Guwahati, July 9 -- Assam, Meghalaya and the rest of the Northeast have always followed football with an intensity rarely matched elsewhere in India. Shillong's love for the game predates the IPL boom by decades, and cricket has since carved out its own loyal following in Guwahati, Agartala and beyond. That dual passion has fed a quieter trend: more people in the region are now placing bets on matches through their phones.

The shift did not happen overnight. Smartphone penetration rose steadily across the Northeast through the last decade, and cheaper mobile data made streaming matches and checking odds equally easy. Platforms like stark bet built their reach in this exact window, offering markets on both football leagues and domestic cr...