Fantasy gaming apps warm-up as IPL kicks off
Six months ago, Indian fantasy gaming start-ups were pivoting to lesserknown sports leagues in faraway places such as Taiwan and Belarus as popular events were cancelled on account of the Covid-19 pandemic. This had led to a lot of companies delay their funding rounds.
It has been a reverse swing of sorts for the space, at least for now. Fantasy cricket apps are doling out new offers, features in their gameplay, and are bumping up marketing spends ahead of the Indian Premier League that kicks off on Saturday.
India's largest fantasy gaming company in terms of users, Dream 11, has, in fact, become the title sponsor of the sporting blitzkrieg for this year. It replaced mobile handset maker Vivo after the firm pulled out due to the Indiachina standoff. Dream 11 targets to get 30-40 million new users on its platform by the end of the year.
Sequoia-backed MPL has introduced a unique season ticket concept, priced at ~99, where holders can enter multiple mega contests on the platform for free throughout the season. The start-up, which is also the kit sponsors for KKR and RCB teams, plans to hit 80 million users from current 60 million by the end of the event.
"IPL is the biggest even in terms of user engagement within the fantasy sports category, with over 30-40 per cent of the year's overall metrics coming from just two months of cricket," said Sudhanshu Gupta, chief operating officer, Paytm First Games. "Being India's home-grown gaming platform, we aim to bring the excitement of fantasy sports during IPL to gaming enthusiasts across the country."
Paytm First Games expects to cross 100 million user mark during the event from current 80 million. On Friday, however, Paytm First Games app was removed from the Google Playstore for alleged violation of gambling policies while the download link for installation was available on its website and the app was still working.
"While online gaming saw a significant user engagement in areas of casual and online betting games during the lockdown, fantasy sports as a subgenre depends on live sporting events that had come to a grinding halt," Ankur Pahwa, partner and national leader (e-commerce and consumer internet), EY India. "The resumption of live-events, especially IPL, will help not only boost onboarding of new users but also bring back latent users onto the platform."
Smaller players in the space such as Harsha Bhogle-backed Fantasy Akhadha and bootstrapped venture Myteam11, too, are betting heavily on IPL to onboard new users.
According to Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports-kpmg 2020 report released in July, gross revenue of online fantasy sports companies in FY20 was ~2,400 crore compared to ~920 crore in FY19. IPL constitutes 35-40 per cent of the industry’s revenue, it said.
IPL constitutes 35-40 per cent of the gaming app industry’s revenue, a report said