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India may have lost the cricket World Cup, but Indian fantasy sports players have scored with it.
Companies in fantasy sports saw their active user bases grow by as much as 60 per cent during the recently concluded tournament as firms had unprecedented traffic and record revenues on their platforms.
Take the case of fantasy-gaming platform SportsBaazi (formerly BalleBaazi). The company witnessed a 60 per cent month-on-month increase in its playing users, while it maintained an active user base of over 400,000 players during the World Cup. New sign-ups on the platform increased 40 per cent.
“This was a very important tournament for us, being the first one (in India) in the goods and services tax regime. Since it was hosted in India, traffic and revenue were at an all-time high for us,” said Puneet Dua, co-founder and chief marketing officer, SportsBaazi, a fantasy-gaming platform.
Dua said compared to the previous World Cup, the firm saw 2.15-fold growth in unique users playing. “Revenue has grown 2.5-fold compared to the previous tournament,” he added.
Spurred by increased traffic, gaming unicorn Dream11, the largest Indian platform for fantasy gaming, breached the 200 million-threshold of registered users on its platform.
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Fantasy gaming firm MyTeam11 also witnessed an increase in revenue to the tune of 40 per cent, Vinit Godara, chief executive officer and co-founder, MyTeam11, told Business Standard.
The platform observed a notable increase in its active user base, with a 50 per cent surge in user acquisition, comparable to the levels seen during the Indian Premier League.
“This growth was attributed to the World Cup being hosted in India during prime time, coupled with the exceptional performance of the Indian cricket team, including prominent players like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, who led the team to the finals,” he said.
A fantasy sport is often played using the internet, where participants assemble imaginary or virtual teams composed of proxies of real players of a professional sport. These teams compete based on the statistical performance of those players in actual games.
Notably, the World Cup final between India and Australia, on November 19, had a peak viewership of nearly 59 million on Disney+Hotstar, which streamed all the matches in the tournament.
According to industry watchers, advertising campaigns played a pivotal role in improving traffic on fantasy-gaming platforms during the World Cup.
However, enthusiasm among gamers was not solely restricted to India’s matches. Notably, fantasy platforms reported heightened participation of users in non-Indian matches as well.
During the fourth week of the tournament, ad slots for India’s games surged 142 per cent over the average ones in other matches, according to a report by advertising analytics firm mFilterIt.
User traffic and interactions on fantasy-gaming platforms received a boost because of the stellar performance of Indian players. The event brought several first-time as well as return users to these platforms, surpassing previous benchmarks of traffic, experts said.
Revenue from the Indian fantasy sports industry grew 31 per cent to reach Rs 6,800 crore in FY22. It is expected to cross Rs 25,240 crore by FY27 at a 33 per cent compound annual growth rate, according to a recent report by the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS) and Deloitte India.
With over 300 fantasy sports platforms (FSPs) and an estimated 180 million users, India is the fastest-growing market in this sector globally. The sector, valued at Rs 75,000 crore, is projected to reach 500 million in five years.
