India may have lost the World Cup, but Indian fantasy sports players hit a six. Indian fantasy sports companies saw their active user bases grow by as much as 60 per cent during the recently concluded International Cricket Council (ICC) Cricket Men’s World Cup as firms witnessed 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 a total active user base of over 400,000 players during the World Cup. New sign-ups on the platform increased by 40 per cent.
“This was a very important tournament for us, being the first one after the newly implemented Goods and Services Tax (GST) 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 (CMO), SportsBaazi (formerly BalleBaazi) – a fantasy gaming platform.
Dua added that compared to the last World Cup, they saw 2.15-fold growth in terms of unique users playing. “The revenue has also grown 2.5-fold compared to the previous tournament,” he added.
Spurred on by the increased traffic, gaming unicorn Dream11 – the largest Indian platform for fantasy gaming – breached the 200 million threshold of registered users on its platform.
A fantasy sport is a game, 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 match between India and Australia on November 19 created a peak viewership of nearly 5.9 crore on Disney+Hotstar – which streamed all the tournament matches.
According to industry watchers, advertising campaigns played a pivotal role in improving traffic on fantasy gaming platforms during the World Cup.
During the fourth week of the tournament, ad slots for India’s games surged by 142 per cent compared to the average ad slots of other matches, according to a report by advertising analytics firm mFilterIt.
User traffic and interactions on fantasy gaming platforms received a boost by the stellar performance of players during matches. The event brought several first-time as well as return users to these platforms, surpassing previous benchmarks of traffic, experts revealed.
Revenue from the Indian fantasy sports industry has grown 31 per cent to reach Rs 6,800 crore in financial year (FY) 2022. This figure is expected to cross Rs 25,240 crore by FY 2027 at a 33 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), 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 fantasy sports market in the world. The sector, which is currently valued at Rs 75,000 crore, is projected to reach 500 million in the next five years.