MUMBAI: India’s first self-regulatory governing body for the gaming industry, the Indian Federation of Sports Gaming (IFSG) and financial services KPMG have teamed up for creating a research report titled ‘The Evolving Landscape of Sports Gaming in India’ that was launched at the GamePlan 2019 event in the city on Monday.
The report has estimated that the value of the fantasy gaming and eSports industry in India is set for a 60% rise from the present-day Rs 43.8 billion to Rs. 118.8 billion in 2023. Its CAGR growth rate has been pegged at 22.1%.
It also claims that 55% of people surveyed in the report, have the misconception of considering eSports purely as digital sports games with another 22% of them clueless about eSports altogether.
However, the encouraging aspect lies in the fact that 72% of respondents claiming that their primary motivation towards playing fantasy games and eSports is enjoyment and a sense of excitement. 81% of them claim that it requires a tremendous amount of skill and knowledge to play them well.
While 74% of users play fantasy sports anywhere between once to thrice a week, 54% of them play it for free. When it comes to paid competitions, 46% of the respondents have played them least once in the last 12 months.
On the other hand, 70-75% of spending on fantasy sports platforms are re-investments coming from previous winnings, cash bonus or periodical promotional offers given by them to users, incentivising them and lightening their own pockets.
In terms of gaming developers and producers, 85% of the industry revenues come from mobile games, making them virtually a monopoly. In the last eight years, an 5x increase in the size of the market has been seen.
IFSG President John Loffhagen stated: “With the rapidly growing digital infrastructure and emergence of new sports leagues, the Indian online sports gaming industry is witnessing a boom which shows no sign of slowing down. Exponential growth provides users with easy access to a vast variety of sports gaming apps, formats and genres. This could lead to potential confusion and misjudgement among players in choosing the right platform to engage with their favourite sport. As India’s only self- regulated industry body for Sports Gaming, we are dedicated to creating awareness about fantasy sports, encouraging operators to adopt ethical and best business practices and allowing sports fans to enjoy their favourite sports in a fun, exciting and safe manner.”
Dream 11 co-founder and CEO Harsh Jain added: “Sports fan engagement is something like the Jio effect that we had when 4G data was available at affordable prices. In the last couple of years data has become 90% cheaper and is used 20 times more than before enabling viewers to engage with the sport in different ways. Watching your own sport at your own time (even on the go) leads to ways in which you would want to engage with that sport even more. Through fantasy sports platforms, the viewership has gone up by 80% having a reason to delve into the statistics of the players and teams. These factors are working in tandem to increase fan engagement over the last couple of years.”
