‘Team Hai Toh Maaza Hai’ — Dream 11
Analysis of the largest Indian gaming unicorn.
Last Saturday marks the inception of the 15th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
And one thing that is synonymous with IPL for the past few years is — Dream 11 !!
Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth were extremely passionate about sports since their childhood.
During their MBA, they realized India lacks a native fantasy sports platform.
While fantasy sports were popular in the west, it was still a foreign concept in India.
Seeing this gap and realizing India’s love for cricket, they launched Dream 11 in 2008.
Fast forward to this day, it is the largest Indian gaming unicorn ($8B).
In FY-20 it generated Rs 2000 cr in revenues along with Rs 181 cr in profits.
So, let’s analyze how the company made it this far:
1. Rise of fantasy gaming (market):
The fantasy sports sector of India is projected to be a $3.7B market by 2024 with a cagr of 32%.
Cheap smartphones and data packages, the rise of native developers, and an increase in on-screen time are the reasons behind this.
Besides, the mobile gaming sector of India is a $6.5B market growing at a cagr of 35%.
Together this creates a huge opportunity for fantasy sports platforms like Dream 11.
2. Popularity of cricket (market):
India constitutes 90% of 1B global cricket fans.
The IPL alone gets a net viewership of over 400M. It is also the largest cricket tournament around the globe.
Dream which initially started as a cricket-only fantasy sport benefitted heavily from this macroeconomic factor.
3. Tech (product):
Dream is a tech product at its core.
It uses:
Torque: To lower latency even at peak demand
Funnel Analytics: To recognize and know user behavior trends
FENCE (Fairplay Ensuring Network Chain Entity): To detect fair play violations
Concurrency prediction: To predict growth patterns of infrastructure and users
4. Wide Distribution (strategy):
Dream started initially as a cricket-only fantasy sports platform.
Gradually it managed to partner with all the leading global sports tournaments.
From NBA (basketball) to ISL (football), BBL (cricket), FIH (hockey), Pro-K (kabaddi), Dream has got it all.
5. Marketing (strategy) :
To bring disruption and inculcate a new behavior, marketing is the most effective weapon.
And Dream did exactly that.
In FY-20 alone, they spent Rs 1300 cr on marketing.
It was also the chief title sponsor of IPL 2020, where it spent Rs 222 cr.
Besides, it created several ad campaigns and onboarded all the leading cricketers to create a connection and trust amongst its TG.
6. First mover advantage:
Dream 11 was the first Indian fantasy sports app.
It was launched way back in the year 2008 as a seasonal fantasy sports platform.
Also, low ticket contests attracted a lot of users.
However, currently, Dream is facing steep competition in the fantasy gaming segment.
Startups like MPL, Winzo, Mycircle 11, Hala play have entered the market and reduced Dream’s market share.
To counter this, the firm is slowly diversifying its core business.
Infact, they are trying to build a complete sports ecosystem:
Dream 11: Fantasy Sports
FanCode: Sports News
DreamSetGo: Sports Tourism
Dream Capital: Sports VC
DreamPay: Finance
Dream is also preparing to ride the web3 (NFT, blockchain, AR/VR) gaming boom.
Recently they have acquired a cricket-based NFT platform, Rario for $100M.
This is also the largest web3 acquisition in India to date.
Excited to see how the company will contribute to the growth of the Indian
Sports-Tech ecosystem !!
Alright, that’s a wrap for the second edition of “Decrypt 🔎”.
Check below for the first edition 👇
Please provide your feedback by dropping me a message at Satyaki KC.
See you next week on Wednesday at 9 am sharp :)