Mumbai: The Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS), India’s self-regulatory industry body for Fantasy Sports (FS), today unveiled the findings of a report titled ‘Fantasy Sports: Creating a Virtuous Cycle of Sports Development’ in collaboration with Deloitte. According to the report, India is the world’s biggest Fantasy Sports market with a user base of over 13 crore, which is expected to further grow at a CAGR of 32% in the coming years. The country has become a high-growth, in-focus market for FS due to factors like large tech-savvy millennial population, growing affiliation with sports, rapid smartphone penetration, availability of low-cost mobile data; and the market size is projected to grow from INR 34,600 cr in FY21 to an estimated INR 1,65,000 cr by FY25 thereby clocking a CAGR of 38%.
Cricket, the dominant sports on fantasy sports platforms, might see its share going to other sports such as kabaddi, hockey, football and volleyball which are growing in popularity, but is expected to continue growing at 30% CAGR over the next four years and remain the highest contributor to the overall revenue of the fantasy sports industry. Women’s cricket has also gained popularity with fantasy sports; the first 12 matches of the 2020 ICC Women’s Twenty20 World Cup generated 4.1 crore viewing hours in India, a 213 percent increase from 2018. During the Phase 1 of the 2021 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) alone, the FS industry user base in India grew by over 20 lakh users.
Key Highlights:
- 50% of user transactions on the FS platforms have come in through tier 2 and tier 3 cities which not only promotes digital payment literacy but also increased engagement and involvement of population in sports through the grassroot level
- Currently, it is estimated that close to 30% of the registered user base for FSPs in India is female users, a number that is expected to consistently rise in the next few years
- Globally the FS user base has been male dominated with men accounting for 67% of the total revenue. Further, the male FS user segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14% over 2020–26
- We can infer that the generation of INR 5,200 crore revenue, in FY21, would have created an indirect revenue of approximately INR 5,500 crore through its vendors and service providers. The total revenue attributable to FS (direct + indirect) is therefore INR 10,700 crore. It may also be noted that the indirect revenue will generate its own stream of GST as well
