The OFS market attracted Contest Entry Amount (CEA) worth Rs 16,500 crore (US$ 2.34 billion) in FY20 versus Rs 6,000 crore (US$ 851.18 million) in previous financial year. CEA is the amount of money paid by a user to the operator to play a match on its platform. Thus, increase in CEA denotes that the number of players on various platforms have significantly increased.
This growth was led by the increase in overall userbase and the number platforms. Users have increased from two million in 2016 to 90 million in 2019, the OFS platforms grew from less than 10 operators in 2016 to over 140 by 2019.
Indian online sports fantasy industry indirectly generated Rs 2,600 crore (US$ 368.85 million) revenue for the secondary industries as well including payment gateways, technology providers, media platforms and agencies. Around 3,400 direct and over 5,000 indirect jobs have been created so far. The top OFS operators have ventured into team-based sports such as cricket, football, and kabaddi, bringing seasonality and reducing over dependence on a single sport. The share of cricket as a percentage CEA has seen a decrease from 95 per cent in 2016 to 85 per cent in 2019.
According to the report, some of the growth drivers responsible for the space are growth in digital infrastructure, increase in online transactions, growing popularity of sports leagues, operator investments in technology and reaffirmation of the legality of the fantasy sports format in India.
“While COVID-19 may result in a temporary blip in the upward trajectory of the fantasy sports segment, the medium to long term growth prospects of the segment remain robust, with the gradual return of international sport. Further, in a post COVID world, with social distancing measures in place, fantasy sports is likely to play an increasingly important role in connecting fans to their favourite sports and increasing fan engagement," said Mr Girish Menon, partner and head, media and entertainment, KPMG in India.
Although, global football leagues like Bundesliga, English Premier League, Serie A and La Liga have started, and it is estimated that Indian Premier League (IPL) might start towards the fag end of the year. This is likely to provide relief to the online fantasy sports industry in the country.
"In absence of live events in the last few months, the business has taken a massive hit. With football and basketball leagues starting globally, I feel the worst is behind us. Hopefully, sports tournaments in India including IPL will also resume. The recovery will be quick as there is immense pent up demand for sports," said Mr Amrit Mathur, strategic advisor, FIFS.
The user base has been showing interest in online fantasy sports as revealed a dipstick survey by KPMG conducted on 763 respondents across 10 cities. Out of these 253 were OFS users (having played OFS in the last one year) and the rest were categorized as non-OFS users. Total, 65 per cent of the respondents indicated sports was among the top three genres they watched on TV and OTT platforms.
As per the data, a total of 32 per cent were engaged with more than one sport on the OFS platforms; incentivizing operators to expand their sports offerings. Over 65 per cent of these respondents revealed that there is a direct increase in the time spent in analysing, watching, and reading about the Sport once they start playing fantasy sports online.
Though, there are crucial challenges which involves high dependency on cricket, seasonality, consumer perception of OFS being a game of skill, low entry barriers, play store listing limitation and low women participation.
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