by Sandeep Goyal
I set up India’s first-ever fantasy gaming platform – the Indian Fantasy League (IFL) – in 2008 to coincide with the first edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). It was a 50:50 joint venture between my company Mogae and Times of India’s holding company, Bennett Coleman. Karthik Reddy, the celebrated private equity investor of Blume Ventures, was those days with the Times and was on the Board of IFL.
IFL was completely funded by Mogae. And Times provided the advertising space as their contribution, as well as editorial coverage. I actually had the IFL platform up in six weeks – all tech and design, and interfaces all developed in-house. I knew nothing then about fantasy gaming and learnt on the job – IFL was created to have some fun on the side, a diversion from my day job at Dentsu. But IFL came up so nicely and so quickly that I went looking for sponsors – because gamers would just play for free. Airtel signed on as title sponsor – for a princely sum of Rs. 2 crore, which is like maybe Rs. 10-12 crore today. Toyota gave me 10 Innovas for the winners; Yamaha came onboard with 25 bikes; Canon gave me a hundred cameras and Raymond signed up as a co-sponsor with some cash. IFL was all set to launch.
So huge was the rush to sign-up and create a team that our servers crashed in the very first hour and I had to scramble to find more, many more. We got to a million registrations in the first couple of days. The number doubled in the first week. We popped champagne in the office.
The full-page ads every morning and the daily editorial coverage in the Times were hard to miss. They also obviously got noticed by the then IPL czar Lalit Modi. I had known Lalit for years. His father, KK Modi was my client at Godfrey Philips, and he was a good friend. I had worked with Lalit on his on-line lottery project and knew that he wasn’t easy to deal with. Nevertheless, I went to meet him at his opulent suite at the Four Seasons. Lalit was livid – I had launched IFL without BCCI approval and Lalit’s “permission”. After much haranguing and posturing Lalit offered me a ‘deal’ – those who know Lalit Modi will understand what that means. IFL was just a distraction for me. I didn’t honestly understand how potentially large it could become. I stupidly said no to Lalit and walked out.
Lalit Modi was incensed. He had told me that he would teach me a lesson – and he did. BCCI instantly took IFL to court in Chennai – very few cricket fans know that the BCCI is actually registered in Chennai and not in Mumbai – and the Madras High Court got involved. But BCCI got no immediate relief. Just some tweaking of the IFL logo was ordered by the court.
The next year, Aircel grabbed the IFL title sponsorship for Rs 3 crore! Even I was surprised. Registrations nudged 20 million. Sponsors continued to queue up. We added a daily online portfolio game in partnership with BSE. Tennis, state elections, football … we added more and more. But the participation remained free. Just register, and play. But the Sword of Damocles continued to hang over the IFL due to the BCCI litigation. And in 2011, the Madras High Court decreed against us. Litigating against BCCI was not cheap. I had had my fair share of fun – I shuttered IFL. I didn’t want any headache and court cases to fight. Many years later, my friend Rahul Johri during his tenure as BCCI CEO helped us finally reach a settlement with BCCI and end the dispute.
IFL’s loss was surely Dream 11’s gain. Dream11 was last valued at $8 billion in November 2021, following an $840 million funding round. The company’s parent, Dream Sports, secured backing from investors like ChrysCapital, Multiples, TCV, and Tiger Global at that time. I suppose with the Gaming Bill almost on the verge of coming in force as a law, this valuation could well be seriously impaired, if not completely eradicated. What was the difference between IFL and Dream 11? All else apart, Dream 11 participants paid to play – and Real Money Gaming has been a jackpot, multiplied a million times over, in the past few years enriching not just Dream 11 but many many more similar companies.
So, what does the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025 now passed by Parliament state? “No person shall offer, promote, or engage in online money games or online money gaming services. Similarly, no person shall create, cause, or be involved in any advertisement in any media, including electronic communication, that directly or indirectly encourages participation in online money games or promotes online games or promotes online money gaming.” So, who all are likely to be affected? The platforms. Their owners. Their investors. Their employees. Their vendors. Their ad agencies. Their performance marketing agencies. Production houses that produced the visual assets. The celebrity endorsers. BCCI. IPL teams. The cricket broadcaster. Meta, Google, YouTube … all the carriers of digital ads and clicks. And yes, of course, the players of the Real Money Games.
How much is the estimated loss? In 2024, PwC estimated the total size of the Indian online gaming market to be Rs. 33,000 crore in 2023 and estimated it would reach Rs. 66,000 crore, growing at a CAGR of 14.5 percent between 2023–2028. To my mind, the gaming ban could wipe out Rs. 7,000 to 8,000 crore in annual ad spends alone. There are some industry experts who are actually estimating double that number. BCCI and IPL teams (jersey sponsorships mainly) could lose about Rs. 1000 crore between them. JioStar and JioHotstar could see another Rs. 1000 crore or more from selling commercial time. Performance marketing could see a Rs. 5000+ crore erosion – it has been a big category for them. Celebrities could lose Rs. 300-400 crore annually. The ad agency business could lose Rs. 300-400 crore in fees and retainers. Production houses maybe poorer by Rs. 200-300 crore. These are of course just guesstimates.
Biggest losers? Dream 11 with revenues of Rs. 6,380 crore last year spent Rs. 2,960 crore on advertising, promotion and brand-building. Games 24×7 (owners of My11Circle and RummyCircle) earned Rs. 1,990 in revenue and splurged a reported Rs. 1,420 on promotions. Gameskraft, M-League, Winzo, Pokerbaazi, Zupee … and many others spent large sums too.
Investors are set to lose a lot, if not all of the $2 billion+ invested in the gaming sector. Nazara Tecnologies invested Rs. 1,000 crore in Moonshine’s Pokerbaazi some time back. It lost Rs. 1,600 in shareholder value in just one day as its stock plummeted 12% on the bourses.
The inevitable question is why did the government first let Real Money Gaming thrive, and has now nearly killed it? Me believes Real Money Gaming had become open gambling. Just that the likes of Dream 11 had spent large sums of money giving it a veneer of legitimacy, and respectability.
At IFL we did well with sponsors and visibility, but that success was tiny compared to a Dream 11 that enticed storied investors, bewitched BCCI, dominated IPL broadcasts and earned its promoter many laurels and awards as a ‘visionary’ – but while the going was good it did not at all matter. The Govt. is likely to lose a reported Rs. 25,000 crore in GST revenues but it must be congratulated for taking the bold step of stymeing Real Money Gaming which was eroding the very foundations of civil society.
