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It’s the IPL season and time for some power-packed action by the mighty
players and their teams. While the ardent cricket lovers would never let get off
even a single opportunity of following up with their favourite teams, there is a
new breed of sports lovers who are parallels working their strategies by forming
their own dream teams. Yes! We are indeed talking about the fantasy sport which
is driven by the young breed of sports lovers whose number has risen to two
million last year. According to Indian Federation of Sports Gaming (IFSG) and AC
Nielsen’s report, their numbers are going to cross over 100 million by 2020.
For the beginners, fantasy sport is basically a game where participants can
choose their own imaginary teams of real players of various teams that a
competing against each other in a league. The success rate of this team depends
on the real performance of players in the league matches. Fantasy sports are
played for not just cricket alone. Games like kabaddi, football and basketball
are hot favourites too.
On the other end of the spectrum are multiplayer games like
online rummy
which is enjoying a growing popularity among online gamers. According to KPMG
online gaming report, the Indian online gaming market is currently valued at USD
290 million and is expected to grow to USD 1 billion by 2021. The online gaming
industry has different genres of games but it’s the skill-based games like
fantasy sport and multiplayer games like rummy which are witnessing great
growth.
Several factors are expected to enable the rapid growth of these genres in the
coming days.
Increase in the number of digital payment users
As all these games initially took off as free-to-play games, their growing
popularity has led online gamers to move towards pay-to-play mode with in-app
purchases. Also, the ease in making online payments has further added to these
growth data. It is expected that the digital payment users in the country are
expected to grow to 300 million by 2020 – a growth fostering trend where
spending on online games is also an integral part of young generation’s
entertainment needs.
The growth of local talent
Whether it is the number of companies operating fantasy sports or the number of
local developers, one important parameter worth acknowledging is their growing
number of local talent. Till 2016, there were only a handful of companies in the
fantasy sports space. But today, there are more around 60 operators with the
likelihood of a new operator being added every week. On the developer front, the
local developer ecosystem is all poised for an impressive growth with 100+
online game developers expected to be added in the next four to five years’ time
frame.
Localized games
The growing demand for localized games in the form of themes and gaming content
has helped the developers to develop games in according to local preferences and
languages. By 2021, according to KPMG report, the Indian language internet users
are expected to increase to around 540 million. As the country gears up for a
spectacular growth, the world’s focus is fixed on the Indian market.
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