99% of Dream11's 260 million users never won or lost more than Rs 10,000 in their lifetime, says co-founder Harsh Jain

Dream Sports CEO Harsh Jain

99 percent of users on fantasy sports platform Dream11 had never won or lost more than Rs 10,000 in their lifetime, co-founder Harsh Jain told Moneycontrol in an interview, responding to concerns about the societal impact and financial distress linked to real-money games.

"Our ticket sizes were always very small. They were on average about Rs 51 or Rs 52," Jain said "We’ve clearly reported that fantasy sports, because of the nature of it, you can't play it again and again, anytime you want. It must be based on a real-life match"

"It very much was the popcorn to your movie. It was a sports fan engagement tool," he added.

Jain has previously said that fantasy sports has resulted in a drastic increase in the number of Indians participating in tier two and three cricket tournaments as well as sports outside cricket, including kabaddi, basketball, hockey, football, handball, and volleyball.

On August 22, Dream11, which has a user base of 260 million, halted all paid contests on its fantasy sports platform and shifted entirely to free-to-play online social games. This move was prompted by the new online gaming law that prohibits online money games, which are games where a user makes a deposit, directly or indirectly, with the expectation of earning winnings on that deposit.

In a recent interview with Moneycontrol, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had said that ban was necessary since the problems surrounding such games had grown into a 'social menace' and that it risked spiralling out of control if left unchecked.

“We have seen so many cases where entire families were affected, where students even resorted to crime because of debts accumulated on these platforms. If we hadn’t acted now, it would have become unmanageable," Vaishnaw said.

Jain said regulation would have been the right approach to address the issue, as prohibition is likely to increase the prevalence of a black market.

"I am sure the government is going to come down heavily on them as well," he said.

Looking back, Jain added that the industry could have worked harder to come together and strengthen self-regulation.

In March this year, the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS), of which Dream11 is a founding member, along with other real-money gaming industry bodies, the All India Gaming Federation (AIGF) and the E-Gaming Federation (EGF), announced that they had jointly adopted a ‘Code of Ethics’ to ensure consistent user safety standards across the industry.

The industry bodies had stated that the framework was based on global best practices and aims to implement responsible gaming and advertising policies.

This includes measures such as age-gating, adopting stringent KYC (Know Your Customer), and enabling user-set spending limits and self-exclusion. It also mandates annual third-party audits and comprehensive reporting mechanisms to ensure accountability and transparency.

Jain believes the move may have come a “little bit too late.”

"We were all waiting for a regulator to come. But maybe we should have been harder on ourselves to regulate this as an industry and not just wait for the government to appoint a regulator," he said.

Dream Sports, the parent company of Dream11, does not plan to challenge the constitutional validity of India's new gaming law, Jain said.

"I think the government has made it clear that they don't want this right now. I don't want to live in the past. We want to focus entirely on the future and not fight with the government on something that they don't want," Jain said.

Founded in 2008 by Jain and Bhavit Sheth, Dream Sports was last valued at $8 billion when it received $840 million by way of funding from a clutch of funds led by Falcon Edge, DST Global, D1 Capital, Redbird Capital, Tiger Global, TPG and Footpath Ventures in November 2021.

Apart from Dream11, Dream Sports also houses brands such as sports content and commerce platform FanCode, sports experiences platform DreamSetGo, mobile game development unit Dream Game Studios, fixed deposits and gold investment app Dream Money, and its philanthropic arm Dream Sports Foundation.