FIH parners with Dream11 to develop fantasy league for hockey tournaments

After cricket, football, and kabaddi, now hockey too will have its share of fun on fantasy games. The International Hockey Federation (FIH) has signed a four-year partnership agreement with Dream11.

Over the 2019-2022 cycle, Dream11 will develop and operate the official fantasy games relating to all FIH events. These include – FIH Pro League (2019-22), FIH Series Finals (2019 and 2021), Olympic Qualifiers Men & Women (2019), Junior World Cups Men and Women (2021) and World Cups Men and Women (2022).

Dream11 is a fantasy sports platform based in India, that helps sports fans increase their engagement and connect deeper with the sport they love. Dream11 allows one to become a team owner digitally through fantasy games. Dream11 is already the official partner of various other leagues such as the Hero CPL, Hero ISL, and National Basketball Association.

This global partnership kick-started this year at the Odisha Hockey Men’s World Cup Bhubaneswar. This is the first time that FIH will be associating with a fantasy game platform for hockey matches. Hockey fans will now get an opportunity to select their fantasy hockey teams for all FIH global matches.

With hockey being added to the fantasy sports platform, it is only going to add to the huge number of players in India who already engage in fantasy sports.

According to a recent IFSG-Nielsen report, India has 40 million fantasy sports players. It is a ten-year-old market and the number is huge when compared to the US and Canada markets that have 59.3 million fantasy sports users, even as fantasy sports started in these countries back in the 1980s.

Harsh Jain, CEO and co-founder, Dream11 said, “The partnership will encourage hockey fans to further popularise hockey and encourage fans to deeply engage with the sport thereby increasing participation and viewership. This is a great opportunity to increase hockey consumption driven by Dream11 users.”

Interestingly, fantasy sports amplify fan engagement and viewership across the world. Almost all major sports leagues in the world are using fantasy sports as their primary tool for fan engagement. The CPL, ISL and NBA have all forged official partnerships with Dream11 to offer fantasy cricket, football and basketball. Further, EPL, IPL and PKL run their own fantasy games to keep fans engaged.