India fantasy sports platform raises $225m

The round comprised primary and secondary shares, Dream Sports said in a statement cited by local media. The company is reportedly now valued at $2.5 billion.

According to AVCJ Research’s records, Dream Sports received five previous angel and institutional rounds, with Kalaari Capital and Multiples Alternative Asset Management among the earliest investors. They took part in a $100 million round that also featured Tencent Holdings in 2018. This was followed by a $60 million investment by Steadview Capital last year. The company also identifies Think Investments as an investor on its website.

Founded in 2008 by Bhavit Sheth and Harsh Jain, Dream Sports is best known for Dream11, which has over 80 million users who create their own teams comprising real-life players participating in actual matches and score points based on on-field performance. They compete with other players through online leagues. Sports covered include cricket, football, kabaddi, basketball, hockey, volleyball, baseball, and handball.

The company operates under a freemium model, with users able to participate in free-to-play contests or pay a platform fee, which removes advertising and entitles successful entrants to a share of a winnings pool. Not all free-to-play contests have prizes.

Dream11 launched freemium fantasy cricket in 2012 and reached 17 million users by 2018. By this point, it had partnerships with the International Cricket Council and Australia’s Big Bash League, while former Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni had signed on as a brand ambassador. Fantasy hockey started the same year.

The platform's sports league partnerships now stretch from the Pro Kabaddi League to International Hockey Federation to the NBA, although cricket remains the core offering. Dream11 was recently announced as the title sponsor for the 2020 Indian Premier League, which begins this weekend. It paid $30 million for the branding opportunity, replacing Chinese mobile phone manufacturer Vivo, which backed out amid tensions between China and India.

A 2019 report by KPMG and the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS) projected that fantasy sports users in the country would total 100 million in 2020, up from 50 million in February 2019. The number of platform providers grew sevenfold between 2016 and 2018 with the user base growing 25-fold. Most users opt for free-to-play. Dream11 had a 90% market share as of year-end 2018.

Dream Sports describes itself as a sports technology company, having expanded into other domains in recent years. Its assets include FanCode, a sports streaming platform, DreamX, a sports-focused accelerator program, and DreamSetGo, a sports travel and experience business that offers everything from event packages to personal masterclasses to celebrity shout-outs.

“The sports sector has high growth potential in India. There is a significant opportunity to enhance the fan experience and we are excited to partner with Dream Sports to leverage technology in ways that will deepen the connection between Indian fans and the sports they love," said Akshay Tanna, a managing director at TPG, in a statement.

The private equity firm raised $1.6 billion for its first tech adjacencies fund last year. Speaking to AVCJ last November, CEO Jon Winkelried said the strategy emerged “because we were seeing a number of interesting opportunities out of our tech franchise that didn’t fit the core definition of what we put in our funds, either because they were non-control deals or we weren’t getting governance rights. The risk-return characteristics were slightly different.”

Avendus Capital served as financial advisor to Dream Sports on the transaction.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Technology
• Consumer
• Expansion
• India
• TPG Capital
• ChrysCapital Management
• Tiger Global Management
• TMT