In India, the country which has given rise to many historic cricketers like sachin tendulkar, kapil dev and many more, it is worth introducing fantasy cricket.  But the Indian market of fantasy cricket was barred by the entry fees.   

 

So, Gaurav Sarin, CEO and founder of CricPlay,  came up with the idea of removing entry fee and let the Indian cricket fan base make this idea a fabulous one. Fantasy cricket was basically a format of cricket in which you were virtually teamed up with your friends or randomly with one another and could make a virtual team and could score points based on the performance of the players in your team. One could easily cash out the winnings and rewards. But CricPlay also experimented with the traditional form of fantasy cricket and now one could also play with experts and ex-players.  

 

This fantasy cricket company Cricplay however managed to have 200k+ users in an year and claimed to have 60% daily to weekly users in terms of retention and 40% on an average in the year. 

 

The biggest X factor for this app is its star contest in which one could easily compete against experts or former players and if somehow e manages to beat their predictions, then he can cash out all his winnings. Apart from this star contest , it has many more features which makes it more favorable to users like captain change, vice-captain change and many more in different leagues. 

 

The fantasy sports fan base exploded and reached to 50 Mn users in 2018 from mere 2 Mn users in 2016. Smartphone affordability and penetration, internet user base, declining data prices and advancement in digital payment are some key features in expansion of fan base of the fantasy sports.   

 

Along with the growth of fan base, the number of fantasy operators also kept on increasing and reached 70 from mere 10 in 2019. Amongst all fantasy operators, Dream11 was reported to have the largest fan base approximated to be around 50 Mn in 2018. 

 

According to KPMG’s survey, nearly 85% of the major city respondents pay one to three times a week whereas 70%  of the small city respondents play more than 4 times a week. It is the urge of the Indians to simply make money sitting back at their homes that are making this fantasy sports idea a huge success in the country. 

 

The Indian fan base for these sports amounted around 290 Mn in 2017 and is expected to cross 1 Bn in 2021.  Same goes for the fan base which currently is 50 Mn and is expected to be 100 Mn in 2020.  

 

But the major hurdle was the legality of such apps, some individuals in India  still think that it is illegal to play such betting games. But the fact is that they are completely legal in the country and the high court of Punjab made this fact very clear as it dismissed a petition saying that these bettings does not fall under gambling.