Dream11, the fantasy gaming giant with 250 million users, is rewriting its playbook. It now looks to recast itself as a sports entertainment platform, betting on India’s rising ‘watch-party’ culture, where fans stream matches, interact and hang out online. The shift from fantasy gaming to live, creator-led engagement comes after the real-money ban gutted its core business, pushing the firm to reinvent itself as a place where viewers watch with influencers, as sports viewing becomes more social.
The bet is that India’s sports fandom can evolve into a creator-driven, engagement-led ecosystem that generates revenue through advertisements and micro-payments. But, will fans choose creator-led streams over traditional broadcasts? Mint explores.
The core idea borrows from Silicon Valley: Twitch, the platform Amazon snapped up for $970 million in 2014 built a global ecosystem where gamers broadcast themselves, audiences interact with them in real time and creators monetize fan engagement.
For context, Dream11 has always been rooted in cricket, but in a very different way. The app revolved around fantasy cricket: users built virtual teams, scored points based on real match outcomes and competed for cash rewards. It later added football, kabaddi and other sports, but cricket remained its foundation and biggest draw.
The new pivot isn’t Dream11 entering sports for the first time; it’s shifting from playing around cricket to watching and interacting around cricket, moving the experience from fantasy contests to social viewing.
How far does Dream11’s global sports reach extend?
Dream11’s footprint extends well beyond India. It has been the official fantasy partner of the Caribbean Premier League and has held naming rights for New Zealand’s Super Smash domestic T20 competition. The platform has also been linked with Australia’s Big Bash League, the Women’s Big Bash League, and struck a partnership with the International Cricket Council in 2018.
Its reach isn’t limited to cricket either. Dream11 works with football and basketball properties, serving as the fantasy partner for the Indian Super League, Pro Kabaddi League and various basketball tournaments. In 2017, the National Basketball Association (NBA), America launched its official fantasy game in India through Dream11, and the company has forged ties with the International Hockey Federation as well.
Dream11’s presence in Indian cricket wasn’t limited to the app economy either. It had signed a three-year, ₹358-crore deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in July 2023, becoming the lead sponsor on Indian men’s and women’s team jerseys. After the real-money gaming ban was notified in October, Dream11 exited the agreement, prompting the board to hunt for a new sponsor.
Can ‘watch parties’ become a viable business?
Gaming had a large, proven revenue pool, underpinned by entry fees and cash contests. Dream11’s new model is very different: free usage, monetized through ads, micro-transactions and performer interactions. Chief executive officer Harsh Jain says the opportunity is large enough to justify the pivot: the firm pegs the total addressable market (TAM), a metric used by startups to understand the growth potential of a segment, for such sports engagement at $10 billion in revenue, with over a billion sports enthusiasts globally.
However, monetization can take time. Digital advertising is now a $16 billion sizeable pool in India, but free-to-play platforms typically sit at the top of the funnel—large reach but slower revenue per user growth, says Madhur Singhal, managing partner at Praxis Global Alliance, a management consultancy firm.
The revenue pool “will take time to build up” though Gen-Z and millennial audiences are receptive to targeted engagement formats, he added.
Dream11 plans to start small— ₹3–10 per shout-out or interaction— with a chunk going to influencers and a platform fee retained by the company. It also offers paid shout-outs, ad-free versions, promotional slots and creator-driven engagement formats.
Singhal said the low price points can scale “fast enough" especially because of the seamless digital payments infrastructure in India.
Will fans actually watch these influencers instead of just watching matches on TV/OTT?
One of the biggest behavioural leaps Dream11 is banking on is that sports audiences will split attention between live broadcast feeds and creator-led interaction streams. Singhal believes they will as sports evokes passion, intrigue and unpredictability—qualities that creators can amplify.
Dream11 is betting on a universal truth in fandom: people like watching reactions. Whether it is a YouTuber reacting to a goal, an ex-cricketer offering live tactical insight, or a gaming personality injecting humour, the second screen has long been part of sports culture. The company’s platform attempts to institutionalize that behaviour, making commentary and interaction as important as viewing.
Still, this shift is not guaranteed. India’s OTT giants already command huge sports audiences; convincing viewers to split or migrate attention to a new format will require strong creator pull, differentiated experiences and habit-building. As Singhal notes that downloads only “induce trial” and repeat usage depends entirely on the quality and continuity of content.
Is India’s creator pool deep enough to fuel this model?
The biggest structural challenge may not be technology, but supply. India’s creator economy has scale, but deep sports-native creator ecosystems are still emerging. Singhal points out that the creator economy “is not deep enough today,” but Dream11 could play the role YouTube once did: build the infrastructure, provide tools, improve access to sporting content and create a pipeline of hosts, commentators and streamers.
Can Dream11 defend against competition?
Competition for attention and advertising is intensifying.
Reliance, for instance, has begun pushing harder in the cricket economy: ending free IPL streaming, rolling out subscription plans and pitching data-led targeting tools to woo advertisers, signalling a push to monetize cricket viewership, rather than giving access away for free.
As streaming giants and telecom-media platforms sharpen their own monetization playbooks around live sports, Dream11 is entering a space where deep pockets, content rights and audience ownership can quickly shift the balance. Its challenge, therefore, is not just building a differentiated experience but defending it against incumbents that already control distribution and ad-spend flow.
Watch-party formats are replicable too: OTT platforms, YouTube and even broadcasters can spin up similar creator-led experiences. Singhal argues that copying the product is far easier than copying the community.
Meanwhile, the broader Dream Sports group is diversifying to hedge risk. It has launched Dream Money for wealth management and intends to enter stock broking, Mint had reported earlier.
Backed by investors, including Tencent, Steadview Capital, Tiger Global, TPG, ChrysCapital, TCV and Alpha Wave Global, Dream11 was last valued at $8 billion. It reported ₹6,384 crore in revenue and ₹188 crore in profit for FY23, but those numbers have plunged after the ban.
Queries sent to Dream11 on Friday did not elicit a response until press time.