Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju says online fantasy sports are 'revolutionising' consumption of sports

Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju said online fantasy sports platforms are "revolutionising" the consumption of sports in the country.

Speaking at the 10th Global Sports Summit: FICCI ‘TURF’ 2020, he said: “I see how fantasy sports is fuelling sports consumption. It is very important. Online fantasy sports is instrumental in revolutionising the manner in which sports enthusiasts engage with their respective favourite sports.”

Harsh Jain, CEO and Co-Founder, Dream11 & Dream Sports, during a conversation, highlighted the direct impact that online fantasy sports have on the sports industry and the Indian economy at large. “India is a pretty big market with a billion sports fans, and so we cannot be a one-sport nation. The problem is that sports as an industry is built as top-down, meaning, it is all about mass and scale. We want to build it bottoms-up, and so, we want to focus on other sports that have pockets of users, and in India, even pockets can be lakhs of people," he said.

“Fantasy Sports changes the way you consume sports — you don’t just follow the top team or the team you like; you follow everyone to see the value picks, research, knowledge, chemistry for every player, and sports consumption goes through the roof. It’s based on the actual sports match, and on real-life events and it’s not available 24x7.”

Sangita Reddy, President, FICCI, and Joint MD, Apollo Hospitals Group, while speaking about the potential of fantasy sports in India, said, “online fantasy sports industry is actively working to develop and strengthen, and provide meaningful impetus to the entire sports ecosystem and is committed to creating impact dual partnerships for the government and other organisations to help realise the true potential of sports. The industry is committing a corpus of INR 20 crores in FY 2020-21 and will be deploying an additional Rs 50 crores in FY 2021-22 to aid and facilitate the development of sports in the sports ecosystem in the country.”

Fantasy sports platforms enable fans to create their own fantasy sports team. In doing so, fans actively engage with the players, matches venue conditions, etc.

With inputs from ANI