Game on: Dream Sports raises $840 million at valuation of $8 billion

Earlier this year, Dream Sports further strengthened its commitment to this space by announcing a venture fund with a corpus of $250 million.

By Salman SH

Dream Sports, the parent company of fantasy gaming unicorn Dream11, on Wednesday announced its largest-ever funding of $840 million led by Falcon Edge, DST Global, D1 Capital, Redbird Capital and Tiger Global.

The current round also saw participation from existing investors such as TPG and Footpath Ventures, making it among the largest investments in India in the sports and gaming tech sector.

Dream Sports, which also owns and operates multiple gaming and sports brands including Dream Capital, FanCode, Dream11, DreamSetGo, Dream Game Studios and DreamPay, was valued at $8 billion in the current round. The start-up was earlier valued at $5 billion when it last raised $400 million in a funding round in March.

Dream Sports, with an existing user base of 140 million Indian sports fans, aims to build a large sports ecosystem, including in areas like sports content, commerce, experiences, fan engagement (including sports gaming and esports), Web 3.0 solutions, fantasy sports and fitness tech.

Earlier this year, Dream Sports further strengthened its commitment to this space by announcing a venture fund with a corpus of $250 million. The Dream Capital fund will look at independent investments and M&As. Currently, Dream Capital has built an initial portfolio of 10 companies, largely focusing on thematic early stage investments in India, including, Fittr, SoStronk, KheloMore and Elevar. Dream Capital is now expanding its sports, fan engagement and fitness portfolio in India and globally.

“Our vision and mission is to create an entrepreneur-led virtuous cycle of investment, innovation and wealth creation for all stakeholders in the sports ecosystem, from fans to athletes, teams and leagues. Our investors have deep experience in developing sports ecosystems globally, and we are fortunate to have their guidance to ‘Make Sports Better’ for 1 billion Indian sports fans,” Harsh Jain, CEO and co-founder, Dream Sports, said in a statement.

“We’re excited to partner with the Dream Sports family in their vision of building the leading end-to-end sports tech company in India. We’re very impressed with their customer-centric approach, product strategy and ability to strengthen connections between fans and their favourite sports,” added Rahul Mehta, managing partner at DST Global.

A homegrown company founded in 2008 by Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth, Dream Sports is located in Mumbai and employs close to 1,000 employees currently. The company’s latest fundraise comes amid a legal cloud hanging over the fantasy gaming sector in India which saw several states including Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Assam, and many others enforcing blanket ban on the sector.

However, Dream11 founders in October moved the Karnataka High Court to reverse the ban, while the Chennai High Court recently quashed the Tamil Nadu government’s blanket ban on fantasy gaming, calling it a ‘game of skill’.