Evolution of Fantasy Cricket in India

Mar 10, 2025

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Trigger Warning & Disclaimer: Gambling, Betting, and Fantasy sports involve risk. A lot of information shared here might be triggering for those who gamble or in recovery. We recorded this to bring forth the issues involved with Gambling, Betting, and Fantasy Sports. Same goes for all the links in the shownotes.

In this episode, we have MV and Aditya who are joined by Swaroop Swaminathan from The New Indian Express.

Swaroop has been with the daily for a decade and has covered two Asian Games, two Hockey WCs, the recently concluded Chess World Championship, the 2016 T20 World Cup, 2023 ODI World Cup & was there for the WTC Finals in 2023. He won the Red Ink Award on Mariappan Thagavelu who won a Gold Medal for India at the Rio Paralympics.

We go down memory lane to the origins of Fantasy Cricket with Super Selector to season long IPL fantasy to Dream 11 and now the plethora of Betting Websites openly out and about the Indian internet and all around us.

Some Notes about Fantasy Sports in India -

In FY23, 18 Crore (180 million) users were playing fantasy sports. By FY27 - it will be 50 Crore (half a billion)

40% users are between ages 25-34 - the so-called demographic dividend of India (Statista)

India fantasy sports market is projected to witness a CAGR of 20.88% during the forecast period FY2024-FY2031, growing from USD 751 million in FY2023 to USD 3423.54 million in FY2031. (Markets and Data)

Links to Swaroop's pieces

- Swaroop's piece on Fantasy Cricket from 2023 - State of Play

- Swaroop's piece on Surrogate Advertising in Cricket

- On Ban Cloud over BCCI's partners - here.

- On Illegality of betting but rampant tips on Instagram reels - here.