- Dream11 will exit online gaming and focus on live sports entertainment in India
- The new app will launch within 24 hours on App Store and Playstore
- Dream11 plans to onboard top influencers and share majority revenue with creators
Dream11 will exit online gaming segment completely and pivot to the booming live sports business in India, co-founder Harsh Jain said on Thursday. This comes months after India's new online gaming law prohibited real-money games.
"We are entering sports entertainment platform and will become second screen for live sports viewers. The platform will allow viewers watch matches along with creators. The new app be go live on App Store, Playstore in the next 24 hours," he said.
Advertisements will continue on the platform and a paid ad-free version will be launched sometime later.
Dream11 is actively onboarding "top quality" influencers now, he said. The company will rope in other creators eventually, Jain said, commiting that creators will take the "lion's share" of the revenue.
Jain also hinted at staff restructuring. "Dream11 has nearly 1,000 employees but the new Dream11 will need only around 200 people. The rest will be spread across other properties within our ecosystem. Other platforms include Dream Money, Fancode, Dream Sports AI, Dream Cricket."
In August, the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025, came into effect that banned real money-based gaming, while promoting e-sports and online social games.
The legislation prohibits advertising or endorsements of platforms facilitating online games that involve real monetary transactions. It had proposed to bar banks, as well as non-banking financial bodies, from facilitating any transaction involving online money games.
Many real-money online gaming firms, including Dream11, had shut their doors after the passage of Bill.
Additionally, payment gateways also braced for up to a 15% hit in their annual top line growth as real-money gaming companies brought their operations to a halt.
Overall transaction volumes in India is expected to take a hit of at least Rs 30,000 crore over the year, with smaller industry-specific companies facing the brunt of the ban.
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