Hasta La Motion!

The Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS), announced the winners of India’s first Fantasy Sports Awards at its Annual Conference – GamePlan 2020, hosted virtually this year. Recognizing the outstanding work done in the Fantasy Sports industry, FIFS announced four winners across four categories. Fancy11 won the ‘Best Debutant’ award, Faboom was felicitated with the ‘Best Product Innovation’ award, MyTeam11 received the ‘Best Marketing Award’ and Dream11 was recognised with the esteemed ‘Excellence Award’. The winners were shortlisted by an eminent jury consisting of  FIFS strategic advisor Amrit Mathur, Professional Volleyball League CEO Joy Bhattacharjya and GoSports Foundation managing trustee and Principal Lawyer at LawNK Nandan Kamath.

 Themed as Good for Sports, Good for India, GamePlan 2020 was graced by  NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, as the keynote speaker. In his address, he spoke about the immense potential of the Indian fantasy sports industry. The annual report industry report on Indian fantasy sports was launched at the event by FIFS in collaboration with KPMG, ‘Business of Fantasy Sports’. The event witnessed two highly engaging panel discussions on “Fantasy Sports Fuels Sports Growth” and “Rapid Growth of the Fantasy Sports Ecosystem”. Some of the key speakers at the event included  Games, AWS, Worldwide Technical Leader Nari Gopala, Dream11 and Dream Sports co-founder and CEO  Harsh Jain, MyTeam11 co-founder and COO Sanjit Sihag ,  Delhi Capitals CEO Dhiraj Malhotra,  Rotowire co-founder and president Peter Schoenke,  and LaLiga India MD José Antonio Cachaza Pereiro. The event was attended live by over 1500 delegates.

 Kant said, “I have very keenly followed the growth of the fantasy sports industry as a supporter of technology and good governance. I am a long term believer that India must become a global champion of the fantasy sports industry. Due to the looming COVID-19 threat, in the foreseeable future, digital fan engagement will be at the forefront as most of the mainstream sports are being held today in closed-door stadiums, without an audience. Online fan engagement platforms like fantasy sports will take centre stage in such situations. I am sure we will witness new and innovative ways of engaging with sports fans in the online space in the next few months.”

Talking about GamePlan 2020, John Loffhagen, Chairman, FIFS, said, “The 3rd edition of FIFS GamePlan, witnessed some of our firsts. We went virtual for the first time and launched India’s first fantasy sports Awards. At GamePlan 2020, we deep-dived into the economic impact of Indian fantasy sports via employment creation, paying taxes, creating newer micro-economies around itself, and much more. We also discussed the growing need for FS platform to evaluate avenues including analytics, content, digital, transactions, and other imperatives in order to further improve and sustain the user engagement on all the platforms. FIFS is proud of the innovation & passion demonstrated by the Indian fantasy sports operators. I want to congratulate all the winners who have done exceptional work in the industry.”

GamePlan 2020 has garnered attention and support from some of the best brands in the industry. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the ‘Title Sponsor’. FSS and Dream11 have joined as the Gold Sponsors; MyTeam11 is the Silver Sponsor and SBI General, TransUnion are the Bronze Sponsors.

Categories and Winners in the Indian OFS industry 2020:

1. Best Debutant: Fancy11
2. Best Product Innovation: Faboom
3. Best Marketing Award: MyTeam11
4. Excellence Award: Dream11

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New age digital entertainment and technology company, JetSynthesys, has raised a capital infusion of Rs 300 crore to strengthen its global foray into gaming, digital entertainment, and interest-based social community platforms.

Having garnered over 100 million consumers and across 180 countries, the fresh capital will be utilised for new products, ramp up technology, talent, and content, accelerate marketing, and expand the consumer base over the next 36 months.

The investment comes from existing shareholders of JetSynthesys, part of the Navani family owned Jetline Group, led by the family office of Adar Poonawalla, and Kris Gopalakrishnan. Other shareholders of JetSynthesys include India’s leading billion dollar family offices of the promoters of Thermax, Triveni Group and DSP Group.

The venture claims that the fundraise positions JetSynthesys amongst India’s first tech and gaming unicorns with a global presence, and partnerships in countries such as Japan, United States and Europe, one of the only Indian players to do so.

Rajan Navani, vice chairman and managing director, JetSynthesys said, “Since our inception, we have believed in the power of technology, content and digital transactions converging to impact the daily lives of people positively. The current times have seen a huge surge in data consumption and large investments have come into telecom providers of data. In that light, we have succeeded in creating products and platforms with world class expertise that have found their niche with millions of end consumers who ride on this data infrastructure and consume this data.”

“We want to use this latest fundraise to create more success stories at scale, across varying demographics, geographies, and socio-economic classes; similar to what we achieved with Nodwin Gaming, an esports venture we co-founded that has grown to about INR 100 crore revenues in just 4 years. We’re confident this fresh capital will help us to further strengthen our technology, content and distribution stacks in a new emerging era of contactless experiences through made in India apps with the best talent available globally, funded through Indian capital,” Navani said.

With an annual run rate of 20-50 rupees in revenue, JetSynthesys claims that the infused capital will be leveraged to put the venture’s digital platforms into high gear, each of which are currently poised to reach Rs 100 crore in annual revenue in the next 24 to 36 months.

Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer, Serum Institute of India, and scion of the Cyrus Poonawalla Group, said, “Our family office has had a long history with healthcare and wellness. In light of recent global developments, digital products and services are the need of the hour, since they help everyone feel connected, while also contributing towards social distancing.”

“Gaming, social communities, and digital entertainment have thus become basic essentials in this new normal, and I’m happy to be associated with a company like JetSynthesys which is playing a critical role in these sectors, not just in India, but also globally. I am privy to the developments on this front, and I foresee some exciting times ahead for all of us,” Poonawalla said.

The investment will also enable the venture to develop world class digital products and mobile games with high fidelity and network play, strengthening the company’s deep tech stacks in new technologies like AI, Blockchain, AR/VR/MR and quantum computing. This will further deepen JetSynthesys’ presence in global e-sports, and help the company create large global IPs and forge new strategic partnerships with gaming powerhouses across leading markets like Japan, United States and Europe.

Kris Gopalakrishnan, non-executive chairman, JetSynthesys, shared, “We have several initiatives in gaming, content, digital commerce, mindfulness and fintech which are seeing increased traction during Covid times. Our international business with global partners is also seeing increased traction. This funding will allow us to invest more in sales and marketing as well as scale up operations.”

Boosting this growth phase, JetSynthesys recently launched ‘WWE Racing Showdown’, in an exclusive partnership with WWE. A one-of-its-kind, high-octane, vehicular combat game that claims to feature the best of mobile action, sports, and racing.The gaming business is also set to launch new games in the casual and hyper casual segment in partnership with Japanese gaming studios in the near future.​

With gaming, social communities, digital entertainment becoming essentials in this new normal, Rajan tells us that engagement measures and revenue have gone up by as much as 150-200 percent and 50-70 percent respectively across some of JetSynthesys platforms.

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After the government of India banned 59 Chinese apps for everyone in the country, the Indian army asks soldiers and officers to delete 89 apps from their smartphone. The report first comes from news agency ANI. The agency posted a full list of 89 apps on Wednesday. Notably, the list includes more than just apps with China origin such as Facebook, Tinder, Instagram, among others.

In a Twitter post, the news agency stated that the “Indian Army has asked its personnel to delete 89 apps from their smartphone including Facebook, TikTok, Truecaller, and Instagram to plug leakage of information.” The list includes both Chinese and non-Chinese apps ranging from messaging platforms to health apps to popular mobile games and more.

Indian Army has asked its personnel to delete 89 apps from their smartphones including Facebook, TikTok, Truecaller and Instagram to plug leakage of information: Indian Army Sources pic.twitter.com/l23Lu5ndNh

— ANI (@ANI) July 8, 2020

The list of apps banned in Indian Army has been divided into different categories including messaging platforms, video hosting apps, content sharing apps, web browsers, video streaming apps, utility apps, gaming apps, e-commerce apps, dating apps, music apps, microblogging apps, news apps, lifestyle apps and antivirus apps.

The app list are as follows :

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The Covid-19 wrecking ball — hit the planet hard, jolting economies and disrupting the traditional ways of conducting business — across the world. With social distancing norms, precautionary measures and strict guidelines put in place to prevent the outbreak, film productions and live shoots — have been affected enormously.

Film Shoots

By proxy, the ecosystem’s crucial chamber; the VFX industry — also initially floundered on its feet during the lockdown phase — owing to its own struggles with the pending operations. However the industry managed to navigate remote workstations, nuanced pipelines and workflows — in an astonishingly short amount of time.

Necessity being the mother of invention, forced the industry to quickly — create innovative technologies and workarounds — to soldier on despite the constraints triggered by the pandemic. Co-ordination was ensured through live conferencing applications like — Zoom and Hangouts while cloud services, high-speed internet along with remote workstations — zipped to their rescue during the nationwide shutdown.

As the content industry gears up to regain momentum with the resumption of — the previously halted big-ticket movies like — Batman, Mission Impossible 7 and Avatar 2, cinema world is beginning to evolve and adapt to — newer mechanisms to continue working on their projects.

Now more than ever, filmmakers are training their eyes on — VFX and virtual production technologies to facilitate the filming process — in order to minimise the number of people on the sets and efficiently plan their projects — ahead of time from their homes.

Victor Tango Productions Founder & Owner Vaibhav Modi

Surmising the ways in which filmmakers will approach projects, Victor Tango Productions founder and director Vaibhav Modi shares: “Federations and unions are also working on drawing out the protocol for sanitisation and hygiene. Indeed, there will be a lot of Green Screen shoots and technologies that will emerge and grow faster to enable shooting without too many people crowding at one place. Not only non-fiction but even on fiction shoots or the shows involving VFX and action that are shot — the actual number of people is— very high. So we would all have to get used to multi-tasking and breaking down the production process in such a manner that not many people have to come together at one place”

A representative of Ajay Devgn owned NYVFXWAALA studio shared that ‘filmmakers are writing their scripts bearing green-screens and visual effects work in mind in the current times’

Given the rising Covid-19 cases, filmmakers — who were previously agnostic about the potential of special effects and pre-visualisation technologies — are now beginning to adopt them lickety-split in large number. Even before the lockdown, Disney’s live action Lion King — was seen by Jon Favreau — even before making it with the help of virtual production, illustrating — the myriad possibilities filmmakers can tap into.

Centroid India Director Parth Shah

Crowd simulation, face and body replacements, green-screen compositing and digital FX all facilitate the goal of minimising the physical crew sizes and scenes. Explaining the wonders of Virtual Production Technology that filmmakers can leverage in the Covid-19 times, Centroid Indian Director Parth Shah opines: “One benefit of virtual production (VP) along with performance capture (PCap) is that it helps you shoot with — a digital double of a CG Character along with a real actor in a virtual environment (LED Stage or realtime compositing on chroma stage), thus — lowering the risk of involving multiple actors and their support staff on the set”

During the lockdown, VFX Studios and Filmmakers — have leveraged the time to plan Previs and TechVis — for their project. Over the years, Centroid India has been providing realtime previs of character animation in a CG environment, helping production houses to plan complex scenes remotely.

Motion Capture

He adds: “You can also MoCap (Motion Capture) a single actor and replicate his animation to create crowd scene, which helps you to reduce secondary characters on the shoot floor. We provide services like — VR Scouting which lets you do — virtual recee of a location — without physically traveling to the location”

philmCGI founder & director Arpan Gaglani

With great technologies, come great budgets. Although the scenario indicates that — the quantum of visual effects work will increase in the days ahead, philmCGI founder & director Arpan Gaglani offered — a more nuanced take. On the question of whether chroma shoots can be the tangible solutions, he shares, “There’s no straight answer for this as its very intuitive to think that — VFX will be the solution. Every project has its own set of complications and maybe a few sequences can be achieved. But to entirely shift to chroma and crowd replacements, the visual language, story and budgets have to support it”

The prospects for the VFX industry look bright as — the content pipeline shift gears to adapt — to the newer methods. In the coming days, the paradigm shift — in the content world will be — interesting to behold.

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The Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS), today unveiled the findings of a report titled ‘Business of Fantasy Sports’ in collaboration with KPMG, at the third edition of FIFS GamePlan 2020.  According to the FIFS-KPMG report, online fantasy sports operators’ gross revenues stood at Rs 2,470 crore for FY20 as compared to Rs 920+ crore in FY19 an increase of almost 3X over a period of 12 months.

KPMG India head of media and entertainment and partner Girish Menon

KPMG India head of media and entertainment and partner Girish Menon added, “Online fantasy sports in India has seen rapid growth, reaching a revenue size of Rs 2,470 crore in FY20. This growth has also contributed immensely to the overall ecosystem around fantasy sports including online payment platforms, tech vendors, data analytics, and more. and has had a positive impact on the consumption and growth of the overall sports landscape in India. While COVID-19 may result in a temporary blip in the upward trajectory of the fantasy sports segment, the medium to long term growth prospects of the segment remain robust, with the gradual return of international sport. Further, in a post COVID world, with social distancing measures in place, fantasy sports is likely to play an increasingly important role in connecting fans to their favourite sports and increasing fan engagement.”

KPMG has conducted the survey among 750 respondents where 253 were online fantasy sports users (which is have played a fantasy sports game online in the last one year) and the remaining were not online fantasy sports users. Here are the Findings:

• Indian online fantasy sports platforms have shown a rapid increase in their user-base YoY, growing from 2 million in 2016 to 90 million in 2019. Similarly, the number of online fantasy sports platforms in India has increased from less than 10 operators in 2016 to 140+ operators by the end of 2019.
• Following the lead of players like Dream11, major business houses like Times Internet, Bigtree Entertainment (through BookMyShow), Living Media Group (through Aaj Tak) and Paytm, have also entered the fray with their multi-sport online fantasy sports.
• Increasing competition, high customer acquisition costs, innovative offerings by the well-funded market leaders to acquire and retain their users, coupled with the business impact of COVID-19; is likely to result in a certain degree of market consolidation in the near to medium term.

• The top four to five players currently account for ~95 percent of the market share of the industry.
• For 55 per cent of the respondents, their engagement with sports increased once they started engaging with fantasy sports
• 32 per cent of all fantasy sports users, engaged with more than one sport on the platform
• Over 65 per cent of these respondents indicated that there is a direct increase in the time spent in analysing, watching and reading about the sport once they start participating on fantasy sports online
• Fantasy Sports users who engaged with online fantasy sports platforms more than four times a week spent an average ~215 minutes/week watching sports in comparison to users who engaged less than four times a week and spent ~160-180 minutes/week watching sports
• 16 per cent of the online fantasy sports users categorically mentioned that the key motive of watching the sports leagues is to track the performance of their online fantasy sports teams
• 77 per cent of fantasy sports users are engaged in cricket contests followed by Football at 47 per cent and Kabaddi at 9 per cent
• ~15-20 per cent of the active users on online fantasy sports platforms are paid-users, which is significant given the relatively younger vintage of the industry as compared to other digital businesses.
• 50 per cent of transactions on online fantasy sports platforms in 2019 were initiated from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India, thereby promoting digital payments literacy and adoption.
• Besides increasing sports consumption among sports fans, fantasy sports also supports the sports ecosystem by sponsoring live-sporting events, across Cricket, Football, Basketball, Volleyball and so on., by partnering with sporting personalities and giving back to sports via philanthropic initiatives.
• Due to the rapid growth of online fantasy sports, a new segment of the fantasy research ecosystem is also fast emerging across different digital platforms.
• Dream11 was found to be the most popular platform across online fantasy sports operators, with ~94 per cent of the respondents alluding to Dream11 as their preferred platform. MyTeam11 and My11circle were the second and third most preferred platforms with ~42 per cent and ~26 per cent of the respondents engaging with these platforms respectively.
• The online fantasy sports operators currently pay 18 per cent Goods and Services Tax (GST), which is applicable on the platform fee charged by the OFS operators. Industry estimates indicate that the OFS operators cumulatively paid GST to the tune of ~Rs 166 Crore in FY19 and the same increased to Rs 445 Crore by FY20.
• TDS of 31.2 percent is applicable on winnings above ~ Rs 10,000. In FY19 alone TDS on winnings was to the tune of Rs 93 Crore, increasing to Rs 250 Crore by FY20.
• Salaries earned by the employees of the OFS platforms are subject to income tax. In FY19, the cumulative income tax outlay due to the direct employment wages was to the tune of Rs 43 Crore, doubling to Rs 81 crore by FY20.
• The online fantasy sports market had a contest entry amount(CEA) of over Rs 6,000 crore in FY19 and more than doubled to Rs ~16,500 crore in FY20, at a growth rate of 167 per cent over FY19-FY20. The growth in FY20 is despite COVID-19’s impact on loss of CEA and revenues for the last 15 days of March.
• User preferences complemented by the expansion of sports coverage by the online fantasy sports operators has been instrumental in changing the CEA split across sports. Though Cricket continue to dominate, its share has reduced from 95+ per cent in 2016 to ~85 per cent in 2019, though the actual value of CEA contribution of Cricket continues to rise.
• 32 percent of all respondents who have played fantasy Sports in the last one year, were engaged with more than one sport on the platform. The same is encouraging for the industry and indicates a widening interest of users as far as type of sports is concerned

What has been driving the growth of online fantasy sports ?

Here are the factors that are driving the growth of online fantasy sports platform:

Digital Infrastructure – Internet and Smartphone Penetration:
Smartphones have become the primary medium for users to participate in fantasy sports in India. The growth of smartphones in India and mobile broadband internet in tandem, expedited by the launch of Jio’s affordable data plans in 2016 coupled with the launch of smart feature phones by Jio and other players10, have emerged as major enablers for the growth of online fantasy sports in India. Smartphone penetration in India has been growing at ~13 per cent CAGR from 2017 and its user base is expected to reach ~850 million by 2020. While the rural internet penetration has reached 27.5 per cent by Sep-19, the same still has significant scope for growth. The number of broadband internet subscribers in India grew from~482 million in September 2018 to ~625 million in September 2019, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of ~8-10 percent to reach 840 million by 2022.

Increase in digital transactions via Payment wallets and UPI

The increasing user adoption of digital payments and introduction of user-friendly payment modes such as payment wallets and UPI have also contributed to the growth of paid users of OFS in India. The transaction volume on UPI and digital wallets has grown at a CAGR of 469 per cent over FY17-FY19, helping OFS users transact seamlessly on the platforms.

Advent of T20 format

Growing popularity of Sports leagues Historically India has been a Cricket-centric country, and both the core formats (Tests and ODIs) have received strong viewership. The advent of the T20 format, and introduction of Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2008 revamped the sports league landscape in India. IPL follows an innovative city-based franchisee format, which not only pulls people to stadiums to watch their favourite players battle it out, but also unites residents of a city to come together and support their city franchisee and in turn drive viewership across channels. As per Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, IPL clocked ~462 Million viewers in 2019 on Television and around 300 Million viewers on Hotstar.

Surge in growth of sponsorship, participation

With sponsor support, participation of international sportsmen, celebrity endorsements and demand of viewers, these new leagues have gained increasing traction, and fantasy sports operators have expanded their offerings to include these leagues in order to ensure continued user engagement on their platforms. In addition to that formalisation of different sports in League format and marketing initiatives by the promoters and broadcasters has increased the popularity of erstwhile recreational and non-mainstream sports among a national audience. While sports like Hockey and Football have been the next most popular after Cricket, the tournaments were mostly regional with select representation of Hockey in Olympics and World Cup. Other sports like Volleyball, Basketball and Kabaddi though omnipresent in the country had never garnered notable traction at a national level. Incorporation of these team-based sports in a league format has increased the mass appeal of these sports.

Investments in data engineering and data sciences infrastructure

Fantasy Sports operators are leveraging technology to provide a seamless product experience to users through continuous investments in technological innovation and upgradation of the platform, and partnering with technology solution providers, analytics platforms and more. For instance, Dream11 is hosted 100 per cent in the Amazon cloud, giving the operator an infinitely scalable platform to build on.Its backend is built on micro-services architecture backed by distributed computing and in-memory databases to develop infinitely scalable systems. Being highly data-driven, the online fantasy sports operators are investing heavily in data engineering and data sciences infrastructure to run machine learning algorithms at scale to support their product offerings. To enable these tech- advancements at a targeted speed, players like Dream11 and MyTeam11 are moving towards a continuous deployment model,

a completely automated testing framework and technological advancements in partnership with the likes of AWS. These technological investments improve the user engagement on the platform.

Content platform partnerships

The fantasy sports platforms are partnering with content platforms to offer insights and research avenues to users. They are increasingly launching solutions like group chats, clone team features, player statistics, and more to develop meaningful ways for users to engage. For instance, Cricwars is differentiating its offering by introducing an ‘Auction’ format which enables user to build a team by participating in a live auction sale held on the application before the start of every series. This interactive participation increases the user engagement even before the game starts. Users then earn points basis their team’s performance in the entire series, and winner of the fantasy sports contest is decided accordingly

Fantasy sports is legal in India

Reaffirmation of the legality of the fantasy sports format in IndiaJudicial precedents in India have found a certain format of fantasy sports offered on online fantasy sports platforms has a preponderance of skill over chance and therefore ruled that this format qualifies as ‘games of skill’. The courts have further clarified that the format offered by OFS platforms in India do not fall under the ambit of the Indian Public Gambling Act of 1867. Further, courts have specifically accorded the protection to the right to free trade and commerce guaranteed under Article 19(1) (g) of the constitution of India. The recognition of Dream11 format of online fantasy sports contests as ‘games of skill’ by multiple High Courts outlines the judicial position on fantasy sports and the dismissal of special leave petitions concerned with the issue by the Supreme Court on multiple occasions lends additional strength to the legal position that online fantasy sports contests are games of skill.

NITI Aayog, CEO, Amitabh Kant

Talking about the growth of the fantasy sports industry in India in his speech at GamePlan 2020, NITI Aayog, CEO, Amitabh Kant, said, “I have very keenly followed the growth of Indian fantasy sports industry as a supporter of technology and good governance. I am a long term believer that India must become a global champion of the fantasy sports industry. Sports across all facets, including fantasy sports, could well be a game-changer for employment and career opportunities. Given our Government’s initiatives like ‘Digital India’ and ‘Startup India’, I believe that we can harness the power of fantasy sports and create a robust sports ecosystem to boost its growth in the next few years. Post pandemic I am confident that the industry will not just rebound but will lead the way for sustainable technology-enabled growth secured by good governance.”

FIFS, chairman John Loffhagen

Commenting on the report findings, FIFS, chairman John Loffhagen, said, “The COVID-19 impacted the Indian online fantasy sports industry in FY21 with sports matches across the globe cancelled to ensure player and staff safety. Specific to India, with IPL getting postponed, ~30-40 per cent of the revenues for most of the online fantasy sports operators were impacted for the quarter. As real-life sports is making a promising return, Indian sports fans are in for a non-stop sporting action for 8-9 months. As most of these matches will be held without an in-stadia audience, we are sure that fantasy sports being a highly immersive fan engagement platform will experience a strong surge in demand by the Indian sports fans.”

Earlier the Gameplan 2020 was scheduled for 5March 2020 by but due to the Covid -19 pandemic the event was postponed. Today, adapting the new normal of digital age, Gameplan 2020 finally went live on an eye-grabbing virtual event envionment.

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