If you are into fantasy sports, Dream 11 is a household name. Boasting over 220M active users, it is one of the most popular fantasy sports platforms in the world. But what you might not know is that Dream 11 is just one part of the Dream Sports Group, which aspires to be a full 360 sports experience beyond fantasy (including merchandise, travel, streaming, live experiences, and, of course, video games).
Rohit Gupta, Founder and CEO of Dream Games Studios, joins our host, Alexandra Takei, Director at Ruckus Games, for a discussion about innovation and growth in the sports video game industry with a specific eye towards Cricket and India. Their most recent game, Dream Cricket, aims to be the most authentic and realistic cricket game in the market. But what makes a good cricket game, and can you create a blockbuster cricket video game akin to Madden for the Indian market? What advantages are there to building in public, and what are the challenges in the licensing (name, image, and likeness) across the pro cricket space? What is the macro positioning for the sports video game market, and how has Dream Sports Group organized itself to capitalize on the opportunity? That and more!
We’d also like to thank Lightspeed Venture Partners for making this episode possible! With its dedicated gaming practice, "Lightspeed Gaming," the firm is investing from over $7B in early- and growth-stage capital — the by far largest fund focused on gaming and interactive technology. If you’re interested in learning more, go to https://gaming.lsvp.com/.
This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.
Alexandra: What's up everyone, and welcome to the Naavik gaming podcast. I'm your host, Alex Takei, and this is the Interview and Insight segment. So, Dream Sports is one of India's biggest sports and technology companies for anyone that follows fantasy sports.
You've heard of Dream 11, one of the world's largest fantasy sports platforms for fantasy soccer, volleyball, football, and more. Dream 11 has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and is honestly just one part of the Dream Sports family. The Dream Sports ecosystem consists of Fan Code, Dream Sports Foundation, Dream Set Go, and finally Dream Game Studios, the CEO and founder of which is joining us today.
And we're having this conversation because for as much as we cover PC and AAA and mobile, something we don't talk about too much on air are sports games. And we know that there's some of the most popular sports genres of games in the world. The market size for sports video games is around 20 billion USD, and ostensibly some obvious juggernauts are EA Sports FC, Madden, and NBA 2K.
But today we're going to discuss sports games with a finer pen towards geography and innovation. And there's interesting innovation going on in sports game with the micro level mechanics and graphics, enhanced realism, lots of personalization, emerging real world players with games. But what is the next lateral expansion?
Is it just making more sports games? Are these territories poised for growth? I of course don't have the answers to these questions, but I'm excited to welcome Rohit Gupta, founder and CEO of Dream Games Studios to help us figure it all out. Welcome to the pod.
Rohit: Thanks Alex. Great to be here. Excited to be here and really appreciate this opportunity.
Alexandra: Yeah, I'm pretty excited to record this episode because, um, something we'll talk about later in the episode today is Dream Cricket 24. And although the Olympics will be far past over by the time this airs, I was watching and bummed that I didn't see any cricket in the Olympics this year, but apparently cricket will return in 2028, Los Angeles. You're excited about that.
Rohit: Yeah.
Alexandra: I also heard it's remarkably popular in the U S of all places. Texas, um, cricket is huge.
Rohit: So, yeah, definitely. I mean, you see the last world cup that happened, happened in the U S right. And there is like major cricket league, uh, which is, which major league cricket, sorry, which has just come up, right.
So exciting times for cricket, like as a sport, uh, which has been very popular in Now having a global footprint.
Alexandra: Yeah. Yeah. And we'll definitely talk about like, whether or not those tailwinds at some point in the episode. But before we kick off, I'd love for you to tell the audience a little bit about yourself and how you came to found Dream Games Studios.
Rohit: Yeah. So, hi everyone. I'm the founder and CEO of Dream Games Studios. I would say one of the most exciting mobile games company coming out of India right now. Very specifically, we are building AAA mobile sports games, right? We are a sports gaming company. That's we are, that is what we are doing. That is what we plan to continue to do.
Me personally has been building games for 17 years now, uh, prior to Dream Games Studios, I was the founder of Rolocule Games, uh, who was the pioneer of mid core games from India. We won multiple international awards for some of, many of our games from 2010, 2016, including the International Mobile Gaming Awards in Barcelona, where we won; the people's choice award, including the game of the year that I see in many more. Right. Uh, interestingly, we were also the inventor of, uh, it is an award winning tech called as Ruler Motion in 2014. I'm not sure how many of you have heard of that back then, but, uh, it is a very interesting tech that converts your phone into a Nintendo Wii kind of an experience.
Right, and yeah, Dream Games Studios, I would say is even more groundbreaking than Ruler Cube, more ambitious than ever. So yeah, amazing.
Alexandra: Yeah, thank you for that, that context there, because it sounds like, uh, you know, this is something that is part of the overall DreamSports strategy. And so we're going to talk about how DreamGames, um, the studio specifically folds into that strategy.
Before we kind of start running down that pipe, , DreamSports, as I mentioned in the intro, has all, has a lot going on. So as a larger conglomerate, it holds dream 11, a fantasy sports platform, fan code, which is a digital sports destination, dream sports foundation, which is a philanthropy arm dream set go, which is a sports travel and experiences arm and dream game studios, which you just described now.
But before we start talking about dream game studios, I'd love to understand the general holistic journey of dream sports. How did it begin? Like what's its mission? , and kind of how did it grow into all of those different, how did it grow and acquire all those different pieces?
Rohit: Sure. So if you look at Dream Sports, it's a very mission driven company.
Right. And the mission is simple, right? To make sports better. Uh, that is what we are here for. That is what Dream 11 is doing. That is what a fan code is doing. Dream Set, who is doing Dream Games Studios is doing. And I mean, it has a very humble beginnings, uh, back in 2008, dream sports was founded by Harshal.
So both of them like grew up, playing IPL, APL fantasy, right. And the question they asked themselves is why not have it? , for cricket, right? And that is how the dream 11 started. , currently, if you look at our dream sports in 2024, it is the leading sports tech company, , and very likely to become one of the leading in the world in time to come to talk about the different business verticals that you see, right?
So first, if you look at sports, right, sports is very big. There are like so many verticals, which is possible, right? , like as a sports fan, you would, let's say, watch a sports match on a TV, right? You would play a fantasy. You would buy merchandise, right? You would maybe go and watch a sports game in a stadium, or you might play a sports games, right?
So there are just. So many verticals, which is possible in sports and for Dream Sports to become, let's say, the world's leading sports tech company, they have to have a very 360 degree approach, right, to be able to capture all these words. So if you look at Dream 11, it is already the world's largest fantasy sports platform, right?
Fancode is like a digital sports destination. It's more like a sports platform. Streaming platform, like merchandise. If you want to watch a match, you can go to fan code. You want to buy merchandise, you can go to fan code and dream set. Go like you mentioned, right? It's travel, sports, travel, sports, tourism for the people who likes to experience physically the sports, right?
What DGS is, we fell the vertical, which is sports gaming. So just like dream sports as ambitious, we want to become one of the largest sports gaming company, right? It walks shoulder to shoulder with. Some of the big names, which is out there. I know it's a very big vision might take a decade or a two, but yeah, I mean, that is what we are building for and what really differentiates dream sports, I would say is a founder led approach.
I mean, definitely all these verticals were set up, but we also understand that to truly disrupt a vertical, you need to have a founder led approach to be able to build businesses from zero to one to 10 to a hundred. Uh, things like that, right? So, yeah, I mean, uh, this is just a start. I would say there is like many more exciting things to come in the future.
Alexandra: Got it. Yeah, that's great context to talk about, you know, what the overall mission and yeah, of course, it seems like sports stitch together everything. It's a, as you said, very well, um, a 360 view. I would love to a little unpack a little bit about also how a company is structured. , you know, how big is the company at this point?
And theoretically, like, do as all are, all of the verticals sit separately, , with different heads of business for each business unit. , looking to understand, like, what's the collaboration like inter between, uh, fan code and dream 11. DGS, et cetera.
Rohit: Sure. So first of all, there's a parent entity, which is Dream Sports, right?
And all of us are part of that period, right? Whether it is Dream 11, whether it is Fan Code, Dream Set, Go and Dream Games Studios, right? One thing that I mentioned earlier, it's a founder led approach, right? So every business unit, right. Has a founder. So think of it like a corporate star, right? In which we are here to disrupt a market.
We are here to disrupt the vertical. So, uh, we have a very similar structure when it comes to any typical startup, right? So we have a board, right? It's a very professional board. We have like regular board meetings that happens, right? Geographically, uh from the location perspective it all depends upon Where does it make sense to have that office?
In fact, we call it our office, our stadium, right? So we'll have like, you might hear a lot of, uh, sports related terminologies that we use internally. , we have offices in Mumbai. And then Pune, right? So Dream 11, Fan Code, and Dream Setgo is based out of Mumbai. And, uh, Dream Game Studios is based out of Pune.
Like, so if you look at Pune, right? It's one of the, , like, one of the top destinations for game development in India, apart from Bangalore and Hyderabad, right? So we have, like, some of the big studios like Ubisoft, , in Pune. We have Reliance Games. We have Super Gaming.
Alexandra: And so all of the, as the, as the founder led mission, all of those companies, were they birthed in house or were they acquired?
Rohit: So it's a mix of both, right? So there were some companies who were born internally, right? So they were first incubated within dream sports. And then. , we realized that, Hey, this could actually become like an organization and entity itself. And that is how they were formed in case of dream game studios.
It was formed through the acquisition of rollercoaster games, uh, back in 2021.
Alexandra: Yeah, I think it's interesting to unpack this because this is kind of like a big company, I guess what we would call it intrapreneurship, um, where you're trying to create that entrepreneurship experience, but sometimes inside big companies, and this is, you know, your structure is lending towards that approach.
Yeah. Um, Before again, we go back to dream game sports. I want to talk a little bit about dream 11, , because for those that are unfamiliar with fantasy sports, would love for you to explain, you know, what players are doing on the platform, , and you know, and where the basis of what comprises the majority of their playtime as on the fantasy sports platform, as it may inform our discussion about dream game studios as approach, , dream 11 currently has like 220 million active users at this point, but You know, what comprised the majority of the playtime and what are people specifically doing on, on the app?
Rohit: Okay. So, uh, being a founder of Dream Game Studios, I'll definitely give you some insights into Dream 11, but that would again be limited to a certain extent, right? So first of all, uh, just like any other fantasy platform, , and going with the vision or the mission of Dream Sports, which is to make sports better.
Right. So Dream 11 is to actually enhance the sports experience. that you have while watching a real match, right? Here is your opportunity to really put to test all your cricket knowledge, right? And pick the best team, uh, from, let's say in case of cricket, there are like 11 players playing on both sides.
So from 22 players, you select the best performing 11 players, right? Based on your cricket knowledge, based on the past performance of those players, , based on the different dynamics between teams and things like that. And when the match starts, your, that knowledge is truly put to test. So it's like a leaderboard.
Right in which, different points are given based on how the match goes. So for example, if you score a run, you score a point, right? Based on this points, your ranking is determined on the leaderboard, right? And definitely the one who wins was able to have the best knowledge of, uh, The entire experience that was expected out of the match.
Alexandra: Got it. Yeah, that's, and that's great context though. Cause I think for some of, um, our audience that might not be familiar with the fantasy sports betting platform to separate it from what a video game is. , and so this is more of like a companion app where you're tracking real players, real matches, making bets, et cetera, assembling like, you know, a dream.
No pun intended roster, um, and seeing sort of how you, how you do. And I'm sure that there are some synergies there with what we're, what you guys are doing in dream cricket 24, which we will eventually get to.
Rohit: And there's definitely one point I would like to add here, since you mentioned that, like the betting part of things, but if you look at fantasy, it is actually much more than that.
Right. Uh, it is, it is not just about selecting a single player. It is more about selecting a roster of 11 players, right. To be able to, let's say in a cricket game, right. Just like, like any of the sports, there are different roles that different players play. So for example, you have batsmen, you have bowlers, you have cricket people, you have all rounders, right.
So to be able to create a team of these players. requires immense cricket knowledge and understanding of cricket, right? To be able to finally select that team and to top that leaderboard, right?
Alexandra: So yeah, it's, it's very much like a team construction, team roster, team management and a kind of, but it's not a management sim game, which is separate from, you know, like as those do exist.
Rohit: It is connected to the real life, right? What is happening in a live match versus what is happening in the game.
Alexandra: In the game. But that actually pivots us back towards Dream Beam Studios. We talked a little bit about the what prompted the idea of building the building an in house studio which for you guys was we want to have a 360 coverage on The entire sports market, which for includes sports video games.
Um, but I would love for you to tell me a little bit about the studio. , you know, what games you have built so far and how big the studio is. , and you know, where obviously we talked about where development takes place, but, you know, talking a little bit about the studio strategy for innovation and building games.
Rohit: Okay. So there is a common DNA that we have inside dream sports, right? Uh, that is followed by almost, in fact, that is followed by all the business verticals and all the startups, right? Within the dream sports system, which is to solve real problems. And If you look at what DreamGames is trying to do, uh, is also trying to have a very problem solving approach, right?
Which might sound a bit weird when it comes to building games, right? You might say, Hey, what is the problem we are trying to solve by building a game? So when we started DreamGames Studios, first we set out what that, and this is something that we identified a problem, that there are 2. 5 billion cricket fans, which is out there.
And there is not a single game who is able to provide them the gaming value or the entertainment value that they truly deserve. Right. If you compare it with a lot of other sports, which is out there, let's say football, basketball, there are like so many great games out there. You mentioned two of them.
FC mobile median is there and, and there is NBA 2k, right? So, so we asked the question to ourselves, like, why should football fans have all the fun or baseball fans or maybe basketball fans, like, Hey, let's build a product. Which gives cricket fans an experience that they truly deserve. And that was the start of it.
Definitely. There were a lot of business angles to it, right? First, a large addressable market. Uh, secondly, if you look at sports genre, right, as such, you would see that. Historically, right? Whether we go to the start of the gaming industry in general, when FIFA or ESports started FIFA. I don't know if you know this, but FIFA was first started in 1993, right?
I mean, it's been 31 years and that is one IP that is still number one. And like eFootball is also there. So there is like a huge market, which is able to actually hold multiple players in. So, From a business angle, if you see, Dream Game Studios wants to build a very sustainable Long lasting and profitable business, right?
And sports genre give reduces that risk when it comes to building a legacy, right? Which is what we are after. We are not here to build a game for one year, three year, five year. They're here to build games for decade, right? Uh, I mean, we often say this, but we are actually not building for 2024. We are actually building for 2054, right?
That is. That is where we see Dream Cricket, uh, in the future. That's the ambition, at least, and that is how we make decisions internally, right? I, I mean, I see that. I don't know if, like maybe in 2054, I might have retired. I don't know. Maybe I want to like sit on a beach, sipping a beer and playing Dream Cricket 2054, right?
That's, that's truly the vision. And, uh, if you look from a size of the organization, we are currently 70 people strong and growing, right? Dream Cricket is the first game under the Dream Game Studios umbrella. If you look at RollerCueled Games, it also started as a gaming company. We build a game for squash, badminton, tennis, bowling, and a lot of other sports games, right?
In addition to that, we also build, , games in other genres as well, like a zombie shooter. Uh, we built, we built a dance game, right? So very varied in different genres. And ultimately we realized that sports is where we excel truly. And that is where we'll double down on. Uh, I hope I have covered almost everything with respect to Dream Games Studios.
Alexandra: Yeah, I think so. Um, and since, I mean, in summary, right, so the studio is around 70 people, Dream Cricket is the first it's the first game of two that is out by this studio. And you shared a lot about, you know, why build a cricket game, et cetera. I think that actually double taps into, you know, specifically you mentioned there's, you know, you're trying to build a business as well.
Right. And you're trying to tap into what is potentially like a blue ocean in. In the cricket sports gaming market, right? Right now, there's a problem. It's a problem statement, for sure. Players are currently being underserved if they're into cricket. And so I want to talk a little bit about that market specifically, the India sports gaming market.
Because although we just mentioned that in the beginning of this episode that, , cricket is actually very popular in the US, it's obviously significantly more popular in India. So, How big is this cricket market, , in India versus the rest of the world? And also, what are those players, what are their spend behaviors like in this market?
I'm just curious as understanding a little bit about the demographics of the players that you're serving, and, and then market specifically, it's probably very different from the West.
Rohit: Sure. So firstly, you mentioned Blue Ocean, right? I agree with you on that. It's a blue ocean yet red ocean, right?
Contradictory statements. But the reason that I say that it's a red ocean, because there are so many cricket games out there and it is natural, right? Because a fan base of 2. 5 billion, right? Definitely you would want to address that at the end of the day. The thing is, what is unique is that Majority of this games are built by studios in India, right?
Um, primarily because it is a very India, it has been a very India specific sport does now growing internationally as well. If you look at the market overall, all these cricket games has been able to. accumulate almost 400 million downloads overall from a sports games perspective, right? Uh, there are definitely two categories.
One is arcade sports games. Uh, cricket league from mini clip is the one who leads that almost one 30 million downloads, , maybe somewhere around like 10 millions monthly active. , Then we have realistic cricket games, right? Which is historically has been or traditionally has been real cricket. and World Cricket Championships, right?
So Real Cricket and WCCR both built by studios based in India. Dream Cricket, if you see, we fall in the realistic sports category. That is what we are trying to go after. From a monetization perspective, that's a different story altogether, right? So if you look at, the overall sports gaming or overall gaming market in India, you can say somewhere around a billion dollars, right?
But if you look at sports, it's a very small or a very small part of it. Uh, currently the gaming market in India from a revenue perspective is largely dominated by battle royale games Right, whether it is gmi or pubg or free fire right now and that is where the blue ocean comes right because there is like Just such a huge opportunity You When it comes to, monetization, when it comes to games, but then the games, local games in India have been unable to unlock the true potential of monetization, right, when it comes to gaming in India, particularly, and particularly the sports games.
I'll also talk about maybe. That's the reason maybe as we move forward in this conversation .
Alexandra: Yeah, I think, um, it's interesting to hear, you know, cause again, one of my other questions that you, that you already answered was, you know, what is the games, what is the games market cricket games market currently comprised of, and it sounds like it's actually ultra competitive.
There's lots of games that have been made in India for cricket. And so therefore your problem statement is. We still don't feel that any of those specifically maybe in the realistic genre are satisfactory towards the actual experience. , can you, we're going to get there about talking about why, what specifically, you know, platform gameplay, et cetera, about what that difference is.
Before we move off the, The Indian gaming market. I do want to do a little bit of a compare and contrast between the ROW sports market and India. Like if you had to give me like three differences between rest of world sports, video game fans, and India sports gaming fans, what are those? As I think it will inform the last piece of our podcast discussion.
Rohit: Sure. So rest of the world, I'll definitely give you a bit of a limited view. Right. Primarily because we are very much focused on India. That is what we are going after, but definitely we have some decent understanding of how the global sports gaming look like, right? So from a market perspective, it's somewhere around 2 billion, right?
Some of the major players you had mentioned that, , FC mobile is huge, right? Made in a suit. , NBA2K is huge, right? , if you look at from a gamer's perspective, what differentiates, let's say the sports gamers in India versus sports gamers, , outside, uh, India, one of the biggest thing that stands out is the volume, right?
There are just like so many sports fans in India when it comes to cricket and a very young demographic, right? Again, right. It comes down to. The shift that we are seeing in India right now, right? There is just like so many millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha who are just coming, getting digitally adopted where we see the growth when it comes to sports gaming is going to be significantly larger in India versus the rest of the world.
Alexandra: Got it. Yeah. I think, cause I think the ones that would pop up to me are. There's, I think, I've done an episode on the India gaming market as a general whole with the Lumakai fund and a couple of other founders that are building different games, not sports games, but one of the biggest one is the aptitude for, is the heavy aptitude for sports in general, right?
People just really like sports. The heavy aptitude also for, , RMG, which is probably very, it's very heavily present in India versus somewhere like the West. Not that there is no like DraftKings, etc. And also just the platform that people are playing on, right? Like all of those games Madden, NBA2K, EAFC are like predominantly console games versus mobile experiences.
And so it's curious because those have different spend, those, those behaviors obviously inform the kind of game that you decide to ultimately build. I mean, that's an opportunity for us to take us there about, you know, dream cricket, right? Is, you know, tell me about the platform. Tell me about the actual gameplay.
You know, I'd also love to understand, you know, how important, given that you said that it's a real in the realistic genre, how important is it to have actual real world player representation? So the players that are actually out in the real world that people are betting on in dream 11, are they present?
Are those IP and likenesses present in, you know, the And Dream Cricket.
Rohit: Yeah. So a lot of IPs are present inside Dream Cricket. And in fact, if you look at the vision of Dream Sports, right, it's ultimately the ecosystem that we're trying to build in which, like in the, in the future that you see, all these things will be interconnected, right?
Whether it is Dream 11. Whether it is Dream Cricket, whether it is fan code with the street games, right? So it's a, it's a single destination for sports fans to just enjoy everything. Right. So imagine like that, , a match starts right in the real, in the real life. You create your team, And the match starts right now, after that, you don't have to do anything on dream 11 because the match has started.
You open dream cricket, you have your team from dream 11 inside dream cricket, and then you start playing with them and then you enjoy it so much. You like the kit and all you go on the merchandise store on fan code and you just buy it from there, right? Things like that. So it's a longterm vision that I told you about.
When it comes to like connecting all the dots in the ecosystem, but I have to specifically talk about Dream Cricket and its current avatar right now. Then what do we really differentiate on? First are some of the pillars that we extensively focuses on, right? What we truly wants to give, like I'd mentioned at the past in some time back as well, that we are trying to give the cricket fans what they truly deserve, right?
So it has to be a 360 degree experience. 360 degree experience. That you have to create, right? So there are multiple pillars that we have identified, which will allow us to give that 360 degree experience, right? The first pillar being the visuals, right? , I told you about the realistic game genre. So when it comes to the visual, it covers almost everything, right?
Whether it's the best looking graphics. Uh, whether it's the best looking players, uh, as close as possible to realism, you can say let's ultra realism or hyper realism, right? We pride ourselves in saying that we are trying to build a triple a, a mobile sports game. So try to like juice up the processing power of a mobile phone using the best in class tech.
Which is the second pillar for us, right? We're able to combine everything together when it comes to the visuals, whether it is animations, whether it's the stadiums, whether it's the characters, whether it's the audio, combining it all together and give you the smoothest experience possible. Which also brings to another sub vertical of tech, which is, let's say, a multiplayer experience, right?
It has to be a very seamless, seamless. Competitive experience that we're trying to build. Then best gameplay and to connect all of these things together, the best meta. So the problem that we're trying to solve from a meta perspective, we are trying to actually solve for, in fact, in a lot of sports, people have this dream to build a team.
Which they feel is the strongest in the world, right? Like their dream team, that is the sauce that we're giving the users. Hey, here's a game. Here's a platform where you can go and build your dream team. It doesn't matter where that player comes from, right? It can be a current player. It can be a player from 2000, 1990s, 1980s, doesn't matter.
If it's, if it's cricket, build the dream team that you always dreamt of, right? And by the way, there is no such best dream team possible, right? Because it is very subjective, right? At the end of the day, you might think that this is my best dream team. Someone might say that, Hey, this is the best dream team.
And that is what creates like such unique experiences, especially in multiplayer experience.
Alexandra: Got it. Yeah. So in the multiplayer experience, I just want to just confirm that you are, you're slating up a roster of 11 against another roster of 11. So it's a PVP framework where you're playing this game against somebody else.
You're not co op playing with someone running half your team and you're running the other half.
Rohit: Yeah. I mean, that's, that is something that we have been discussing a lot internally. Correctly. It is definitely one V one. Uh, but in the future, let's see whether the co op comes or not. One, one thing that I'll, I'll mention Alex, right.
What we're trying to do differently is we are life building the game. What that really means is that. If you look at dream cricket, the game is not yet complete, but we still decided to launch it right in our main market, right? We said, Hey, and it was a strategic decision of a lot of advantages that we see.
We say that, Hey, let's build this game with the community. Let's listen to the users, what they want. So it is more about balancing what the user needs. And balancing what user might know, not know yet what they need. Right. And it has been like a fantastic experience for us, uh, in which we have seen like a steady growth as we move towards, our roadmap.
Right. And like we live in an age where the games are never complete, right. It's more like a game as a service, right. It's a live game. So it will continue to go on. But you, if you, if you play the game, you would notice that there are. Lot of features which are not there yet and it is intentional taking a very , problem solving approach, , and a KPI driven approach to product development, which is very unique in India.
Alexandra: Yeah. And I actually want to talk a little bit about like the, the current games launched in reception, but you know, you mentioned this, you're double tapping on this thing. You said the three pillars, you know, advanced tech, heightened realism. Um, And one of them was being like, again, like, we want to fulfill people's dream of building their dream, their dream team.
Right. And I actually found that fairly interesting because, I was under the impression that a lot of people played sports games because they wish that they were the athlete. They were like, Oh, I wish I could have been a basketball player. Oh, I wish I could have been a soccer player. But in reality, it's also, it's more to correct the wrongs of the real world.
, and so people are like, Oh my gosh, like if, uh, you know, so and so, you know, Barcelona lost and now I go into E A F C and I'm going to go correct the past. I'm going to queue up this man city versus Barcelona match and I'm going to fix things. And so I think that's a really interesting core fantasy for the game.
But I think what's important in that is obviously having that real world player representation. And so I'm curious from the business side, , you just mentioned that you could have a cricket players likeness from like nine, you said like 1980 or something like that. How are you getting all those likenesses in the game? And what's the business model around licensing those, those images and likenesses, especially if the players are currently alive? And it's probably even more complicated if they're, you know, they're not alive.
Rohit: Yeah. So definitely, uh, when I said 1980, definitely we don't have any licenses from 1980 yet.
Right. Uh, I definitely spoke about the longer mission, but we definitely have a lot of licenses when it comes to the diet. Let's say from the two thousands, right. Or from, uh, let's say the, uh, from the decade, which. Uh, and did it very, very right. , it's, it's very interesting because if you look at, the licensing business bit of things, right, when it comes to cricket, it's actually very fragmented, right?
Uh, as opposed to, what you see in, let's say NBA or FIFA, right? In FIFA, you will have like fifth row. It's like a association of football players where it's the single organization that you have to interact with and you get, let's say all the licenses, right? , in cricket, it is still a bit fragmented, right?
So we are still trying to figure out how to like piece everything together. We see definitely a lot of. I would say progress or improvements that is happening in the Cricut ecosystem, right, with the Cricut associations and things like that. So it's definitely exciting times, uh, but it's a problem that we need to solve as we build along, right?
It's, it's not, not a problem that's solved entirely yet. I see.
Alexandra: I see. Yeah, because I would imagine it being quite complicated because even on it's definitely in the in on sports like football and and soccer. I I've I've under the impression that there's also even some challenges with licensing those players because there's team ownership.
There's like a team license. So like, oh, I can have the the Tottenham Jersey, but then there's the actual individual person specifically, and that's also an extra, extra layer of complications. So all of these like licenses that have been structured, for many, many years, and this is also like, why with, with EFC, And then feet and losing the FIFA license.
They didn't lose any of their players. They still had all the rights to the players, et cetera. , so I was curious, like how that dynamic is working for cricket. Yeah, because it also just has a lot of governance and overhead for the studio to manage. But on the other side, perhaps there's synergies from the Dream Sports Group.
Rohit: That, that helps a lot, right? That goes a long way. Uh, in fact, that's the strategic advantage, right? That we as game studios can actually go and say that, Hey, we'll build the most authentic cricket game out of India, right? Being a startup and dream sports plays a huge role here. And it, and see Alex, it's an ecosystem shift that is happening, right? It's a very different approach that we're taking to product development to everything, right? So definitely it's like a, think of it like a wave that lifts all the ships. So, uh, that is what we're trying to do, right? Hopefully cricket ecosystem will become as matured as what a football or basketball and baseball is.
Alexandra: Makes sense. Um, and it sounds like for you guys, you know, you're thinking about cricket to India or, you know, dream cricket potentially as Madden is to the U. S. , but I, and, but you also are doing a very different development and, you know, go to market approach than maybe something like a Madden, which boxes it up, spends a couple of years on it, ships it out, and then does that annually every year.
What has been challenging about this style of launch for you? And what has been challenging specifically about Dream Crickets launch and reception as you've worked on this product live over the past couple of months?
Rohit: So in fact, it has been very interesting, right? This entire live building strategy.
That we went after, , we definitely had some apprehensions, uh, before, when we decided to go ahead with it, but then there are so many pluses that we saw, , going ahead with it. The biggest shift or the challenge I would say, it is the mindset shift that the entire team was able to get just by launching the game out there.
And to be able to see that You are out in the open, right? And people can actually publicly criticize you, for example, right? Publicly can say things about your game, right? For example, when you're in closed beta or when you're in open beta, you still get the reviews from the users, you still get the feedback from the users.
But then the public in general is unable to read those reviews, right? So, so what you can do is you can go, Hey, I mean, it doesn't matter what the rating is, right? You can be least worried about what the public perception would be, right? Because no one is aware what people are talking about. But when you do live, when you go live, Then everything is out in the open, right?
People can criticize a game which is half developed. And we took that bet. , we took that approach. Turned out that in first few months or maybe in a month or two, it, it was like crazy. We had our ratings going down. Right. , but then that is where the team comes together. Right. All ultimately comes down to the people who are building this game.
Right. They automatically understood what is the priority. Right. Uh, in fact, I'll, I'll maybe talk about some of the cultural values of DreamSports and DreamGames Studios. Way forward. But one of that is user first. And that's mindset shift. When it happened, people automatically realized, right? What is important for the game?
What is it that we need to focus on? And instead, I mean, you know, you have been in the gaming industry for so long, it could get overwhelming for the number of features that you have to build, right? It gave us that clarity on what we really need to focus on. Right. So from a challenge perspective, I would say just the phase that we went through with the ratings, were going down to the phase where we are now, right?
So if you look at Google Play Store, we are somewhere around 4.3 stars, right? , we were once around 3.7. And that is like truly a team effort, , a truly, uh, a focus effort to truly focus on what like the user needs. Our user wants and what we believe user wants, right? So that has been the experience I would like strongly recommend going with that approach where we do other games to do this well it's it's definitely a bit counterintuitive, but has worked out pretty well so far.
Alexandra: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's like they say, feedback is a blessing and a curse, right?
I think you, boy, is your backlog probably prioritized really well, because all you have to do is check the comments and you're like, people care a lot about this and we need to fix it immediately. Yeah. Versus kind of being in your own unit of 70, kind of postulating about what the priority might be. So, it's very helpful to that extent.
But at the same time, like you said, people are, You know, unfortunately, judging a product before it's completely final, right? And then, you know, they might be saying like, oh, and it's hard for people who don't work in the, in the business of making games to kind of see through where is this thing going, right?
They're like, they're judging it right there at face value and being like, this thing is broken or this thing doesn't work the way that I would expect it to. , and that could be hard, like you said, for your team to receive that feedback, especially to receive it publicly. , But yeah, that was just interesting to know because I think you've had this launch and reception and you're obviously building and also launching into a crowded, you know, cricket, cricket gaming market.
So a lot of people are also probably comparing your game, which maybe have a younger life cycle to older games that have been out for multiple years.
Rohit: Yes, and one more thing I would like to mention here, right? The focus that has. Talking to you about, so whenever you launch a game, right, there is a, there is like a inherent pressure that you have when, with respect to user acquisition.
You're like, Hey, this is my opportunity. The launch has to be big. It has to be like so huge. , and you don't know how the users are reacting to it, right? So you don't know whether the product market fit is there or not. So when we did the life building, the entire burden of user acquisition went away.
Okay. Because we were like, Hey, we are, why are we doing this in first place? Like we are doing it to collect the user feedback, right. Publicly and to also have a mind shift in us as a game developers. And there was no user acquisition that was involved in it. The good thing was the kind of reception that we got from this was amazing.
Right now, almost 6 million downloads, right? 6 million users that we were able to get without. user acquisition, right? And without tapping into the dream sports ecosystem yet. That is purely organic, uh, purely based on the communication, that community thing that I was telling you about. Six million users, one million months, more than one million monthly active users.
Alexandra: So yeah, got it. Got it. Yeah. And this is again, mostly. Targeted obviously in India specifically, , do you think that, um, and I'm guessing this is more towards the question of like, what does success look like for this game? , like, how do you plan to grow? Do you think that dream cricket can go cross borders?
And if so, you know, what lends you to believe that?
Rohit: Yes, definitely. It can go cross borders, but India is going to be the market for us. Yeah. Uh, in time to come, If you look at, I already told you about the, the user base that a lot of other games has been able to get when it comes to a game, right? 400 million.
Cumulative downloads of all the games. If you look at cricket league, 130 million, right. We had still at 6 million. Right. So there is like such a huge, user base that we still have to cater to. Right. And predominantly these users are from India. If you talk about cross border, then definitely there are many more countries which are cricket crazy.
Right. Just like India. And if you look at like, let's say Europe, right, then there is like UK, right. If you look at, let's say, uh, Asia Pacific, then there's like Australia, then there is South Africa. And if you look at like cricket fans, I mean, we, we live in a global economy, right? Cricket fans, you will find everywhere in the world, the industry, we, at the start of this podcast, right.
We spoke about. , how the World Cup happened in the U S right. Then how there is like major league cricket, which has recently started. So we see a lot of interest in cricket and a lot of cricket fans in the future. For cricket. So definitely beyond India, there is a lot of, growth that we see for cricket games or specifically green cricket.
Alexandra: All right, let's turn back and actually a great segue to talk about our final topic, which is kind of just the global sports gaming market, you know, taking cricket aside, right? What are the opportunities for sports games in general to innovate? Um, and also maybe what, Dream sports groups role is in all of this, but, , before we get there, I kind of want to run, , the couple ideas.
I had a conversation with a sports gaming VC about this. I'd love to get your take on, you know, what is potentially next for the future of sports games in general. So the first would be lateral expansion. Just make more sports games. , so like you said, like what you guys are doing, expanding to cricket, , badminton, squash, , and tap into like those underserved players, underserved sports for people who would be interested in playing those video games.
That that's where a video game, right. The next thing would be to create more interesting game modes within one sport. So like a three V three basketball by Tencent, um, et cetera, there's been a lot of innovation specifically in basketball games. For, , mode, mode setup and like non, non real world sports dynamics and, and team rosters.
The third would be platform expansion. So put sports games in VR or something like that. , and the fourth would be a deeper integration of video game sports and the real world. , so combined sports and video game sports to make an entirely new sport, such as I saw a drone racing at the Olympics or some, or somewhere.
Uh, it's not, not the Olympics. I think another competition where like you run and then you race a drone and then you like, put it back down and then you keep going. , so those are my four ideas. What are, what are your ideas? Sure. Definitely. Right.
Rohit: So I would say instead of calling it, let's say the small, like the sports, which has lesser, , fan base, let's say you talked about squash, you talked about badminton, right?
Uh, there are a lot of sports which has, let's say, longer fan base, but they are yet unsold. Okay. An example of that. I will give you a sports, which is an India, right? I don't know if you have word of this sport called as Kabaddi. No, you haven't. Not right now. I'm not. It is actually the second most popular sport in India, right?
And yet there is no sports game built out for that. So one such opportunity would be right for, let's say, as a global sports gaming industry, right? You see India, uh, as a market, uh, for gamers to be growing. What opportunity could we do? Let's say build games For sports, which are underserved, right? Uh, because that is what will give you a lot of volume and ultimately a lot of business as well.
Whether you should create, , games for sports, which have a smaller fan base, it all depends on the organization and the goals of that organization, right? At the end of the day, right? There are definitely niche gaming studios, right? Focuses on let's say a smaller fan base. But then they're able to like, drive a lot of value from that smaller fan base.
Maybe the ARPU would be much higher in that case, right? So that, that could be definitely one strategy. What I feel that going forward, innovations in gameplay would be, I, I believe the biggest one, right? The biggest, the popular sports in the world. For example, football or soccer, with our 3.5 billion fans.
You can't compete with them on volumes. What you can do is to convert more of these 3. 5 billion fans to start enjoying sports games, right? Not 3. 5 billion users or sports fans. All of them doesn't play sports games yet, right? So maybe improve the penetration, improve the accessibility and things like that.
Third thing you talked about was platform expansion or something that, we are very bullish about as well, right? I definitely see in time to come. provided that we are able to sort a lot of issues with respect to VR. That is something that could give one of the best immersive experiences, right? But then there is hardware player here, right?
Because once the hardware problems are solved with respect to VR and there is a particular mass who is able to adopt that hardware, right? When we see that disruption, uh, that is when I think it will be a good time to Start diversifying into different platforms, right? Apart from consoles and mobiles and things like that.
And deeper integration in the real world. I mean, I have my, this is my most frontier idea. Can you, can you like give some more idea about it? I haven't, I frankly not have thought a lot about it, but what are you thinking? Like, how, how does it work? Is it like a Pokemon go kind of thing?
Alexandra: Yeah, maybe. I mean, so I, I don't know.
It's like, you know, like an heptathlon. I'm also like on this because I watched it. The Olympics was very recent. Um, but like there's have tap on there's the cap on. And so there's like a sport where you just run, run, run, run, run. And then all of a sudden you start shooting at targets, right? Like, why would we not be like, okay, run, run, run, run, run, play a call duty game, run, run, run, run, run, throw a javelin.
Like, why would that not be part of the sport?
Rohit: Um, maybe something to do with augmented reality. I think that is what you're wrestling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The problem with this tech, right? Or I wouldn't say like problem, it's the evolution of any tech, right?
Just like we have seen with mobile. , this tech will evolve, right? But the stage where they are in right now, I think they are unable to reach that critical mass, right? So whether it is VR or whether it is AR, a lot of, lot of interesting innovations happening in those spaces. Uh, but let's see how that plays out.
Alexandra: Yeah. Well, I loved, uh, your responses and reaction bringing me kind of back down to earth. Um, I'm, I, I rode division one crew in college, um, so I've spent nine years being a rower. , and I'm still waiting for my rowing video game. , no one has made that, so. Not that we're a very lucrative market. , and I actually don't think that there's a ton of overlap between those that play video games and those that recruit, I actually think it's probably like very asymmetric, but, um, still waiting for the…
Rohit: That's very interesting actually, because like, if you look at Olympics, right, rover is a part of Olympics.
So if you're able to create, let's say a game of Olympics, right? , it, it will have, let's say a considerable volume, right? Because it's the small, what would be the right word? It's like, like small drops, which makes up the ocean, right? It's like small, all the sports combined together could be like pretty big.
There are a couple of, , Olympic games out there right now as well, right? We, and we have seen that, but not yet achieved a critical mass. I think the innovation in game play. will go a long way, right? , along with a very strong meta, right? Why, why should I like, keep playing, , Olympic game, right? And in which I can like row or I can like play javelin throw or whatnot.
Alexandra: Got it. All right. , well, as a final question to wrap up this topic, I want to hear a little bit from you about what you think the whole role of dream sports Have in the innovation of, of the macro sports gaming market. You know, we're doing, like you said, you're approaching this with this three 60 holistic approach.
But what are you most excited for? , and how do you think that dream sports group is going to have the, where do you think they're going to have the biggest impact in driving innovation in the sports space?
Rohit: Okay. So a couple of things I'll, I'll mention before that, right? So if you look at dream 11, I told you that.
It was first founded in 2008, right? , it's been almost 16 years now. And when Dream11 was able to find that product market fit. And if you look at like 2024, it's been like almost eight to 10 years, more or less 250 million users. It is still a leader. Right. By a huge margin. Right. And like, if, I mean, if you dissect why, why is that, is it, is it because of the first mover, right?
We have seen historically multiple times that the first more necessarily is not thing. In fact, to reach number one is one thing, but the more difficult thing is to actually retain that position. What I'm really coming to is the entire approach that dream sports as when it comes to solving a problem. It is, it is about the culture.
It is about the people, right? Ultimately, DreamSports is able to see a big picture, right? It's able to dream big, , in a market, right? Where such things is actually required right now. In fact, definitely there are more startups like Dream11. , who is trying to like disrupt the overall way in which India in general, uh, builds products, right.
And become, let's say a truly global organizations as such. Right. , so if you look at the approach in general, right, first thing, like a founder led approach, right, which I spoke about, right, like a very mission driven, , startups, right. Within the dream sports ecosystem. Right. And. To be able to let these organizations to provide that strategic guidance, , because see, they have seen that journey, right?
What it takes to become Dream 11, right? And what we are trying to build here is we are trying to build more Dream 11s, right? Fan code, dream set code, dream game studios. Maybe we could, uh, become as big as team set. When we are, , we have that strategic guidance. We have that strategic wisdom, right. That we get in that ecosystem, right.
At the end of the day. So yeah, that is, that is how we see the future, uh, from a collaboration perspective, maybe I'll just touch upon that as well, right. So we don't have to reinvent everything right inside the system. For example. Uh, when it comes to building a backend, right? If you know this, then Dream 11 has one of the biggest concurrency.
When it comes to users, right? Almost 15 million concurrent users, right? Now they have been able to build such a resilient backend systems and it wasn't built in a day, right? It took time, , might have failed work, right? And ultimately it reached a time where it was. It leads to maturity, right? When we look at DreamCricket and when we say that, hey, we want to reach a critical mass, right?
DreamCricket as well, maybe 200 million users going forward. Now, if you want to build a system who is able to handle so much competency, we don't have to build everything from scratch, right? We double tap on Dream11, we double tap on their learnings, we double tap on their wisdoms, and we work together to finally a system, , that will withstand the future, like kind of future proof.
And this is just one example that I gave you back in, , licensing is something that we already spoke about. User acquisition, right? , 250 million users. We are currently at 6 million, so much growth opportunity, which is out there. And it is something which is available to every portfolio company, every startup of inside, uh, the team sports ecosystem, right?
Alexandra: Yeah. Yeah, definitely a deep distribution advantage and inbuilt audience with the dream 11 for sure. , Well, it's amazing. , and thank you for sharing those like final concluding thoughts about dream sports group. , it was great to hear a little bit of how the, how the structure and all the subsidiaries have come together, um, the vision for, for cricket, , or dream cricket in general.
And also a lot about, you know, the D the differences, the nuances between the Indian gaming market and the Western sports gaming market. I've. Definitely learned a lot and I'm sure that our audience has as well. , there's clearly so much opportunity here and it's amazing for you to share your journey.
, as a concluding thought in, in case there's anybody in the audience that is interested in getting in touch with you or chatting with dream sports for any reason, how can they reach out?
Rohit: There are multiple ways I can live in a digital world now. So there are like so many ways in which, you can definitely reach out.
Uh, we definitely have a website, but I think the best way to reach out would be LinkedIn. I believe, so yeah, just, just send a connect request. Would be happy to connect, speak it out, brainstorm, right? Whatever.
Alexandra: Awesome. All right. Well, as always friends, if you have, feedback or ideas, hit me up at [email protected]. I'm always open and that's the end of our episode. Thanks for coming on.
Rohit: Thank you, Alex, for having me here. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
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