Fantasyville

Peeyush won Rs 1.4 crore (14 million)…Play now…This game involves an element of financial risk and may be addictive. Please play responsibly and at your own risk. 

Flanking the text, a grinning Indian youth with a Virat Kohli beard proudly stared at me. "Must be ‘Peeyush’ "-  I thought enthusiastically and decided to investigate the mobile pop-up ad further. 

Suddenly, a smaller font-size line caught my attention. It says I cannot download it from the Google play store! Instead, I was invited to click on a link. By this time, I was burning with curiosity to know Peeyush’s ‘crorepati’ secret, so I obediently moved the cursor to the link, clicked, and landed on the site of ….Dream11.

Dream11 is a Mumbai-based mobile fantasy sports platform started by Harsh Jainand Bhavit Shah. The company attracted investment from China-based Tencent Games in 2018. Harsh’s LinkedIn profile says he is the Culture Enforcement Officer (CEO) of the company but I assumed he is not into much self-promotion as his profile has no picture. Dreams11 boasts of 12 crore (120 million) users where users can create and ‘own’(tickles ego, right?) a virtual team of real-life players and earn points based on the performances of these players in real matches. Your team can participate in cricket, football, basketball, kabaddi, hockey, volleyball, baseball, and handball tournaments. The players can play free competitions or paid cash-based ones (and that’s why Google play store forbids Dream11 on its platform). India is a cricket-crazy nation, hence is no prize for guessing which is the most popular sport on this platform where millions of IPL-watching risk-takers strategize, compete and eventually win or lose cash. But, whatever the outcome is, the hope of cash reward which a neuroscientist will label as a ‘dopamine surge’ (a chemical that lights up the brain’s reward center) drives the participants. 

Though the industry has been growing swiftly in India it is also facing criticism from some quarters due to alleged “addiction”, “depression” and “suicidal tendency” of losers on the fantasy sports platforms resulting from financial loss and mounting debt. At present, the fantasy sports industry is walking a thin line between ‘game of sports’ and ‘game of chance’. 

Buyers beware.

Image courtesy: https://pixabay.com/photos/fantasy-flying-dream-freedom-2245899/ (Under Creative Commons License)