Joy Bhattacharjya, director normal, Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports and Amit Purohit, CEO and founder, Fantasy Akhada engaged in a deep dialogue on how fantasy sports activities enhances sporting expertise on the FICCI Turf 2022 on Saturday. They highlighted the general constructive outlook of the central authorities in the direction of the fantasy sports activities business, and in addition addressed the necessity for sports activities leagues to additional leverage fantasy sports activities (FS) platforms to drive and enhance fan engagement.

Bhattacharjya described how fantasy sports activities is pushing the fan engagement and defined the idea of second screens intimately. “The phenomenon that has changed fantasy sports is the use of second screens. Sports fans while watching matches on TV, are checking match statistics, or seeing how their teams are performing or even engaging in friendly banter with other fantasy sports users. Fantasy sports uses a second screen to push the engagement even harder,” he mentioned.

With fantasy sports activities operators bringing in additional followers and a bigger engagement to the product, they’re pure allies for sports activities leagues. Hence, nationwide and worldwide sports activities leagues and tournaments like IPL, PKL, ICC, NBA, CPL, Super Smash and so on. have partnered with fantasy sports activities operators for deepening engagement, viewership and constructing a better reference to their fan base. Bhattacharjya harassed that the leagues can do extra than simply bringing on FS platforms as fantasy companions.

“In 2019, when we did the first Volleyball League, we had a fantasy partner. We started off with 2000 people playing on the first day. On Day 17, we had 85,000 people playing FS and by the final day, we reached 185,000 people. These numbers were organic because we did not push our fantasy sports partner hard enough. We realised that once you give people a product they can engage with, there is a huge opportunity,” Bhattacharjya mentioned.

“The Indian leagues have some way to go before they can integrate with FS at the level of International leagues,” he added.

Purohit additionally addressed the necessity to provide FS shoppers with ample info and statistics to enhance their experiences. He identified {that a} fan making a crew for an England vs New Zealand cricket match could not discover sufficient info on an Indian broadcasting channel, because the analysts are sometimes discussing the upcoming India cricket match. “Today, even if you search for statistics for any league, you may not find it. You may find information on Virat Kohli’s last five years’ performance, but you will not find enough information at the granular level for all the leagues,” Mr. Purohit mentioned.

“We cannot say that people are using FS for instant gratification. We, as an ecosystem, do not provide enough inputs for them to make well-informed decisions. People are craving for statistics, they want to improve their skills, we are yet to do enough to provide that platform. The fan who is playing Fantasy Sports is hungry for information to improve their skills, so there is a gap which needs to be filled,” he added.

Bhattacharjya and Purohit additionally spoke on the current constructive steps from the federal government and what it’d imply for FS in India within the coming years.

“Recently, Google has allowed Fantasy Sports on the Play Store. It means a far bigger opportunity to reach a larger set of audience. We, at FIFS, have always been supportive of bringing uniform regulations so that we can strengthen the industry, protect consumer’s interests and work in accordance with the prescribed set of uniform laws and guidelines,” Mr. Joy Bhattacharjya mentioned, as his closing remarks.

“I believe Fantasy Sports will have a space for itself in conversations not just in drawing rooms, but also in boardrooms of the right people, which are the associations, federations and broadcasters. People have already started noticing, and it is only going to increase going forward,” Purohit added.