New Delhi [India], May 7: India’s fantasy sports industry is booming, attracting millions of users and spawning a lucrative digital economy around prediction-based skill games. While the industry has matured in terms of scale, technology, and revenue, its regulatory backbone the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS) Charter remains stuck in the past. Designed with the right intentions, the Charter was meant to uphold transparency, financial discipline, and fair play. But today, it risks becoming a tool that protects market leaders while inadvertently sidelining innovation and competition.
The Charter may promise integrity, but in practice, it’s enabling a structural monopoly. Giants like Dream11 are using their vast financial resources and market position to dominate user acquisition, retain players through mega prize pools, and outshine any emerging competitor. This situation raises a troubling question: is the FIFS Charter still serving the broader industry, or just the most powerful players within it?
The Financial Integrity Clause: A Shield or a Sword?
At the heart of the FIFS Charter is a requirement that all platforms maintain separate accounts for operational expenses and user prize pools. This segregation of funds is designed to prevent fraud, misuse, and ensure that users always receive their winnings. On paper, this is a commendable move. It creates a sense of security and ensures platforms are not running unsustainable operations using player funds.
But here lies the twist this provision, while guarding user interests, does nothing to address the growing economic disparity between platforms. Larger operators like Dream11 and MyTeam11 not only comply with the Charter’s requirements but go several steps further by using their financial muscle to dominate visibility. These companies can afford massive prize pools, celebrity endorsements, and wide-scale marketing campaigns that no new entrant can dream of matching.
So while the Charter might prevent the misuse of funds, it fails to confront the elephant in the room: the deepening market imbalance. The playing field isn’t just uneven it’s being tilted further by the very regulations meant to ensure fairness. Smaller platforms that follow the rules find themselves edged out, not for lack of ethics or creativity, but because they cannot financially compete with companies that essentially own the digital space.
In reality, the financial integrity clause, instead of being a safety net for all, has turned into a luxury that only well-funded companies can afford to wield to their advantage.
Time for a Hard Reset: The FIFS Charter Needs Urgent Reform
When the FIFS Charter was conceptualized, the fantasy sports landscape was relatively nascent. Today, it’s a multibillion-rupee industry, but the Charter hasn’t evolved in sync with that growth. What was once a blueprint for responsible self-regulation now feels like a rulebook that protects the incumbents.
The industry’s gatekeepers must confront the uncomfortable truth that self-regulation without reform breeds stagnation. Startups and smaller operators struggle with multiple entry barriers sky-high user acquisition costs, lack of access to mainstream distribution channels, and the impossibility of competing with platforms that throw crores at celebrity campaigns and IPL partnerships.
Yet the FIFS Charter remains silent on supporting these new voices. There is no provision for easing regulatory compliance for startups, no marketing support, no incubation policies, and certainly no checks to prevent prize pool inflation from being used as a monopolistic tactic. This silence speaks volumes, especially when its main beneficiaries are also its most influential members.
Dream11, the most prominent member of FIFS, continues to allow fantasy teams with 10 players from a single real-world team, directly conflicting with the Charter’s own 75% guideline. If the leading member is bending the rules, and the body remains toothless in enforcement, then what purpose does the Charter serve? If it can’t rein in excess or protect fairness, then it becomes little more than a smokescreen for unchecked dominance.
A modern, healthy fantasy sports market should be competitive, dynamic, and inclusive. FIFS must act now to overhaul the Charter introduce new clauses that incentivize new entrants, provide support for innovation, and enforce fairness not just in financial practice but in market behavior. Temporary caps on prize pools, support for licensing, or marketing grants can help level the playing field and foster diversity.
Regulation or Repetition?
Fantasy sports in India are at a crucial tipping point. Left unchecked, the current trajectory will lead to a duopoly or worse, a monopoly where only the richest platforms survive. That’s not just bad for startups; it’s disastrous for users, investors, and the long-term credibility of the industry.
FIFS still has time to course-correct. By revisiting and restructuring its Charter to reflect the current reality of the market, it can become a force for balance rather than bias. But if it continues to operate as a passive facilitator for the big players, the Indian fantasy sports ecosystem will soon find itself creatively bankrupt, lacking competition, and dangerously dependent on a handful of companies.
The industry doesn’t just need fair play on the field. It needs it off the field too. And that begins with a Charter that’s bold enough to confront the imbalance it has helped sustain.
