Moneyball

Online fantasy sports platforms have seen user engagement and revenues grow, especially since the start of the IPL. But as questions are raised over their legality, can they survive in the long run?

- NAINI THAKER

Akshay Dashora pores over his color-coded excel sheet with the concentration of an opening batsman. What gets his mother’s goat, though, is that this dedication is reserved for studying the analytics of different cricketers. She mocks him for not paying as much attention to his studies when he was a student. The 28-year-old only offers a wry smile in return.

Since 2014, Dashora—an avid cricket lover—has been a regular online fantasy sports (OFS) platform, the user. As the sector has blossomed over the years, his options have increased too. From using only Dream11 back then, the Udaipur resident now tries his luck on six applications, including Howzat, Gamez, Faboom, Sixer, and leagues. He’s become so adept at it now that it takes him under 30 minutes to make teams on two or three platforms simultaneously compared to the hours his friends and he would spend on the same when they were in college.

Most applications tell users to choose 11 players, including the captain and vice-captain, after registering themselves for free. Eventually, they earn points based on the players’ performance. “But this format has limitations… gamers cannot win, especially if the captain and vice-captain do not perform well,” says Pratik Kumar, the co-founder of Faboom Fantasy Sports, set up in March 2019. “We decided to level up Faboom for it to stand apart and created two innovative formats: Rank Fantasy and Boost Fantasy. In both formats, all 11 players become important. In Rank Fantasy, you rank them all while in Boost Fantasy, you can apply different multipliers (boost) to all your players.”