The Cricket craze in South Asian countries, especially India, is enormous. And taking advantage of this, Dream11 enters into the Fantasy Gaming Industry of India, which is simply a Gambling company. Dream11 becomes a unicorn within 11 years. In 2020, Dream11 became the title sponsor of IPL with 222 crores rupees. And in 2022, Its profit increased by 216% to 328.84 CR. Even Dream11 was one of the official sponsors of the 2022 Asia cup. And the user base of this company is 15 CR.
How does this game play?
When two teams play a match like India vs Australia, users will be given 100 virtual credits to buy players if they want to participate in the contest. And users must have to pick from both teams. When selecting 11 players, the user must select Captain and vice-Captain wisely because a user will get more points if they play well. After completing the team, the user will get various participation contests starting from 20 rupees. And most importantly, when more participants participate, the prize pool will be more. For example, you have participated in a 20 rupee contest, and if999 more people participate in this contest prize pool will be 16000 rupees. After the match, if you stand within the top 50% of the ranking, you will get something from the prize pool according to your ranking.
How Does Dream11 Earn Money?
The last example of 16000 rupees, the total prize pool comes to 20000 rupees. But they keep 4000 rupees as Commission for the platform fee, which is 20%. But there can be a question that someone is winning. They are transparent. But the fact is, they aren’t. If we look at various trusted websites, a massive amount of people have complained. And they have an allegation that, After the match, Dream11 makes their team use a BOT PROFILE. They keep the best performing players and select their Captain and vice-captain who was the best performer. So the winning percentages of the genuine player are very rare.
How is Dream11Tackling the Gambling Scheme?
According to the Encyclopedia of Human Behaviour,” Gambling is the act of wagering or betting money or something of value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the intent to win more money or things of value than was wagered”
And Dream11 exactly doing the same thing. After every game, they get their own revenue, but who is winning or losing doesn’t matter to them.
In 2020, a petition was filed Against them for Gambling. But they replied that the format of online fantasy games is a game of skill. We do not depend on luck, as you know, the history of all players. Their other logic is, Which team is losing or winning is not our concern. Our concern is which individual players are performing. We are arranging the team from both sides. So there is nothing for match-fixing. After appealing to the High court, High Court freed them from all allegations. They have been legalized based on the Game of Skill. And another open secret is tax revenue. Government imposes 30% taxes on these fantasy gaming.
How dangerous Dream11 is
First of all, it is easy to enter this platform. You need a smartphone and 20 rupees. But as quickly you can enter this platform, you won’t come out so that easily. The minimum withdrawal limit is 200 rupees. So unless you can earn 200 rupees, you have to play more and more. And it’s like an addiction. If you will, you will play more avariciously. And if you lose, you will play more as far as you can recover that money. It can make you depressed to a severe level. Even many of them thought about committing suicide.
Marketing strategy of Dream11
Though they won against their allegations, the mass public has downplayed their image as a gambling app. Then they take some legendary marketing moves to recover their reputation. They endorse MS Dhoni as their brand ambassador. And the public loves him so much that they will believe him blindly. They did a campaign with MS Dhoni with a tagline, “Khelo Demag Se”. And that was the perfect execution of the Celebrity Endorsement Strategy. And now they are enduring the current all players on India national team as Rohit Sharma, Jusprit, Rishan pant and others. Before the 2021 T20 world cup, they launched an intelligent campaign named “Dream big”, a combination of a storytelling strategy. And they emotionally bond with mass people, and mass people get e moral boost to enhance their self-beliefs. That was one of the master strokes of Dream11
