Dream Sports takes the investing route

Mumbai/Bengaluru: Dream Sports, the parent company of online fantasy gaming platform Dream11, is looking to build and scale multiple sports-technology businesses through an investment arm that it set up last year.Dream Sports Investment is looking to back both in-house and external platforms that are beyond the core fantasy gaming business of Dream11. To begin with, Dream Sports has put $50 million in its in-house sports content and commerce platform — FanCode — through the investment arm.FanCode, incorporated in 2019 under the parent company by Yannick Colaco and Prasana Krishnan, offers sports statistics and content to its 20 million users. It plans to use the fresh funds to ramp up its user base to 100 million by July 2022 and expand sports content and commerce beyond the metro cities. Its current user base is primarily male, aged 25-34 years.83013925The investment is part of Dream Sports’ broader push to become a one-stop solution for sports and indicates its interest in expanding other verticals besides its fantasy gaming business. It is also in line with what Dream Sports’ CEO Harsh Jain told ET in March.“We have no plans to IPO… We want to go public as a sports tech company. For that, we need to have a substantial portion of our business coming from non-fantasy sports,” Jain had said.Also Read: Dream11 parent Dream Sports weighs $1.5-billion US listingFanCode's plansFanCode’s Colaco told ET that the company wants to grow its subscriptions at a higher rate than the five times growth aimed for its user base. The company’s three revenue streams are live sports content, official sports merchandise, and sports analytics and insights. It also sells subscriptions to users, enabling them to stream sporting events and tournaments.FanCode plans to use the capital to offer a more comprehensive merchandising platform and add multiple teams, sports and clubs, Krishnan said in an exclusive interaction with ET. “We are looking to expand it to a more comprehensive sports licencing and merchandising platform and IPL was the first phase of this,” he said.Currently, it is the only platform hosting the official merchandise of all eight IPL teams.The funds will also be utilised to become the largest sports demand aggregator platform.FanCode plans to double its team size to 200, strengthen its engineering and product development team across various roles as well as leadership positions. Its partners include National Football League, Cricket West Indies, New Zealand Cricket, NBA, and multiple IPL teams. It has live-streamed nearly 30,000 hours of sports content.According to Colaco and Krishnan, the platform does not see itself competing with broadcast players like Sony and Hotstar, as their platform serves a different need. “You also need linear broadcast, which we have no intention of ever getting into. So, we are both in the same ecosystem, but we are kind of filling in different needs right now,” Colaco said.Dream Sports’ plansDream Sports' investment arm plans to continue investing in health, sports and related verticals and cover the ambit of sports technology. It has also invested in a sports aggregator platform and is looking to make investments in the Internet of Things, and virtual and augmented reality space.“Our focus now is on diversification. We have one good core business which has market leadership in its area. Now, we want to go and build the YouTube, Gmail and Google Maps of sports. Want to build an Alphabet-like entity, not just Google Search,” Jain told ET earlier.

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