How the year 2020 has been for the Indian gaming industry?
The year 2020 has proven to be a great boon for the gaming sector. With the entire world being confined to their homes for months, individuals rushed to adopt gaming as a mode of entertainment and catharsis.
Therefore, businesses from various industries enforced themselves to do expansion into the gaming sector in the form of game creation, investment, partnerships for merchandise or hosting esports tournaments and more. The COVID-19 lockdown has actually changed the game of the Indian gaming sector. Throughout the year the numbers from the sector topped the chart in the Media and Entertainment sector particularly.
Online gaming and card games
According to the recent KPMG report ‘A year off script: Time for resilience’ between the year 2016 and 2020, the gaming sector has witnessed growth in revenue at 34 per cent CAGR from Rs 28 billion to Rs 90 billion. The year 2020 has revealed various dimensions of the gaming surge and it has become the trendsetter of the ecosystem.
What insiders say?
According to Nazara Technologies CEO Manish Agarwal, the trends that have shaped the gaming ecosystem in 2020 are as follows:
Gaming becoming mainstream entertainment during the lockdown and lack of fresh content on TV/ OTT
Community hangouts on social multiplayer platforms in lieu of real life social get-togethers
Growth of esports spectators and growth of e-tournaments
Rise of Indian companies generating revenues and building user base in the North American market
Investor excitement in the gaming sector
With the rising interest of people towards gaming due to lack of other availability of entertainment, it has also left no option for the government to identify gaming as the high growth potential sector. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in August that India should tap the huge potential in the digital gaming arena by developing games that are inspired from its culture and folk tales, asserting that focus should be on the use of technology and innovation besides manufacturing products that meet global standards.
Hitwicket CEO and co-founder Kashyap Reddy also added, “2020 was a phenomenal year for Mobile Gaming in India, with our hon’ble prime minister identifying gaming as a high-growth potential sector and making a clarion call to Indian Game developers to compete in AatmaNirbhar App Innovation challenge. The Challenge was a testament to the growing significance of mobile gaming as a new-age soft power in India. With 2021 around the corner, mobile gaming can be expected to sweep into people’s lives — not only as a mode of entertainment — but as social platforms for the next billion.”
What Paytm First COO Sudhanshu Gupta states are the five key factors that have driven the gaming industry in 2020:
– Increased penetration of smartphones in India, especially in tier II and III cities, followed by the easy availability of mobile data.
– Stay at home on-demand gaming & entertainment has gained popularity in smaller cities and towns and not just a metropolitan phenomenon anymore. It has emerged as a popular mode to spend quality time with your friends and family.
– Gaining popularity of fantasy sports and esports in India.
While card games including rummy and poker remained popular in non-fantasy real money gaming, there has been significant traction in the adoption of other non-fantasy real money casual games including cricket, live trivia and quiz apps. Increased adoption of multi-gaming platforms made it convenient for users to access a wide range of games on a single platform. The rise of professional gamers in India also provided a huge boost to the esports segment. According to reports gaming fared much better, with massive spikes in digital consumption during the lockdown across geographies and socio-economic classes.
Fantasy Sports
On the other side, online fantasy sports witnessed strong growth on the back of IPL in FY19, postponement of IPL and decline in live sporting events negatively impacted the platforms in the first quarter of FY20. Not just that, as soon as IPL commenced, the fantasy sports platforms bounced back and this momentum is still continuing with many international and domestic leagues across different sports making a comeback.
The announcement of IPL 2020 happening has brought a wave of good cheer to the fans, users and fantasy sports operators. It has brought an increase in the viewership of the matches and with fantasy sports operators and platforms pitching in as sponsors, this shone a spotlight on the industry as a whole. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has awarded the title sponsorship of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 to Dream 11. The contract has been awarded for Rs 222 crore to the fantasy cricket league platform which is already a partner of the BCCI. This and the growing awareness at large has helped fantasy sports gain the much-needed boost during this IPL.
Fantasy Akhada founder Amit Purohit said, “With COVID-19 pandemic hitting pretty much every live major sports event to get delayed or even dropped, the fantasy sports industry boomed like never before. Sports fans have been consuming long-tail sports by utilising fantasy sports. The online fantasy sports industry was able to present a variety of mind-boggling sporting actions to sports fans in India in 2020 by introducing the newest sports and tournaments held in COVID-19 free places. The online fantasy sports platforms have offered more than 1,000 matches globally and won over five million participating users. As indicated by the industry, online fantasy sports platforms and operators cumulatively paid Rs 166 crores in GST in FY19 and Rs 445 crores in FY20.”
Esports
As soon as lockdown started, all the esports events were either cancelled or postponed which massively impacted the esports industry. We all know gaming actually is an online affair and esports is the only extended way which gives it on ground sports feel where players could meet fans and the excitement is on a whole new level. So when esport events were all cancelled or postponed there has been a darkness that invaded in the competitive gaming industry. Slowly virtual matches started to commence in the form of charity tournaments and later when WHO and gaming companies started to promote the initiative #PlayApartTogether, esports industry started to see the light in the midst of darkness which led the surge in esports tournamnets both in small and large scales.
Gaming Content
With the rise of esports gaming, content consumption has also increased. People have started consuming gaming content as a form of entertainment. Users on platforms like TWITCH, YouTube and others have seen a surge in the DAU and MAU rates. Indian platform like Pocket Aces Loco has witnessed a 6x growth in daily active users (DAUs) in July. The viewership increase has been driven by a growth in the number of active streamers on the platform, including India’s popular streamers, who are now streaming on Loco. Monthly active streamers have increased by 122 per cent month on month during the last three months and continue to accelerate at a breakneck pace. Loco sees over 1,000+ hours of live gaming content being streamed per day and this is likely to grow further in the coming months. The platform enables users to watch and stream gameplays of different games such as PUBG Mobile, FreeFire, and Call of Duty Mobile. The platform houses some of India’s top competitive gamers such as Jonathan, Ghatak, IND Snax, and Xyaa, who, along with top teams like Fnatic, IND, 8bit, and Team Tamilas, provide viewers with the very best of gaming entertainment.
In the coming year 2021, we can expect to witness an even brighter side of the industry with more game creation, investment and jobs.
