Dream Sports funds FanCode $50 Million!
Dream Sports, the parent company of the online fantasy gaming platform Dream11, is looking to expand its horizon beyond the core fantasy gaming business of Dream11. To begin with, Dream Sports funded its in-house sports content and commerce platform - FANCODE- 50 million through an investment arm set up last year.
Fancode offers sports statistics and content and plans on utilizing the funds to ramp up their current user base of 20 million to 100 million by July 2022. They also plan on expanding sports content and commerce beyond the metro cities. FanCode also enables its users to stream sporting events and tournaments through a simple subscription. Its current user base is primarily male, aged 25-34 years.
Dream Sports’ broader goal is to establish itself as a one-stop solution for sports and are willing to invest more in other verticals besides its fantasy gaming business as agreed by Harsh Jain CEO of Dream Sports in March 2021.
FanCode's plans
FanCode’s Colaco told ET that the company is setting its eye on growing its subscriptions rate higher than the already aimed and predicted growth of five times the current user base number. The company’s three revenue streams are live sports content, official sports merchandise, and sports analytics and insights and they are looking to expand it to a more comprehensive sports licencing and merchandising platform. It is currently the only platform hosting the official merchandise of all eight teams of IPL.
Part of their broader aim is to become the largest sports demand aggregator platform and they hope to use their funds in line with that as well.
FanCode currently functions with a team consisting of 100 members and wants to double its number and strengthen its engineering and product development team across various roles as well as leadership positions becoming a well organized entity for sustaining the operations through the changing sports scenario around. 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 may be aligned similarly to the already operating giants in the broadcasting players like Sony and Hotstar but their server also provides much more than just being the linear broadcasting tool for sporting events.
Dream Sports’ plans
Dream Sports' one-stop plan involves continuing investing in health, sports and related verticals and covering every mould of sports technology. It is looking to make investments in the Internet of Things and step up the virtual gaming experience with the 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 said.
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