After the crackdown, Dream Sports is shifting from a fantasy sports-heavy model to a multi-vertical portfolio across fintech, content, and sports infrastructure, leveraging its large user base
With Dream Money and DreamStreet, the company is targeting underserved non-metro users through AI-led investing and wealth tools, though competition remains intense
A startup-within-a-startup model and cash flows from FanCode and DreamSetGo are funding new bets like Watch Along, even as regulatory risks persist
Nearly eight months after the Government of India’s sweeping crackdown on real money gaming (RMG) dismantled a multi-billion-dollar industry, the sector is still grappling with its aftershocks.
As cost cutting, layoffs, or desperate pivots become the new norm for most incumbents, Dream11’s parent Dream Sports is bucking the trend.
Despite being the largest and most profitable player in the category, the company has neither challenged the regulation legally nor undertook layoffs. Instead, it moved swiftly to preserve capital and reduce operations burn, pulling out of Indian cricket team sponsorships, consolidating office infrastructure, pausing high-cost marketing, and events, and shutting FanCode’s merchandise business.
At its peak, Dream11
operated as a high-margin, primarily a single-engine business powered by fantasy sports, which contributed 95% of revenue. While lucrative, the company operated in the regulatory grey area.
Dream Sports is now building a portfolio of business across fintech, content, and sports infrastructure, each addressing a different user need but unified by a common distribution layer: its existing user base.
The Fintech Growth Lever
The most significant near-term bet is Dream Sports’ entry into financial services, a category that offers both scale and monetisation depth.
With the launch of Dream Money, the company has already moved into wealth management, enabling users to invest in digital gold and fixed deposits, track expenses, and access credit through partnerships with financial institutions.
The move aligns well with the fact that a large portion of Dream11’s user base lies beyond tier I cities, an audience that remains underserved by traditional and even new age fintech platforms.
Cofounder and CEO Harsh Jain positions this as a ‘Bharat-first’ opportunity.
This thesis is also being extended through DreamStreet, an upcoming investment platform that will compete with established brokerages like Zerodha, Groww, and Dhan.
DreamStreet, which is powered by AI at its core, offers guided investing, while Dream Money acts as a personal wealth manager
“There are so many people in tier II and beyond towns who are afraid of investing in the stock market, or they lose money after investment. Nobody is there to help them. With the help of our personalised AI mentor on DreamStreet, we can help them,” he added.
If executed well, this could lower the cognitive barrier for first-time investors, especially in non-metro markets where financial literacy remains a constraint.
At a structural level, Dream Sports is attempting to solve two problems simultaneously:
- User acquisition costs in fintech
- Trust deficit among new investors
However, this is also one of the most competitive segments in the Indian consumer internet today. Incumbents have already invested heavily in product, pricing, and education. Dream Sports’ success here will depend on whether AI-led personalisation can offer a materially differentiated user experience rather than a superficial layer.
Reimagining The Core
With its RMG business shuttered on October 1, 2025, Dreams Sports has sought to repurpose its user base, or whatever is left of it, into a content-driven engagement platform.
The watch-along platform, launched within three months of the RMG shutdown, positions itself as a second-screen social experience for sports fans, drawing parallels with global platforms like Twitch but with a localised, sports-first focus.
“Even when we were an RMG platform, we were a second-screen platform. We are just bringing those learnings here. At our peak, we had a 250 Mn user base… we are just capitalising on it,” Jain added.
Early traction of 10 Mn users and rising creator participation suggest initial validation, though monetisation (ads and in-app purchases) remains nascent.
Dream11 is aiming for 50 Mn monthly active users for its watch-along platform during the ongoing IPL 2026 season.
Importantly, Dream Sports is not building this in isolation. Its more mature businesses like FanCode and DreamSetGo are now functioning as cash-flow engines, allowing the company to fund experimentation.
Currently, FanCode, the sports streaming platform boasts of 220 Mn user base, and has expanded outside India to foreign countries to expand its user base.
DreamSetGo currently claims to have over 300K users, and offers experience across 12 sports. Dream Cricket, the AAA game claims to have 27 Mn registered users.
Dream Sports’ New Org Strategy
To support its multi-vertical expansion, Dream Sports is rethinking its organsiational structure. Rather than operating as a centralised entity, it is adopting a startup-within-a-startup-model, where each vertical functions independently with its own leadership and execution roadmap.
Senior executives have been redeployed as founders or CEOs of these new businesses, reinforcing ownership and accountability.
For instance, Rahul Mirchandani, cofounder and CEO of DreamStreet was earlier the CPO of Dream11. Similarly, Amit Sharma, cofounder and CEO of Dream Play was earlier the CTO of Dream Sports.
Jain stressed that these eight verticals are like portfolio companies of Dream Sports. This approach offers two advantages. First, it enables faster experimentation and decision making at the vertical level. Second, it creates optionality, allowing successful businesses to scale independently while limiting downside risk from underperforming ones.
However, it also introduces challenges around coordination, capital allocation, and brand coherence, especially as Dream Sports stretches across diverse categories.
As Dream Sports charts its pivot, regulatory risk remains a critical overhang. The Supreme Court’s pending verdict on the ₹2.5 Lakh Cr GST dispute could materially alter the company’s trajectory.
Edited By Shishir Parasher
