The move comes on the back of a nationwide ban on real-money gaming announced by the central government in August, which erased 95% of the company’s revenue and 100% of its profits.
The company, which claims over 250 million users, is rolling out a product centred on creator-led watch-alongs, real-time reactions and chat, and free fantasy games.
“For the past three months, we have been working on what is going to be the next big problem we can tackle,” Harsh Jain, cofounder and CEO of Dream Sports, said at a press conference on Thursday. “We are moving away from the gaming piece altogether. We are pivoting hard.”
The offering is built on the lines of Twitch, a creator-driven game-focused streaming platform that Amazon acquired in 2014 for almost $1 billion.
The move puts Dream11 in the broader sports-entertainment bucket, where platforms are trying to own the parallel conversation happening outside the TV feed.
Dream 11 is also courting independent creators who can host their own live match streams and build communities around specific teams or leagues.
Creators will receive a significant share of earnings from streams, Jain said, with a platform fee going to the company. Dream11 expects to monetise primarily through advertising.
According to him, 80% of viewers use a second screen while watching live sports, and the company sees a global total addressable market (TAM) of $10 billion, with nearly a billion potential users.
About real money-based gaming, Jain said, “When it was legal, we scaled it legally. When the government said it is not legal, we stopped it on the same day.”
Also Read: Dream Sports CEO Harsh Jain: Won’t legally challenge real-money gaming ban by Indian govt
The company has now split its businesses into separate units, each operating independently. These include Dream11, fintech app Dream Money, sports streaming platform FanCode, artificial intelligence initiative Dream Sports AI, mobile game Dream Cricket, sports travel platform Dream Set Go, open-source initiative Dream Horizon, and philanthropic arm Dream Sports Foundation.
“After the gaming ban, we have segregated the company into these eight different business units, which are all going to add value to this ecosystem and one of them being a fintech initiative (Dream Money),” Jain said.
These separate entities may raise capital in the future from external investors if the company could not meet the funding requirements internally, he added.
Dream11, which had around 1,200 employees before the real-money gaming ban, now requires only about 200 people, Jain said. However, he added, the company has not laid off any employees. Instead, the remaining staff has been redistributed across other entities.
Earlier this week, Dream11 launched Dream HorizonOS, an open-source version of its internal technology stack, aimed at making its infrastructure available to developers across sectors including ecommerce, fintech and healthtech.
Dream11 has been undergoing major changes. In September, the company said it had shifted to advertising and sponsorship-led monetisation for its fantasy platform, offering brand-backed prizes for free contests.
For FY23, Dream11 reported a revenue of Rs 6,580.8 crore, according to Tracxn. It has not yet filed financials for FY24 or FY25.
Dream Sports, the parent firm of Dream11, has raised $942 million from investors including Tiger Global, Steadview Capital and Alpha Wave Global, and was last valued at $8 billion, according to Tracxn.
