In India,online gambling apps can “earn money”, did you know that?
An Indian IT engineer won 17,000 rupees (about 1700 RMB) in 1 week playing RummyCircle.
Another fantasy cricket player won 1.25 million rupees (about RMB 125,000) in one go.
These two examples come from the official websites of two Indian gaming companies, the former is Play Games 24×7’s rummycircle and the latter is Dream 11 platform.
Unlike most countries and regions of the world, the Indian gaming industry has a “special feature” – in most of the regions, users can play games of skill for real money. There is a key to this, which is games of skill (games of skill) not speculative games (games of chance).
Games of skill means that the outcome of the game depends mainly on the user’s excellent knowledge, training, attention, experience and other skills, although the luck factor cannot be completely excluded, but the user’s skills play a decisive role, for example, Rummy (rummy) and fantasy sports are classified as games of skill, while betting games are speculative games.
In general, this field is known as real money gaming (RMG), which is legal in most parts of India, but not in some parts, such as Assam, Odisha, and Telangana.
The registration interface of HalaPlay (a fantasy sports platform similar to Dream 11) states that users in Assam, Orissa, Telangana and other areas where it is legal are not allowed to play its paid version of the game.
Real money games are a major driver in the Indian gaming market, with a size of RMB 2.2 billion
In March, KPMG and the Indian Federation of Sports Games (IFSG) jointly released the “Indian Sports Games Development Outlook Report”, which showed that Indian online gambling apps are mainly divided into three major parts: RMG (such as fantasy sports, Rummy, Poker, quiz games, etc.), mobile platform-based games/casual games (such as Candy Crush, Subway Surfers, Temuga, etc.), and the Indian online games. Subway Surfers, Temple Run, etc.) and competitive games (such as CS, FIFA, PUBG, etc.).
With a population of over 1.3 billion people, half of which are under 25 years old, the penetration of smartphones, and the rapid development of internet infrastructure, India has become a hotbed of competition for internet companies.
In terms of games, India has become the world’s largest market in terms of downloads. According to the data, by 2020, the number of online players will reach 340 million and the number of game downloads will exceed 6.5 billion. The rapid development of real money games has become a major driving force for the development of Indian gaming industry.
Earlier this year, foreign media reported that the size of the Indian online real money game market is expected to reach 22 billion rupees (about RMB 2.2 billion) and grow at an annual rate of 30%.
There are currently over 100 companies in this space, with card games (especially Rummy) and fantasy sports games being the most popular.
According to the Indian Real Money Gaming Market Report, released by Deloitte and The Rummy Federation (TRF) in July 2018, there are 57 active card game companies and 51 fantasy sports companies in the market, which adds up to 108 companies.
