What is Dream11 and how does it works?
Dream11 is a platform for fantasy gaming which is established in India and it allows users to play fantasy cricket, hockey, football, kabaddi and basketball. People of all age groups can play over dream11 by just selecting real players in their team through credits in their particular account. All people above age above 18 years are free to enter on dream11 for fantasy gaming. After selecting team of their favorite players a match is conducted between two teams which is called Super Smash match.
A person playing earns points based on your selected players’ performance in every Dream11 Super Smash match. Dream11 allows you to predict how a player will perform in the real match and get points and eventually you will get money based on your prediction A user has to pay a certain fee to join a contest and can win real cash. To participate in a Dream11 game, a user must be at least 18 years old and needs to get their profile verified using their PAN card. Dream11 is largest fantasy gaming website in India and its having more than 1.1 core players account on their website
How does Dream11 makes money?
Dream11 doesn’t monetize or earn money from their business with Google advertisement or other advertising agency. By showing advertisements of various things on their website. They are just earning the commission for hosting/holding fantasy games on their website. Initially, they also tried Google Ad but the Ads on such platforms made difficult for people to play and now they have stopped everything to give easy and fast user experience to their users. only ten per cent of the player in Dream11 play paid contests. Others just play free contests or private contests. This is a very difficult thing to convert free user to paid because it is very tricky and costly. They charge more than 20% fee or commission on overall money collected from a grand or small league. The commission is fixed for any contest whatsoever you play on dream11 fantasy gaming platform.
Legalization of Dream11 in India!
Dream11 was the first company behind legalizing fantasy gaming in India. For stabling this particular platform the company went through various challenges. Fantasy gaming is basically a platform where game is played using internet and people playing earn money through that by selection of players in their team and through wining of teams points are earned by the owner of account and further according to the points earned money or real cash is given. Which was considered as sort of gambling in India? Many cases have been raised in several states against Dream11 for promoting and providing platform.
The first case against Dream11 challenging the legality of Dream11 was done in April 2017, when an advocate, Varun Gumber had filed a case against Dream 11 to initiate criminal proceedings for promoting gambling and providing platform for gambling, in the he inited the case against Dream11 but it was rejected by the single bench of the Hon’ble Court of Punjab & Haryana High Court. The Court was of the view that online fantasy sports platform provided out by Dream11 do not amount to gambling because there is a material level of skill or knowledge attached to it. There are various other conditions that have to be taken into knowledge by the users of this online fantasy gameing platform, such as analytical performance of the players, previous records, weather conditions etc. Then after some time Varun Gumber the advocate who filed the case then filed a Special Review Petition filed against the order passed by the court, but the Supreme Court upheld the decision of the High Court dismissing the petition.
The order of the High Court was taken as a important addition to the upcoming fantasy sports gaming industry in India, since it was the first time that any High Court had carefully analyzed the system of fantasy sports gaming and managed that these fantasy sports were game of skill and completely legal regardless of the fact that there was money involved in it.
Dream11 is a fantasy gaming platform which takes great care to comply with all central and state legislation in India to ensure that users or people having interest to play fantasy gaming are fully protected. Every contest/player on Dream11 fantasy gaming platform is precisely designed to comply with applicable statutes and regulations in India.
This article is authored by Angad Singh, Fourth-Year, BBA. LL.B student at Jemtec School of Law, Greater Noida
Also Read – Law Relating to Online Betting/Gambling in India
