India-based platform for fantasy sports Dream11 has reportedly started negotiating a $500m funding round with investors including media and e-commerce group Naspers, internet company Tencent, which would be returning investor, as well as telecoms firm SoftBank’s Vision Fund. The potential round could value the company at between $2bn and $2.5bn and may also feature hedge fund manager Tiger Global Management as a backer. The company is reportedly aiming to raise the funding ahead of the start of the next Indian Premier League cricket season in March 2020.
Founded in 2008, Dream11 organises online daily fantasy sports games making it possible for players to win money by setting up imaginary teams for rounds of real-life sporting tournaments. The platform has attracted 50 million users as of February and aims to double the number by the end of the year. It claims to have registered more than $1bn of transactions in the year finishing March 2019, up from a target of $650m.
Fantasy sports form part of the broader gaming and eSports space, which has been on the radar of the corporate venture investors, as our GCV Analytics chart here shows. The number of corporate-backed deals in this space peaked at 58 rounds, estimated to be worth a total of $2.63bn, in 2018, up from 35 deals worth $612m in 2014. So far this year we have already tracked 43 deals, worth an estimated total of $607m. However, potentially large rounds like the one Dream11 aims to raise indicate that valuations may not be going into a slump just yet in this space.
