Fantasy Sports has seen tremendous growth over the last decade especially in the US, spreading over to other continents such as European regions and various other countries worldwide.

Over the last couple of years, India has witnessed a remarkable growth with the increasing admiration for various professional leagues for various sports such as cricket, soccer and kabaddi. A country where a majority of the population are the youth and with the third largest Internet demographic in the world, fantasy sports certainly has a secured future here.

Fantasy games where cricket is worshipped

Indians are truly passionate about sports in general. It’s a country that’s often called “obsessed about Cricket”. This is now translated into the growth of “Fantasy Cricket” in India. Today, Cricket enthusiasts like to be valued and aspire to feel the same power as a manager/coach of their favorite team creating their dream fantasy team, which fantasy Cricket offers them. Having said that, other sports such as soccer, badminton, kabaddi etc. are picking up fast while the leagues are getting extremely popular lately.

Cricket fantasy has grown immensely in India and outside, where Indians are living abroad as well. It started off with ESPN launching their super selector fantasy game, however, now even other media houses such as NDTV have their own cricket fantasy games.

At present, there are over 7 million fantasy sports players and the number is growing exponentially with 30-50% per year. The best thing about fantasy cricket is that the International Cricket Council (ICC) has a busy calendar all the year around with various countries playing Test, One-Dayers and T-20 Cricket. In addition, there are also domestic T-20 Leagues in various countries like IPL, BBL, CPL, Natwest T-20 etc. IPL Cricket fantasy league in India is extremely popular.

In addition to this, there are other nations in cricket trying to achieve international test/One Day/T-20 status from ICC as well such Afghanistan, Hong-Kong, Singapore, UAE etc. This surely keeps all the fantasy cricket lovers extremely busy all the time.

Fantasy cricket apps and data

Fantasy cricket application relies on its data to offer a rich user experience along with the interesting game play (contests) and an attractive front end user interface. Data must be flawless for any successful fantasy cricket platform and there are users who not only follow their favorite international team/players. However, they are also keen on playing fantasy on local domestic leagues as well. Hence, the data providers are also on their toes, and doing their best to cover as many international, domestic competitions/tournaments as possible.

The beauty of fantasy cricket is that you get data for most of the international Tier I and professional leagues (IPL, BBL, CPL etc.). However, if that’s not the case, the site owners also have an option for manual data feed entry to ensure they offer their users an enriched experience on local competitions as well. The manual data feed entry will open up new possibilities for fantasy cricket lovers who religiously follow local/domestic leagues.

This is extremely significant as most of the fans closely follow domestic players and competitions, and would want a fantasy platform to offer them the same.

Therefore, fantasy cricket is only poised to grow not just because of international and professional leagues but also due to domestic and local tournaments where fans relate more to local players depending on their location within the country.