Asia houses world’s two most populated countries: China and India that also happen to be two of the largest economies. The growing interest of this demographic in international football competitions is creating hopes for success of daily fantasy sports in this region. While China has a growing fan base in domestic football and international competitions, India is big on cricket and football. Can Asia become the promised land for fantasy sports and iGaming?

Chinese President Xi Jinping recently announced that he was hoping to start the country’s rise as a football power, a move that has been started to attract investments for domestic and international football tournaments. India has seen a steady fan base building up in the last decade for British Premier League, La Liga and NFL with several parts of India such as North-East India, West Bengal and metro cities embracing football fanship. So now India has Indian Super League – a national football league apart from other sports leagues as such India Premier League (Cricket); Indian Badminton League and Pro Kabaddi League.

Challenges to fantasy sports, iGaming in Asia

While the governments in Asian countries are slowly catching up to the business potential of fantasy sports and iGaming, the laws will take their own time. For instance, online gambling is still not regulated in Macau – the only place in China where gambling is legal. In India, on the other hand, games which satisfy the test of “skill versus chance” are not regulated under the Gaming Enactments and may be legally offered through the physical as well as virtual medium (including Internet and mobile) throughout India.
Yet a proper legal framework is still missing in Asia and this is extremely crucial for this sector to grow. The only silver lining is that daily fantasy sports are still safe from falling into the illegal category and hence hold a lot of scope in Asia.

Reasons why Asia can become the next big thing in fantasy sports

 / Asia has one of the largest sports-loving demographics with football still leading the popularity
 / Daily fantasy sports mostly fall into the category of ‘game of skill’ and hence are legal
 / Governments are now realizing the potential of both fantasy sports and online gambling
 / Asia houses two of the world’s most populated countries and hence the largest customer based in the world
 / People are aware of online gaming, fantasy sports

Leading fantasy sports providers have recently started eyeing the Asian waters especially China that may become the biggest market of fantasy sports in the world. This raises hopes that if companies start taking interest in the business potential of fantasy sports in the region, the governments may soon take steps to create legal frameworks.
If you are looking to develop a fantasy sports or an iGaming application for Asian demographic, do give us a call.