How Dream11 became India’s Biggest Fantasy Sports Platform with the help of AWS!
Firstly, let me clarify that this is not any type of promotion, rather a case study of the role of AWS in startups like Dream11 which is now the Leader in the business of Fantasy Sports and is expected to pay Rs 222 crore for the title rights for Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 that will be held in UAE from September 19 to November 10. The Indian unicorn replaces Chinese handset company Vivo, which opted out of sponsorship this year as India-China ties nosedived following the Galwan Valley clash in June.
There were many speculations after Indian media bragging Dream11 as a purely Indian company with no Chinese connection. Although, in the year 2018 it raised $100 million from Chinese internet giant Tencent at a valuation of about $700 million.
Dream11: From a Dream to Reality!
Dream11 is a fantasy sports platform that lets users create their own team of real-life players, score points, and compete with others.
It was founded by Harsh Jain & Bhavit Sheth, both sports lovers, in the year 2008 in the name of Dream11 Fantasy Pvt Ltd.
CEO Jain is the son of Anand Jain, a trusted aide of Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Industries.
The online gaming sector in India has undergone a tremendous change in the last few years. The online gaming market in India which stood at $290 Mn in 2017, is expected to grow to $5 Bn by 2022. A report by Flurry Analytics said, “India currently ranks among the top five countries in the world for online and mobile gaming.”
Being India’s number one online gaming platform did not come without hurdles. First of them being the legal challenges, particularly because of its similarity to gambling, which is largely illegal in India. The industry though growing at an ever-increasing speed is at a self-regulatory phase.
The version of Dream 11 app in which we can play fantasy league was never a part of google. Earlier there were two versions of the app — Dream 11 Pro and Dream 11 Free Leagues. Only the later was available in google play store because the play store does not allow ‘pay and play’ apps.
After the investments from Tencent, their registered users grew from 2 million in 2016 and to 45 million in 2018. They decided to remove the free version of the game and now only the Dream 11 Pro — which is now Dream 11 official app — is available for download from their official website.
In 2017, a case was registered against the company in an Indian High Court. The court, in its ruling, stated that playing the Dream11 game involves superior knowledge, judgement and attention. The Court also held that ‘the element of skill’ had a predominant influence on the outcome of the Dream11 game. However, the law does not allow Fantasy Sports in few Indian States like Assam, Odisha and Telangana.
A challenge to this judgement was filed with the Supreme Court of India, which dismissed the appeal. The judgement provided legality to the company and allowed them to run their operations throughout the country. Despite it being adjudged to be a game of skill, experts believe that the company operates in the country’s regulatory grey area.
In 2018, Dream11 welcomed Mahendra Singh Dhoni as its new brand ambassador, which helped a lot in the image building of the platform, making it easier for the public to trust.
In 2019, BCCI signed up Dream11 as IPL’s official fantasy sports partner till 2022.
This was not only validation for Dream11, but the whole fantasy gaming sector in the country.
In Inc42’s 42Next list, Dream11 was one of 42 innovative startups.
In 2020, it is the IPL’s title sponsor!
Now, let’s come to how AWS shaped Dream11’s success!
For knowing why cloud is important for any business/startup, do take a look at my blog on it!
Now, that Dream11 is not available in the Google Play Store, it has to have a really powerful website. For web hosting, Dream11 uses Amazon Web Service (AWS).
Let’s look at the Amazon Web Services used by Dream11:
Reverse Proxy Service: Amazon CloudFront.
CloudFront is Amazon’s content delivery service. It gives developers and businesses an easy way to distribute content to end users with low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no minimum usage commitments.
The goal of the Content Delivery Network (CDN) is to serve content to end-users with high availability and high performance.
DNS Server Provider: Amazon
DNS, or the Domain Name System, translates human readable domain names (for example, www.amazon.com) to machine readable IP addresses (for example, 192.0.2.44).
A DNS service such as Amazon Route 53 is a globally distributed service that translates human readable names like www.example.com into the numeric IP addresses like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to connect to each other. The Internet’s DNS system works much like a phone book by managing the mapping between names and numbers. DNS servers translate requests for names into IP addresses, controlling which server an end user will reach when they type a domain name into their web browser. These requests are called queries.
Data Center Provider: Amazon
In today’s fast-moving, interconnected economy, a company’s IT solutions can either empower it to compete in increasingly crowded markets or hold it back. Developing a strategy for technology infrastructure is no longer just a concern for large-scale enterprises, but also for the smallest businesses. If an organization doesn’t have a plan in place to address its future data and computing needs, it can be caught in a situation that makes it impossible to respond to changing circumstances or take advantage of unexpected opportunities.
Similarly, all the technical infrastructure requirements of Dream11 is managed by AWS.
Similar fantasy sports platforms like Mobile Premiere League (Web Hosting, Datacentre infrastructures, DNS), HalaPlay (Web Hosting, Cloudfront, DNS), My11circle (Web Hosting, Cloudfront, DNS, DataCentre) also use cloud and infrastructure services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Thank you for reading! Hope you learnt something new!