Business
RMG ban-hit Dream Sports rejigs operations as over 100 executives check out
While the Mumbai-based firm pivoted its business model, it has seen a sharp decline in revenue generation.
A spokesperson for Dream Sports, said in response to ET’s queries, “Dream11’s 700 employees were placed into these startups based on their experience and affinity in those domains. Since some of these employees were experienced with specifically running and growing high scale businesses, and not startups, around 15% of them chose to leave and join other scaled up businesses as expected, while a few decided to start ventures of their own. Our current attrition is only slightly higher than the 10% we saw before the ban.”
The company is not hiring new talent and is focused on retaining its existing workforce, the spokesperson added.
The executives who left the firm in recent months were from customer support, engineering and data functions, said one of the persons cited earlier, adding that the number might increase as the company continues to realign its organisational structure.
When the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, which put a blanket ban on real money gaming, was passed in August last year, several companies operating in the sector announced workforce reductions.
In an interview with ET after the ban last year, Dream Sports cofounder Harsh Jain said, “We may need some cuts, but talent will be the last thing to go.” He added that any future plans for the company would start with the right talent.
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In December last year, the gaming company said it was recasting itself as a “second screen sports platform”, moving beyond its fantasy gaming roots to tie itself more closely to live broadcasts after the regulatory ban erased 95% of the company’s revenue and 100% of its profits. It has since split its businesses into separate units, each operating independently.
These include Dream11, fintech app Dream Money, sports streaming platform FanCode, artificial intelligence initiative Dream Sports AI, mobile game Dream Cricket, sports travel platform Dream Set Go, open source initiative Dream Horizon and philanthropic arm Dream Sports Foundation.
Several other platforms, including Mobile Premier League, Zupee and Winzo, have also pivoted to free-to-play formats and diversified into other businesses. Many of these firms have reduced headcount significantly as part of broader cost cutting efforts.
In January, ET reported that Zupee had laid off around 200 employees in a second round of workforce reductions as it sought to realign operations and cut costs.
Gameskraft axed more than 400 employees, representing more than 80% of its workforce, as of December. Similarly, Games24x7 laid off around 500 employees from a workforce of about 777, as of July 31 last year.
Mobile Premier League late last year laid off around 350 employees as it wound up all real-money gaming operations in India. Hike, which operated the real money gaming platform Rush, also announced a full shutdown of its real-money gaming business in India.
Dream Sports has raised $942 million from investors including Tiger Global, Steadview Capital and Alpha Wave Global, and was last valued at $8 billion, according to Tracxn.