Fantasy gaming platform Mobile Premier League raised $90 million in a fresh fundraise as investors tap the popular stay-at-home entertainment options amid the pandemic and the ongoing IPL season.
SIG, RTP Global—an early-stage tech investor—and MDI Ventures led the fresh investments into the two-year-old Bengaluru-based e-sports and mobile gaming platform, according to a company statement. Existing investors Sequoia India, Go-Ventures, and Base Partners, too, participated in the round. The latest funding takes the total investment in Mobile Premier League at $130.5 million to date.
This comes just a week after Dream Sports raised $225 million, the largest investment by a gaming platform this year. Earlier this month, SuperCric had raised fresh funds from Malta-based Nordanvind Gaming to build a cricket manager platform. Besides, Fanspole in August had raised a pre-series funding from Better Capital.
Online gaming, especially fantasy sports, has seen huge success in the last two-three years on the back of cheap data and smartphone penetration, driving consumption from big and small towns. Already this year nine gaming startups have raised about $337 million in fresh funding compared with $120 million in 15 deals in all of 2019, according to Venture Intelligence. In the last three months of 2020 alone, such platforms have amassed about $324 million in five deals.
Online skill-based gaming, according to a Redseer report, is estimated to grow to become a $3.8-billion market by 2024.
And with people staying at home to avoid contracting the virus and most matches being cancelled, gaming startups have seen an increase in user tractions.
Mobile Premier League said it has grown fourfold since March this year. The startup operates a pure-play gaming platform that hosts a range of tournaments. The app, which has more 60 million users, also serves as a publishing platform for other gaming firms, and is working with over 28 games developers and studios.
The startup aims to use the fresh capital to further accelerate its position in the gaming market, expand its product offerings, and grow its team. The funding, it said, will also be used towards product development, with a focus on social functions such as live streaming, and audio and video content features.
“This latest round of funding will enable us to entertain and connect an even larger audience across India and beyond,” Sai Srinivas, co-founder and chief executive officer at Mobile Premier League, said.
Mobile Premier League hosts about 70 games across multiple sports on the app such as rummy, poker, chess, and even fantasy sports, including cricket, football, basketball and kabaddi, among others.
But fantasy sports apps are not available on Google Play Store as the American search-engine giant’s policy prohibits online casino and other kinds of betting. Last week Google pulled Indian financial services platform Paytm from its app store for violation of its gambling policy, before bringing it back few hours later.
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