Fantasy Sports Market Expected to Reach $48.6 Billion by 2027—Allied Market Research

According to a new report published by Allied Market Research, titled, “Fantasy Sports Market by Sports Type, Platform, and Demographics: Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021–2027,” the global fantasy sports market size was $18.6 billion in 2019, and is projected reach $48.6 billion by 2027, registering a CAGR of 13.9% from 2021 to 2027 

Fantasy sports are online gaming platforms where participants manage and draft virtual teams of real professional sports players. Users compete against the fantasy teams of each other people, over an entire sports league or season. Users that scores maximum points wins money based on the performance of the real professional sports players.

The rapid expansion of the fantasy sports industry has been well supported by investment from investors around the world. Investors around the world continued to show interest on sports fantasy platforms. For instance Dream11 a fantasy sports platform in India received funding of about $100 Million in a Series D funding round in the year 2018 led by Chinese investment holding company Tencent. On the similar lines, Halaplay raised $5 billion in Series A funding led by Kae Capital and Nazara Technologies. Similarly, FanDuel has received collective funding of more than $400 million. DraftKings, a sports fantasy platform launched in 2012 has raised close to $900 million and is now valued at more than $2 billion. The continued investment from investors aids in the fantasy sports market growth with better product offerings from different platforms.

The fantasy sports platforms remains niche in the developing nations of Asia-Pacific and Latin America region. According to an in-house survey, more than 58% respondents in the regions have incorrect information about the fantasy sports. Furthermore, one in four people were unaware about such platforms. Though a lot of expenditure is incurred by the fantasy sports platforms, lack of awareness and right information remain a major hurdle for the engaged stakeholders in the industry.

The emergence of COVID-19 has negatively disrupted the global fantasy sports market with leagues and tournaments either been called off or shifted to last month of 2020 or to the next year, i.e. 2021. The deferral of sports events has led to widespread losses for the engaged stakeholders. Nevertheless, with the resuming of sports activities in the last quarter of this year, the market is expected to recover slightly; however, a major rebound is projected to be witnessed next year onwards.

The fantasy sports market is segmented into sports type, platform, demographics and region. By sports type, the global market is classified into football, baseball, basketball, hockey, cricket, and others. By platform, it is bifurcated into website, and mobile application. By demographics, the fantasy sports market is divided into under 25 years, 25 to 40 years and above 40 years. By region, the market is analyzed across North America, Europe, and Rest of World. The market is evaluated based on the user expenditure on fantasy sports platforms.

Key Findings Of The Study

• By region, North America dominates in terms of the fantasy sports market share and is expected to retain its dominance during the forecast period.
• By sports type, the fantasy football segment led in terms of market share, in 2019; however, the fantasy cricket segment is expected to gain market share in the upcoming years.
• By platform, the mobile application segment accounted for about three-fourths share of the fantasy sports market in 2019 and is poised to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period.
• By demographics, the under 25 years segment is expected to gain market share in the upcoming years and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 15.9% during the fantasy sports market forecast period.
• By region, rest of World is anticipated to grow with robust CAGR of 18.2% during the forecast period.

Some of the key players analyzed in the fantasy sports market analysis includes Dream Sports, DraftKings Inc., Fantacalcio, FanDuel (Flutter Entertainment), Rotoworld, FantasyPros, Rotowire, Fantrax, Sportech Inc., and NFL Fantasy.