Fantasy sports AI models extend beyond gaming: Whitepaper

The rising popularity of fantasy sports in India has resulted in voluminous data generation, even for small tournaments and leagues, leading to creation of rich datasets for AI applications. As fantasy sports call for forecasting players’ performances and game results, they can also be used to create AI models based on historical performance data, injury reports, and matchup statistics. Being easily accessible and well-understood across user demographics, fantasy sports can help democratise AI adoption in sports by involving India’s best brains. These observations were made in a recently launched whitepaper titled ‘Fantasy Sports as a Catalyst for India’s AI Revolution in Sports’ authored by Professor Vishal Misra, vice-dean of computing and AI, department of engineering, Columbia University. The launch took place at the recently concluded Waves 2025 event.

The whitepaper is based on the insights gathered from FIFS Sports Data Gameathon, a national-level sports AI challenge organised by Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS) in collaboration with Google Cloud and Dream11.

India’s top engineering and technology institutes participated in the Gameathon. The participating students leveraged data to develop AI/ML models based on real-world sports applications and competed in fantasy sports format. During the Gamethon, the participants packaged their solutions as Docker containers, which Dream11 ran while pulling in fresh data during the tournament. This provided students with hands-on experience of using industry-standard technologies.

Based on the Gamethon experience, the whitepaper states that AI models built for fantasy sports will have applications beyond fantasy games and that they extend to real-world athlete management, strategic planning, and talent identification. AI-powered decision-making can streamline athlete training, enhance performance, and help prevent injury through personalised training programmes. AI algorithms and performance evaluation tools can also help sports managers to make data-led decisions related to team composition and tactics, the whitepaper notes.

Commenting on the whitepaper's subject, Prof Vishal Misra said, “Fantasy sports is a powerful, accessible platform for advancing AI in India. By turning sports into a data science playground, we can nurture the next generation of AI talent while unlocking real-world applications in athlete performance, fan engagement, and strategic decision-making.”

Given the significance of fantasy sports in the larger context of growth for sports as well as economy, the whitepaper also made a few policy recommendations to the goverment. These include establishing a national sports data repository under the IndiaAI datasets platform, developing sports-focused AI curricula in higher education, creating a dedicated AI-in-sports innovation hub within IndiaAI, rolling out regular, multi-sport data competitions to promote innovation, enabling real-time data infrastructure for dynamic AI models, and fostering public-private partnerships between fantasy platforms, academia, and sports bodies.

According to a research report released by the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS) and Deloitte, India’s fantasy sports market is expected to reach INR 1.65 lakh crores in the current financial year. The segment also presents a massive growth opportunity for advertising. Catalysed primarily by Indian Premier League tournaments, the fantasy sports advertising witnessed a strong growth in the recent past.

According to a recent TAM Sports report, fantsy sports ad volumes registered a 6% growth during IPL 2025 compared to IPL 2024. The number of advertisers grew by 15% this year—from over 70 in IPL 2024 to over 80 in 2025. Two popular fantasy sports platforms, namely, Dream11 and My11Circle, dominated the ad volumes during the ongoing IPL season. By investing INR 1,730 crores in advertising during IPL 2025 Dream11 saw as high as 37.7% brand recall rate. This year, My11Circle introduced its ‘Circle Mein Aaja' (Come into the circle) advertising campaign headlined by Sourav Ganguly and Shubman Gill to enhance brand recall among fans.

Fantasy sports advertising in India has experienced significant growth, propelled primarily by the popularity of cricket and the Indian Premier League (IPL). Platforms like Dream11 and My11Circle have capitalised on the IPL's massive viewership to enhance their brand visibility and user engagement.