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There’s more to India’s igaming market than meets the eye and challenging assumptions is the only way to build sustainable growth, says Already Media CEO Alina Famenok
India might just be the fastest-moving, most complex market in igaming right now.
Yet most of the analysis I see boils down to its large population and passion for cricket. This only tells a tiny fraction of the story.
Over the last four years, India has been the driving force behind the success of our affiliate business, Already Media. We’ve grown to a team of more than 250 people – including many on the ground in India.
If you were to split all markets into three tiers – mature, emerging and early stage – when we started out in India four years ago, it was very much a Tier 3 jurisdiction. Over that time, it has progressed so rapidly, I’d now place it in the second tier, alongside markets like Brazil.
That’s attracted a lot of interest from across our industry, but I’d argue most of this interest remains rather uninformed.
I’m going to challenge five points that I often hear made when discussing igaming in India.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a grain of truth to all of these statements, but to build sustainable growth in India, we need to dig a little deeper.
Cricket is the only game in town
Look, before I start with this one, there’s no denying that cricket is far and away the most important product offering in India. It’s where most of the focus and player value is, and that’s not going to change any time soon.
We are, however, seeing a diversification of product offering across sports, casino and skill games that’s leading to a more robust market.
Virtual sports, particularly eCricket, are among the fastest-growing categories. Football is growing rapidly, with interest high both for the major foreign leagues, international games (particularly involving Argentina and Brazil), and the domestic Indian Super League, which is attracting more investment.
The Pro Kabbadi League is opening up opportunities for betting around the ancient sport. And traditional Indian games like teen patti can also be a strong product from both an acquisition and engagement perspective.
In short, the product mix is there to build beyond cricket.
April and May will define your year
The Indian Premier League (IPL) season is a fairly condensed one, particularly if you compare it to equivalent sporting competitions elsewhere. The entire season is condensed until little over two months – focused in April and May – compared to the five-month NFL and nine-month EPL seasons.
So yes, this does mean that you better have a strategy in place for April and May or you’re going to miss the party. It’s not uncommon to see traffic spikes of 2x or 3x during the period.
But there’s a really important qualifier here: new users acquired during the IPL tend to have a very different profile to those acquired throughout the rest of the year. We’ve observed that they place fewer bets, generate less revenue and are more likely to churn at the end of the season.
Building an acquisition strategy fully-focused on IPL action in April and May can leave you short for the rest of the year, particularly if you’ve optimised for a type of user who might not bring you long-term value.
It’s a huge opportunity, but mastering user acquisition for the other 10 months of the year remains the smarter play.
Player value is low
I’m not going to argue that an average user in India can compare with the LTV of a player in a mature European market.
However, I often speak to people who are surprised to learn how quickly CPAs are increasing in India. It isn’t uncommon to see operators now paying upwards of $30 per user in the country.
With India’s economy performing strongly, I’d expect that figure to noticeably increase further over the next couple of years.
Localising to India is easy
A lot of people in igaming seem to think that because of India’s high-proficiency in English, the market is a simple one to enter from a localisation perspective.
Sure, we have many high-performing English-language assets, but there are so many more opportunities out there.
Firstly, Indian English is quite distinct from American or British English. That’s why we’ve invested heavily in on-the-ground content personnel in India. Their knowledge of the audience has meant we’ve been able to create content that far outcompetes those trying to attack the market from outside the country.
Secondly, there’s the question of other languages in India. Officially, India has 122 major languages and 1599 other languages. In practical terms, I’d say Hindi if the first must-have; around 40 percent of the country speaks it.
But then there are opportunities across dozens of other languages: Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and Urdu to name just a few.
Localising to these audiences represents a huge opportunity. Remember, the sheer scale of the country means that languages are spoken by huge swathes of potential customers. Delivering to them is going to be one of the key drivers of growth over the coming years.
There’s not much competition
You might have seen a few high profile withdrawals from the Indian market over recent months, most notably Super Group (Betway). The 28 percent turnover tax applied by the country’s Goods and Services Tax Council has led to some operators concluding that India is simply not worth the bother.
But many others have seen the withdrawal of some of the industry’s biggest names as an opportunity to scale rapidly. As a result, while the market isn’t particularly consolidated, it is very competitive.
At the top end, the likes of Stake.com, Parimatch and Dafabet are consistently strong performers. There are also hundreds of other brands, many with strong offerings who are looking to challenge.
The opportunities are there, but India isn’t a walk in the park.
Alina Famenok is CEO of tech-driven affiliate business Already Media.
