Investigation: RBI Never Authorised Dream11 — India’s Biggest Fantasy Gaming Empire Thrived in a Regulatory Void

X: @vivekbhavsar

Mumbai: In a revelation that cuts to the core of India’s regulatory failure, the Reserve Bank of India has admitted under RTI that Dream11 — India’s biggest fantasy gaming platform built by promoters with powerful corporate and political connections — has been handling crores of rupees daily like a wallet without ever being authorised under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act. No licence, no audit, no advisories, no oversight — only silence. That silence allowed the platform’s influential founders and global investors to thrive unchecked, until Parliament was finally compelled to step in with a sweeping ban through the Online Gaming Bill 2025.  

For years, Dream11, India’s biggest fantasy gaming platform, has been celebrated as a startup success story, boasting over 200 million users and handling crores of rupees in daily transactions. But behind the unicorn valuations and celebrity endorsements lies a disturbing truth now revealed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The central bank has admitted on record that Dream11, operated by Sporta Technologies Pvt Ltd, was never authorised under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 (PSS Act) to run any form of payment system, prepaid wallet, or settlement mechanism — despite operating a fund structure that closely mimics a digital wallet.

In its RTI reply to TheNews21, RBI was blunt: “No. Sporta Technologies Pvt Ltd is not authorised/approved as a Payment System Operator under the PSS Act, 2007.” Equally striking was the regulator’s admission that it has never conducted any inspection, audit or review of Dream11’s operations and has never issued advisories or cautions about its wallet-like system of collecting entry fees and redistributing winnings. When asked whether it had received complaints or representations against Dream11’s unregulated handling of crores, RBI avoided a direct answer and instead pointed to a generic link of authorised entities on its website. The evasive response raises troubling questions about whether the regulator failed to track complaints or chose to stay silent.

At the core of Dream11’s financial model is a structure that resembles a semi-closed prepaid wallet. Players pay entry fees, which are pooled into a common account. From this pool, Dream11 deducts its platform fee, and the remainder is distributed as winnings to a small percentage of participants. This cycle — money moving from user to platform and back to user — is indistinguishable from the settlement flows the PSS Act mandates RBI to regulate. Yet, because the activity was labelled as “fantasy gaming” rather than “payments,” the platform slipped outside RBI’s regulatory net. While wallet operators such as Paytm, PhonePe and Amazon Pay undergo strict inspections, audits, and licensing under RBI’s Master Directions on Prepaid Payment Instruments (2017), Dream11 has managed thousands of crores with no such oversight.

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The regulator’s silence becomes even more revealing when one looks at who built Dream11. The company was co-founded by Harsh Jain, son of Anand Jain — a powerful businessman and long-time confidante of Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani — and Bhavit Sheth, an IIT Bombay and Columbia University alumnus. Backed by global investors such as Tencent (China), Tiger Global, Kalaari Capital, and Sequoia Capital, the duo built Dream11 into India’s first fantasy gaming unicorn. Their pedigree and connections ensured Dream11 was not just another startup; it was a platform shielded by political proximity, corporate muscle and foreign capital. Few regulators dared to confront such clout, while lawmakers too hesitated, wary of the platform’s vast user base, celebrity endorsements, and lobbying influence.

This climate of impunity created a regulatory blind spot. Even as crores moved daily through Dream11’s fund pools, RBI neither applied the definition of “payment system” under the PSS Act nor examined whether its pooling-and-distribution model constituted a semi-closed prepaid instrument. Court rulings branding fantasy sports as “games of skill” further emboldened the industry, allowing platforms like Dream11 to grow unchecked under the protective umbrella of industry bodies such as the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS), which Dream11 itself helped establish.

For Dream11’s millions of users, the consequences of RBI’s inaction are stark. Unlike wallet or bank customers whose deposits are safeguarded under RBI oversight, Dream11’s users placed their money into a system completely outside financial regulation. If a Paytm wallet misuses funds, RBI can audit or revoke its licence. If Dream11 misused pooled entry fees or winnings, users would have no recourse. Their crores, circulating daily through an unregulated loop, were effectively at the mercy of a private platform that operated without accountability.

It has taken Parliament to do what RBI would not. On August 21, 2025, the government passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025, banning all real-money online games. The government cited addiction, social harm, tax leakages and fraud risks as the rationale. But beyond these justifications, the Bill implicitly acknowledges a deeper truth: that the RBI left a regulatory vacuum by refusing to treat pooled gaming funds as a payment system. After years of hesitation, lawmakers were forced to act.

Dream11’s rise may continue to be celebrated as a case study in scale and startup ingenuity. Yet the RTI trail tells a parallel story of regulatory abdication and systemic blindness. It shows how powerful promoters like Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth, backed by deep-pocketed global investors, thrived in a grey zone where India’s central bank chose to say it had “no information.” Parliament has finally drawn the line with the Online Gaming Bill 2025, but the unanswered question remains: why did the RBI, the guardian of India’s payment systems, stay silent for so long? In that silence, crores of rupees moved every single day — unregulated, unprotected and unaccounted for.