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Dream11, once India’s biggest fantasy sports app, says a “brand new” version will launch at the end of December. Its parent company, Dream Sports, still faces GST dues of more than ₹20,000 crore, and the paid contests that once carried the business remain banned. Here is what the comeback is up against.

Aerial view of a large cricket stadium with a green outfield and orange seats

One post on X

Dream Sports co-founder and CEO Harsh Jain made the announcement in a post on X this week. “A brand new Dream11 is launching (at the) end of Dec – by sports fans, for sports fans. Stay tuned…” he wrote, as reported by Inc42.

That was all he gave away. Jain did not reveal any features, a business model or an exact launch date, BW Disrupt reported. The headline promise is simply that the new app will be built around sports fans rather than paid contests.

The timing matters. The relaunch comes more than a year after Parliament passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, which banned online real-money games and restricted their promotion and advertising.

The ₹20,000 crore bill

The bigger shadow over the relaunch is tax. Dream Sports faces GST dues of more than ₹20,000 crore, according to Inc42, BW Disrupt and Outlook Respawn.

Those dues trace back to October 2023, when the GST Council said the full 28 per cent rate would apply to the full value of bets placed on gaming platforms. Tax authorities then tried to collect that tax for earlier periods too. Gaming companies challenged it in court.

In May this year, a Supreme Court bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan upheld the retrospective levy, Inc42 reported. Because the tax is calculated on the face value of every entry, not just the platform’s fee, the bills run far larger than the companies’ own earnings from those contests.

A year of shutdowns

Dream11’s paid contests, the heart of its old business, stopped once the law banning real-money games took effect.

Since then, the app has switched to a watch-along format, where users follow gameplay by well-known content creators, BW Disrupt reported. The parent company also tried other businesses, and several did not last.

Dream Money, which offered mutual funds, digital gold, fixed deposits and loans, shut in June this year. So did Dream Play, an AI-powered sports analytics app. FanCode’s sports merchandise business was also quietly closed earlier this year, Inc42 reported. FanCode streaming, the DreamStreet broking platform, DreamCricket and the SaaS arm Dream Horizon are still running.

A huge, thrifty audience

The new Dream11 will enter a market that is large in players but small in spending. India’s video game market made $1.04 billion in revenue in 2025 from 511 million players, according to the Game Developer Association of India’s GameDev Outlook 2026 report, cited by Outlook Respawn.

That works out to about $2.04 per player per year. For a company that once made money from cash contests, earning that kind of money from free users through ads or subscriptions is a very different business.

At least one investor sees a turnaround coming. Bitkraft’s Anuj Tandon expects India’s gaming sector to recover in 2027, Outlook Respawn reported, citing his interview with The Times of India.

What to watch

The first question is the business model. Jain has promised a product “by sports fans, for sports fans”, but has not said how it will earn money without paid contests. Ads, subscriptions or tie-ups with FanCode’s streaming are all possible, but nothing has been confirmed.

The second is the tax bill. A dues figure of more than ₹20,000 crore hangs over any new product, and how Dream Sports deals with it will shape how much it can spend on the relaunch.

Finally, watch rivals such as Mobile Premier League, Games24x7 and Winzo, which were also hit by the ban. If the new Dream11 finds an audience by the end of December, others may try the same path.