Indian Esports Is a Tale of Two Games — For Now
BGMI and Free Fire Max dominate. Can government support for local players change that?
As promised earlier in the week, here’s the unedited “writer’s cut” of my column that made its way to The Times of India. There’s some napkin math involved, which I break down at the end of the piece. Expect the usual console and PC analysis soon. Thank you for reading.
Beyond the glitzy trophies and the even glitzier headlines, esports needs no introduction. From record-breaking salaries for Indian players to nation-elevating wins for teams on the global stage, much has been said about esports and its potential in India.
However, when you parse through all the ink spilled on sensationalising it, esports is essentially a gateway to a larger ecosystem.
From an Indian context a majority of esports events takes place in two games, Free Fire Max and Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI). Both are mobile games with roughly 500 million players between them.
When you take real money games out of the picture (they should have never been considered as video games but that’s a topic for another column), the Indian video games industry is slated to be worth $1.1 billion in 2025.
The lion’s share of that revenue goes to two companies — Krafton and Garena for their games BGMI and Free Fire Max, clocking a combined $510 million in 2024*.
For both games, esports is a necessary marketing expense to keep their burgeoning audiences interested. With that comes an entire cottage industry of players, coaches, teams, and sponsors vying for prize pools that go up to Rs. 4 crore which is what we saw for Krafton’s Battlegrounds Mobile Pro Series earlier this year while Free Fire Max India Cup had a Rs. 1 crore prize pool.
Suffice to say, when you’re bringing in as much revenue as Krafton and Garena do, which is around $186 million and $323.6 million respectively in 2024, you can afford to be magnanimous.
So why, dear readers, did I take you through some dry numbers? To set the context for what happened next of course.
When the Indian government passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 to be a law, Prime Minister Narendra Modi encouraged the nation’s youth to pursue gaming, claiming India could dominate the global video games business, going as far as to label real money games as gambling.
The distinction matters because finally, it puts India in the same spot as the rest of the world which decided that if your “game” had to have fine print longer than the time you spent playing it to warn you of your financial risk, it isn’t a game at all.
Esports is already recognised as a sport in India courtesy Gazette Notification, December 2022. Throw in 2025’s PROGA (or would it be PROGL?) and the ecosystem should have the confidence to go full steam ahead.
And that’s where we aren’t there yet.
If the entire esports ecosystem is propped up by two games, none of them made-in-India, how does it help the Indian games industry win? Sure we’re seeing some grassroots initiatives from the likes of Scarfall, FAU-G, and Indus Battle Royale but they’re not at the stage where we’re seeing an assembly line of talent.
This is a function of the fact that none of these games are played as widely as Call of Duty Mobile (around 40 million players is the widely accepted figure) let alone BGMI and Free Fire Max. None of them have any global notoriety either.
Even international companies here took note which is why Krafton found it prudent to invest in Pune-based JetSynthesys to expand internationally. Indian game companies simply don’t have the capital on their own to build out esports to compete with global giants.
However, there are positive trends. New talent realises that they can’t compete on the existing big games so are willing to play these other games to get their foot in the door in the business. The Maharashtra state government is keen to position Mumbai as the gaming capital of India complete with a progressive AVGC policy that includes esports, IP creation, and incentives. There are enough green signals for both jaded c-suite games industry veterans and newbie esports players to persevere.
While the likes of BGMI and Free Fire Max still carry some geopolitical baggage in some corridors of power, assuming the ICC makes good on its promise of a mobile cricket game that could be the big moment to nurture a new generation of esports and eventually games industry talent.
If the games themselves are made here, that helps accelerate the games industry as a whole and allows players an on-ramp into game development where their careers have a longer lifespan than the usually up to 25 years you have as an esports pro before your reflexes begin to fade.
That said, you can’t have a robust, healthy esports ecosystem if there aren’t more games to nurture the talent at scale. I firmly believe the policies around video games and esports in India at the centre and state have been made with these ground realities in mind with an intent of taking Indian games and esports talent international just like Bollywood. China for example, had its moment with over 62,000 fans breaking a Guiness World Record for the highest attended esports event ever. The game? Tencent-developed Honor of Kings.
All of this is to say, esports is the tip of the iceberg of a greater, wider, more potent narrative: cultural relevance. One where Indian games are played on a global scale like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or Dota 2 complete with sold out stadiums the world over. This can only happen when we break our dependence on just two games to carry an entire nation of esports talent.
*How this was calculated:
1. Krafton 2024 global rev = USD 1.86bn. Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/en-in/news-and-trends/bgmi-kraftons-once-in-a-decade-win-and-future-plans/497079
India is top 5 in terms of revenue: https://www.ptinews.com/editor-detail/KRAFTON-to-deepen-bet-on-India-s-booming-gaming-market;-eyes-talent--ecosystem-expansion=/2711732
Assume Krafton India rev @ 10%: USD 186mn
2. Free Fire Max 2024 India revenue: USD 323.6mn
Source: https://news.abplive.com/gaming/garena-free-fire-max-shuts-india-based-versus-pune-game-studio-amid-free-fire-max-revenue-push-1785266
These two alone are USD 509.6mn in 2024. Total 2024 market size was ~$900mn leaving out RMG (which is something I shouldn’t have to clarify in 2025 but here we are).
Conservative back of the napkin math puts the others like COD, Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Royale Match etc at about USD 100mn total. In 2024 safe to foreign companies were at around 70 percent of the market.
PS: I’ve started a podcast called Day Zero, check it out here if you’re interested in the bits and bytes that make the greatest entertainment medium ever.