Mobile Premier League spent Rs 30 to earn a rupee in FY19

Online gaming has been scaling up at a quick pace in India, and this can be sensed from the revenue of Dream11 and Nazara Games, the two biggest players in fantasy gaming and publishing space, respectively. 

While Dream11 had revenue of Rs 775 crore in FY19, Nazara Games did a turnover of Rs 167.2 crore in the last fiscal.

Another prominent player in fantasy gaming space, Mobile Premier League (MPL), has posted revenue of Rs 2.87 crore while its expenditure ballooned to Rs 89.46 crore.

According to regulatory filings, the Go-Jek-backed firm’s operating revenue came through the sale of sporting services. It also earned Rs 14.65 lakh from interest on deposits and mutual funds.

It’s worth noting that, MPL was officially launched in September 2018 and the aforementioned financial figure comprises only six months of FY19.

On expenses front, MPL spent Rs 38.61 crore on operating activities such as game development and IT infrastructure. About Rs 9.63 crore was spent on employee benefits.

A significant amount ~ Rs 41.07 crore ~ was spent by the company on other components including advertising & promotion and IT support services. MPL had incurred an expense of Rs 29.62 crore on promotional campaigns while Rs 4.85 was spent on IT support services.

The company also burnt an amount of Rs 10.66 lakh in miscellaneous expenses. Because of the spurt in overall expenses, MPL had a net loss of Rs 86.44 crore at the end of the year ending March 2019.

The financial report further revealed that the company provided bonus cash and MPL tokens worth Rs 3.84 crore to its users. This expense turned out to be even more than the total revenue generated by the company in FY19.

MPL is owned by Singapore-based M League, and the parent entity had infused Rs 118 crore equity capital in the Indian entity. About Rs 70.93 crore of the proceeds for the company came in the form of convertible debentures. 

If we compare MPL with Dream11, the scale of the Bengaluru-based firm is tiny. Dream11 did a revenue of Rs 775 crore in FY19, 256.6X more than MPL. However, the Tencent backed gaming startup is 11 years older than MPL.

Other players in the online gaming space include Junglee Games and Tencent-owned PubG. It was clocking an average of $7-8 million in revenue every month since May in India.

Update: The post has been updated reflecting that MPL had concluded only six months in FY19.