All Things Esports: India’s US$1.65 Billion Opportunity and the Road Ahead

Update: The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 has since given esports statutory recognition. See our two-part analysis of the Act. When this paper was written, the first Olympic Esports Games were scheduled to be held in Riyadh in 2027. The IOC and Saudi Arabia have since ended that partnership.

Competitive gaming has come a long way from the “Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics” held at Stanford in 1972. Esports was a demonstration event at the 2018 Asian Games, where India won bronze in Hearthstone, and a full medal event at Hangzhou with eight titles. It featured alongside the 2022 Commonwealth Games through the Commonwealth Esports Championship, and in July 2024 the IOC announced plans for an Olympic Esports Games. This paper by AM Sports Law & Management Co. explains the business, the governance challenge and the opportunity for India.

Who owns the game

Esports differs from traditional sport at its foundation. No one owns football, but every esports title is a proprietary product. Publishers such as Riot Games, Valve, Activision Blizzard, EA, Tencent, Epic and Krafton hold the copyright, trade marks, patents and trade secrets in their games and decide how they are played, broadcast and monetised, and anyone organising a tournament needs the publisher’s licence. The wider ecosystem includes event organisers, multi-title teams, contracted players, streaming platforms, creators, sponsors and a young, highly engaged audience.

How esports compares

Unlike traditional sport, esports has no single governing federation, its teams often compete across several unrelated titles, and its viewership is spread across official, organiser, player and fan streams. It also differs from fantasy sports, where users have no control over the real athletes whose performance determines the result, and from real money card games, where a random number generator deals the cards. In esports the player controls the outcome through skill, practice and strategy.

The governance challenge

Because each title belongs to a publisher, a single federation for all of esports is comparable to a single federation for every traditional sport, and a body seen as close to one publisher may deter its rivals from joining. International bodies such as the International Esports Federation (2008) and the Global Esports Federation (2019) have grown, the IOC hosted the first Olympic Esports Series in Singapore in 2023, and the two federations formed an IOC-chaired Esports Leadership Group in 2024, but publishers remain the de facto regulators.

The integrity issues are real. There is no universal anti-doping standard, and heavy energy drink sponsorship complicates the question. Cheating takes forms such as aimbots, scripting, stream sniping and DDoS attacks, and match-fixing has led to bans in StarCraft and Counter-Strike. The Esports Integrity Commission, set up in 2016, provides codes on conduct, anti-corruption and anti-doping, and in June 2025 the International Safeguards for Children in Esports set out eight core safeguards for young players.

Where India stands

India recognised esports within the multi-sport events category by a gazette notification of 23 December 2022, with the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports as the nodal ministry, but no association has yet been recognised as the national federation. Without recognition, players miss out on sportsperson visas, insurance, retirement benefits and anti-doping support, and international participation has often depended on private funding. Indian players have still won medals, including a Dota 2 bronze at the Commonwealth Esports Championship, a Tekken 8 silver at the BRICS Esports Championship and Pavan Kampelli’s eFootball bronze at the 2024 Asian Esports Games, and brands from Airtel to Mountain Dew have backed the sport. Esports also appeared as a demonstration sport at the Khelo India Youth Games 2025.

Lessons from abroad

South Korea built its scene through the Korean Esports Association and its 2012 Act on Promotion of Esports. China recognised esports as a sport in 2003 and as a profession in 2019. The United States has granted athlete visas to esports players since 2013 and has a deep collegiate system. The UK supports developers through Video Games Tax Relief, and Saudi Arabia’s 2022 national strategy aims for 250 gaming companies by 2030.

A roadmap for India

The paper proposes an inter-ministerial roundtable bringing together MYAS, MeitY, DPIIT, MIB and MSDE to define roles; a draft national esports governance framework that distinguishes esports from online gaming and sets criteria for recognising a federation responsible for athlete welfare, anti-doping, integrity and international representation; adoption of the ESIC integrity framework; consultations with Indian operators and global publishers; and a pilot National Esports League. With 11 esports titles on the programme for the 2026 Asian Games, the paper argued that a structured high-performance pathway, from early identification to specialised coaching, would give Indian players a stronger chance on the international stage.