Indian Gaming League Boosts the Popularity of eSports in India

According to The Economic Times, India has just entered the roster of countries with their own major professional eSports league; welcome the Indian Gaming League, or, simply, the IGL.

eSports, or Electronic Sports, experienced a period of aggressive expansion in the past decade as more and more countries and organizations begin to understand the financial potential of monetizing professional gaming.

The spokesperson for the newly-formed Indian Gaming League, Siddhanth Valecha, had the following to say about the formation of the IGL and its relevance to eSports in India: “We want to revive the gaming culture in India. We interacted with India’s gaming community before launching the league, and we received a tremendous response.”

He is not exaggerating, because in the very first 2 weeks of the Indian Gaming League’s existence, it received at least 1,000 applications from people looking to become professional gamers.

The IGL was founded by two young men, cousins Yash Pariani, 23, and Krish Galani, 20, who are planning to base it on the model of the Indian Premier League (a cricket league): they’re planning to have six city-based franchises (eg. CounterStrike Mumbai, or DotA2 Delhi) for all the games on the Indian Gaming League’s playlist. These games currently include FIFA, CounterStrike, Halo, League of Legends (LoL), Battlefield, Call of Duty, and Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA2). The cousins stated that they’re looking to add more games to the list as professional online gaming in India grows with the help of the Indian Gaming League.

You may wonder how these two young gentleman achieved such success — the answer is in the sponsors, as is so often the case. The IGL is sponsored by Major League Gaming that claims to have about 20 million fans across its network, as well as by Red Bull (the official beverage partner), Paytm (monetary transactions sponsor), and Sony Playstation, acting as the official hardware sponsor.

And we haven’t even started talking about how much money there is to be made by the betting gamers who already know how to bet on eSports in India. Suffice to say, it is a lot of money. If eSports is something that interests you, this may be the perfect time to jump into the fray. Until then, make sure to check out our eSports betting guide, and get ready to cash out when your Indian Gaming League team of choice is going to make it rain.

Feature Image: Chris Nuzzaco