A look at the growth of esports tournaments in India, which are attracting prime-time TV audiences with both players and viewers mostly using mobile phones
Next to a primary school and a shabby playground in India's financial capital Mumbai stands a plush four-story building that's home to the world's newest breed of athlete. Tweets: @joerwallen and @business Tweets: Joe Wallen / @joerwallen : While still in its infancy compared to the US, China and Japan, investors are betting on huge growth in Indian esports — powered by one of the world's youngest populations and cheap mobile data https://www.bloomberg.com/... @business : Esports teams are pampering gamers with personal chefs as India emerges as a global gaming hub https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
India is the newest entrant in a hub race the coverage has tracked for two years: Singapore positioned itself as Southeast Asia's esports base in its bid to lead the region, while South Korea's mature scene showed how hard building sustainable pro careers is even where the culture runs deep. What sets India apart is the device — Bloomberg reports tournaments now pull prime-time TV audiences even though players and viewers are mostly on phones, powered by one of the world's youngest populations and cheap mobile data.
The timing matters because the incumbent leader is hobbled: experts argued China's gaming rules for young players would hurt its own esports development and hand an advantage to rivals elsewhere. Capital has already been circling India's gaming-adjacent market — Tencent, Alibaba, and SoftBank put money into fantasy sports and rummy apps there in 2020 — and teams are now spending on players directly, down to personal chefs at the new Mumbai facility.
First-order effects
- Investors and team owners are committing real infrastructure spend in Mumbai — a four-story dedicated facility and player perks like personal chefs — signaling esports is being treated as a professional sport in India, not a hobby scene.
- Broadcasters gain prime-time content built for a mobile audience, giving Indian tournaments a distribution channel that established PC-centric scenes took years to build.
Second-order effects
- With China restricting young players' gaming time, talent pipelines and tournament economics shift toward India and Southeast Asia, strengthening Singapore's parallel hub bid rather than competing it away.
- The Tencent-Alibaba-SoftBank money already deployed in Indian fantasy sports gives incumbents a ready on-ramp into esports viewership, since both audiences are mobile-first and prize-driven.
Third-order effects
- If mobile-first formats keep drawing TV-scale audiences, India could define a distinct esports model — phone-based competition at broadcast scale — that diverges from the PC-and-console structure of Korea, China, and Japan.
- Esports' medal eligibility at the Hangzhou Asian Games points toward formal sporting recognition, which would let fast-growing markets like India institutionalize player careers the way traditional sports federations do.
The trend: Esports gravity is shifting toward young, mobile-first markets like India as regulation constrains China and regional hubs compete for the talent and audiences left open.