India’s eSports wins official backing, but the real game starts now

In the mid-1990s, mixed martial arts was a fringe spectacle that found itself banned across more than 30 US states, with critics like Senator John McCain dismissing the Ultimate Fighting Championship as nothing more than “human cockfighting". Without regulatory legitimacy or safety rules, the sport struggled to gain any meaningful acceptance.

Everything changed when Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta bought the UFC in 2001 and embraced regulation. They introduced standardised rules and weight classes and actively sought state athletic commission backing. “We run towards regulation,” Lorenzo Fertitta famously declared. The transformation paid off spectacularly: UFC sold for $4 billion in 2016 and continues growing.

India’s eSports now stands at a similar threshold. For years, competitive gaming players have been caught in limbo, talented but not quite legitimate, popular but not quite profitable. With no legitimacy, parents frowned on it, sponsors hesitated, and the infrastructure remained inadequate.