The white paper “Fantasy Sports as a Catalyst for India’s AI Revolution in Sports” was introduced at WAVES 2025 (World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit) by Professor Vishal Misra, Vice-Dean of Computing & AI at the Department of Engineering, Columbia University, and a leading advisor to the FIFS Sports Data Gameathon. This paper is in line with India’s goal to become a global centre for artificial intelligence.
The white paper draws on lessons from the FIFS Sports Data Gameathon, a national-level sports AI competition created in collaboration with Google Cloud and Dream11. The competition challenged India’s leading engineering and technology institutes to use data to create AI/ML models based on real-world sports applications and compete in a daily fantasy sports format.
The whitepaper emphasises the importance of making sports a focus sector for the India AI Mission, the relevance of fantasy sports as a vehicle for democratising AI development, and the use of initiatives such as Gameathon to develop indigenous AI solutions for sports and beyond. Fantasy sports have the advantage of widespread adoption and, due to their data-driven approach, provide a unique chance to engage India’s large pool of technological ability. It will also help to integrate sports analytics with grassroots innovation.
Prof. Vishal Misra said, “Fantasy sports is more than entertainment — they are a powerful, accessible platform for advancing AI in India. By turning sports into a data science playground, we can nurture the next generation of AI talent while unlocking real-world applications in athlete performance, fan engagement, and strategic decision-making. The FIFS Sports Data Gameathon not only supported Indi aAI’s application development and FutureSkills goals but also showed how fantasy platforms can fuel AI-driven innovation beyond elite teams, making sophisticated analytics tools accessible at scale.”
The study also highlighted critical policy proposals, such as establishing a national sports data repository using the IndiaAI Datasets Platform, establishing sports-focused AI courses for higher education, establishing a specialised AI-in-sports innovation hub inside India AI, launching frequent, multi-sport data tournaments to encourage innovation, providing real-time data infrastructure for dynamic AI models, fostering public-private relationships between fantasy platforms, universities, and sports organisations, as well as cross-disciplinary research in AI, sports science, and statistics.
As India aims for a USD 500 billion GDP benefit from AI adoption by 2025, the report makes a persuasive argument for sports to be included as a formal pillar of the India AI Mission. India can create a robust, inclusive AI ecosystem with revolutionary potential for both sports and society by leveraging accessible platforms such as fantasy sports and projects such as Gameathon.