Gaming
Gaming ad spend hits $25bn as paid installs rise 10 per cent: AppsFlyer report
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence has made building games faster, cheaper and easier. Standing out, however, has never been harder.
That is the central takeaway from The State of Gaming for Marketers – 2026 Edition, a new report by AppsFlyer that paints a picture of an industry bursting with content, cash and competition. The tools of creation are now widely available. Attention is not.
In 2025, paid installs for mobile games rose 10 per cent year on year, while ad impressions jumped 20 per cent. The reason is simple. AI has turbocharged development and creative production, allowing even small studios to churn out games and marketing assets at speeds once reserved for blockbuster titles. The result is a crowded marketplace where marketing muscle and data savvy matter more than ever.
“Production is no longer the problem,” the report suggests. “Attention is.”
Money is still flowing in. Global gaming user acquisition spend hit 25 billion dollars in 2025, up nearly four per cent from the previous year. But the geography of that spending is shifting. Almost half of all budgets still go to the United States, yet US spend actually fell five per cent as high costs make incremental growth harder to justify.
By contrast, markets such as India and Turkey are enjoying a surge. Spend jumped 19 per cent in India and 29 per cent in Turkey, reflecting cheaper scale and growing ad based monetisation. For marketers willing to look beyond traditional strongholds, opportunity is knocking loudly.
Genres are also moving in different directions. Casual games continue to command more than half of all acquisition budgets, but their Android spend dipped seven per cent as returns softened. Hypercasual titles remain heavily reliant on paid traffic, thriving on Android where costs are lower, but struggling on iOS where spend fell 14 per cent. Midcore games, meanwhile, are enjoying a renaissance on iOS, with budgets up 26 per cent year on year as publishers chase higher lifetime value players.
One of the most striking shifts comes from China based publishers. Their share of global gaming acquisition spend outside China rose 22 per cent to reach 35 per cent of the market. Once focused on domestic success, these companies are now aggressively expanding into Western and mature Asian markets. Growth in the US, UK, Germany and France shows that creative localisation is working, while gains in Japan and South Korea signal direct competition with long established local players.
Monetisation models are also evolving, albeit slowly. Around seven per cent more games adopted hybrid monetisation in 2025, combining in app purchases with advertising. Even so, fewer than a third of games currently use a hybrid approach. Developers are experimenting, not yet committing, as they search for the right balance between player experience and revenue resilience.
Behind the scenes, AI is becoming an everyday companion for gaming teams. Nearly half of all AI assistant queries are now about reporting and performance breakdowns. Hypercasual teams use AI for speed, checking what works and cutting what does not. Midcore and Casino teams dig deeper, asking AI to explain anomalies and interpret shifts that affect long term monetisation.
Creativity, however, remains the ultimate numbers game. Top spenders now produce between 2,400 and 2,600 creative variations every quarter, up as much as 30 per cent year on year. Smaller advertisers are scaling up too, while some mid tier players risk falling behind by cutting output. In a world awash with ads, testing velocity has become a competitive weapon.
The report also highlights growing diversification on iOS, where advertisers are spreading budgets across more media sources rather than squeezing existing channels. This broader mix offers incremental scale and some insurance against platform volatility.
Taken together, the findings point to a simple truth. AI has levelled the playing field on creation, but raised the bar on marketing. Winning in 2026 will not be about making more games. It will be about reading the data better, testing faster, and knowing where attention and value truly lie.
For an industry once defined by play, the real game now is focus.
Gaming
Dream Sports sees 100 plus exits after gaming ban forces overhaul
Company splits into eight units as real money gaming law hits revenue.
MUMBAI: For a company built on fantasy leagues, reality has suddenly rewritten the rulebook. More than 100 employees have exited Dream Sports, the parent of Dream11, after the company reorganised its operations following India’s ban on real money online gaming. The shake up came after the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 came into force in August 2025, prohibiting games where users deposit money expecting winnings. The regulation struck at the heart of the fantasy gaming industry and dramatically affected Dream Sports’ core business, wiping out about 95 percent of its revenue and all of its profits.
In response, the Mumbai based company shifted into what chief executive officer Harsh Jain described as “startup mode”, splitting its operations into eight independent business units in December.
Around 700 employees were reassigned across these newly formed ventures based on their experience and interests. However, roughly 15 percent opted to leave the company.
A spokesperson for Dream Sports said many of those who exited were experienced professionals accustomed to running scaled businesses rather than early stage ventures.
“Since some of these employees were experienced with running high scale businesses and not startups, around 15 percent chose to leave and join other scaled companies or start ventures of their own,” the spokesperson said.
Despite the departures, the company noted that the attrition rate is only slightly higher than its earlier level of around 10 percent before the ban. Dream Sports now has close to 950 employees and is not currently hiring, choosing instead to focus on stabilising its existing workforce.
The restructuring has transformed Dream Sports from a fantasy gaming company into a broader sports entertainment platform. The eight units now operate independently, each focusing on different segments of the sports and technology ecosystem.
These include Dream11, sports streaming platform Fancode, sports travel service DreamSetGo, mobile game Dream Cricket and artificial intelligence initiative Dream Sports AI, which includes sports analytics platform Dream Play.
Other ventures include fintech product Dream Money, open source initiative Dream Horizon and the philanthropic arm Dream Sports Foundation.
As part of cost saving efforts, Dream Sports also relocated its headquarters from Bandra Kurla Complex to Worli earlier this year. The new office, called Dream Sports Stadium, brings teams from its various brands together under one roof to improve collaboration and operational efficiency.
Jain had earlier said the company removed bonus lock in timelines for employees hired in recent years, allowing those who wished to leave to exit with pro rata payouts.
“We want people who are fully into the startup mode and willing to work for it, and we will share that reward if it comes,” he said.
Founded in 2008 by Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth, Dream Sports was last valued at 8 billion dollars after raising 840 million dollars in 2021 from investors including Falcon Edge Capital, DST Global, D1 Capital Partners, RedBird Capital Partners, Tiger Global Management, TPG and Footpath Ventures.
The new gaming law has forced several companies in the fantasy gaming sector to either shut down or pivot their business models, signalling a significant reset for one of India’s fastest growing digital entertainment industries.
