Gamifying Enterprise Solutions: The Future of Fantasy Sports After the Gaming Bill 2025
Written by: Shiva kumaran S
Quick Summary
Gamification refers to the implementation of gaming elements in non-gaming scenarios.
Enterprises across industries can benefit from gamified elements and boost user engagement and retention.
In the aftermath of the ban on real money gaming, gamifying enterprise solutions offers a powerful strategy to diversify revenue sources for fantasy gaming applications.
Introduction
The Regulation of Online Gaming Bill 2025 imposed a blanket ban on all real-money gaming applications. This was the primary revenue source for games, including fantasy sports. With the real money gaming incentive not available to users, gaming businesses need to pivot to alternative strategies for survival that are permitted by law. In this scenario, gamifying enterprise solutions emerges as a promising strategy with a proven potential to boost SaaS revenue and diversify revenue sources for gaming applications. Implementing game-like mechanics can help boost engagement and retention in applications across industries. This blog will tell you how.
What are Gamified Experiences in Business Apps?
Games are for more than just entertainment. Gamification refers to using game-like elements in non-game settings to drive greater engagement. Gamification transforms non-game activities into enjoyable experiences that appeal to users’ intrinsic motivations to engage more. This could prove beneficial in combating the effects of the Online Gaming Bill 2025. Game elements like leaderboards, points, and badges can help businesses across industries improve the efficacy of their programs. Let us explore how non-gaming apps can benefit from gamification:
1\. Boost in user engagement and retention
Gamification encourages users to interact and spend more time on your application by appealing to their intrinsic motivations. It makes these interactions enjoyable by transforming mundane and routine tasks into interesting challenges that give users a tangible sense of progress and achievement with daily streaks, rewards, and bonus points. These elements, along with leaderboards and milestones, build excitement and anticipation for what is next, keeping users coming back for more. It proves to be one of the most innovative SaaS strategies as it gives SaaS businesses an engagement engine that helps them actively adopt and use the platform, eliminate user churn, and gain a competitive edge.
2\. Simplified conversion journeys
Gamifying enterprise solutions simplifies users’ product adoption and conversion journeys by integrating game mechanics into functional tools. Reward systems, progress bars, leaderboards, and badges tap into users’ intrinsic motivations of aspiration, confidence, and a desire to make progress, enabling them to move toward paid upgrades, respond to upsells, and premium features on their own. This helps businesses convert user engagement into an engine for revenue growth, creating interaction touchpoints with game elements that help them understand the product’s value and use it to its fullest potential. For example, gamification elements like streaks, leaderboards, and badges help Duolingo convert its free users to premium customers who see the value of an ad-free experience and are willing to pay for it.
3\. Educating users: The Future of SaaS Gamification
Imagine all users (with or without deep financial expertise or literacy) understanding where new-age financial products and services fit in their lives! Enter gamification in fintech! Fantasy sports gamifying principles can help new users understand your product value, engage with it to its core, and understand specific aspects of product or service better that matter to them. Gamification can help new users make sense of stock markets by breaking down complex financial concepts into simple challenges that educate users and give them confidence to use these products. This indirectly improves your usage and engagement metrics, which reflect on conversion and revenue.
4\. User Loyalty
Fantasy app retention strategies after regulation must include measures to build healthy habits among users to revisit their apps regularly. Game mechanics such as loyalty points, loyalty programs, daily challenges, and non-monetary rewards like virtual coins and badges invite users to your platform frequently, offer them meaningful incentives for their engagement, and reinforce the strong connection they have with your brand. Gamification focuses on users’ motivation to boost loyalty inherently, ensuring users willingly spend more time on your app. For instance, a loyalty program may offer users to purchase in-game currency as per their choice and make their engagement with meaningful rewards.
5\. Diverse Monetization Strategies: Alternative Business Models for Fantasy Sports
Gamification offers diversified revenue sources for gaming businesses by combining games with major marketing initiatives, social games, and other esports to attract investor approval and user engagement in the aftermath of the ban on real money gaming. From ads, subscription plans, to promo codes to redeem during purchases, businesses can explore monetization through gamification to win regulatory approval. For example, the Wheel of Fortune game offers users two daily attempts to win a promo code. Promo codes may be used for purchases, in-app game boosters, and attract user participation with incentives that matter to them.
Gamification in SaaS: The Future of Online Gaming in India
After the blanket ban on real money gaming by the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill 2025, gaming businesses need to pivot to esports, casual, or skill-based games, which do not essentially incentivise users with money. Gamifying enterprise solutions is a pivot that enables them to leverage their gaming tech expertise to create more value for SaaS businesses. Let us look at a few examples across industries:
1\. Health and Fitness Gamification
According to a report by Grand View Research, the global healthcare gamification market was estimated at USD 4.65 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 15.95 billion by 2030. With chronic disease management cases at an upsurge, enhanced focus on pre-emptive care, fast-paced lifestyles of patients and caregivers, adherence is the biggest challenge for healthcare providers. In this context, gamification helps patients take individual charge of their health, take steps towards desired health outcomes, win rewards for adhering to preventive measures prescribed by healthcare professionals, and engage in more meaningful and effective pathways to recovery. Gamification converts traditionally boring (but essential) healthcare challenges into fun and interactive journey milestones that inspire patients to adhere, motivate them to stay healthy, and maintain consistency in their journeys.
2\. Banking and Fintech
It is widely known that gamification in banking and fintech can increase customer engagement by 48%. As such, enterprise gamification strategies for banking can help financial services earn a place in users’ habits through elements like leaderboards and streaks for financial literacy, and reward regular user streaks with progress levels that give customers access to higher interest tiers in investment. As such, fantasy gaming businesses can offer their prior and proven user engagement expertise via gamification to one of the most in-demand services in society. With the young generation forming the highest customer base for banks, there are endless opportunities for partnerships for gamifying banking experiences, making data-driven decisions for user engagement, and gaining a competitive edge in the market.
3\. Employee Onboarding across Industries
The impact of gaming regulations in India can be seen in the overnight non-existence of real money gaming apps. However, this is not the end of the story for them as their user engagement, retention, and proven user stickiness strategies are worth transferring to all other enterprises struggling with poor onboarding, misalignment, and compromises in productivity. The core expertise of fantasy gaming platforms (daily challenges, leaderboards, streaks) at scale can be repurposed for enterprise SaaS products, solve the pain point of complex onboarding that reflects on compromised productivity and time waste, and create value for enterprises through tailored subscription models for their employees. This proves to be one of the most promising post-ban revenue opportunities for fantasy apps.
4\. Esports Community Engagement SaaS Models for Fantasy Sports Owners
With Esports set to grow exponentially in the era post the ban on real money games, fantasy sports businesses can offer comprehensive gaming ecosystems to users by including more Esports and going beyond just real money games. Engagement strategies for fantasy sports, including consistent user engagement at scale, consistent user participation in contests, and user loyalty towards a platform with streaks, points, leaderboards, and social community features, can help gaming businesses create more value for game enthusiasts without monetary stakes.
Conclusion: Online Gaming and SaaS In The Post RMG Ban 2025
The effects of the Online Gaming Bill 2025 offer a mixed outlook. On the one hand, fantasy gaming businesses have had to stop offering real money games, one of their primary revenue sources. On the other hand, they are left with the expertise of creating user stickiness, consistent engagement, elimination of churn, and positive user retention for millions of users over years of loyalty. This can be carried forward to SaaS models across industries to improve user engagement and retention, diversify revenue sources, and expand their platforms with services aligning with established regulations.
FAQs
What are fantasy sports gamifying principles?
Core fantasy sports gamification principles to appeal to users intrinsic motivations include:
Competition with fellow players and tracking tangible progress on leaderboards.
Real-time scoring systems that track every point users earn and create a measurable sense of progress.
Daily streaks and rewards for consistently participating in them to encourage retention.
Social community features to instil a sense of competition with fellow players.
What’s next for fantasy sports after the ban in India?
After the ban on real money gaming, fantasy sports businesses can still offer contests without monetary stakes, explore alternate monetization strategies through subscriptions and tailored ads. Additionally, fantasy sports businesses can offer a comprehensive gaming ecosystem combining Esports, casual, and skill-based games. Gamifying enterprise solutions is another pivot to explore to diversify revenue opportunities in 2025.
What is SaaS transformation for fantasy startups?
Beyond real money gaming, SaaS transformation helps fantasy startups leverage their prior expertise in engagement, community building, retention, and top-notch performance at scale via value-based subscriptions for industries like banking, finance, healthcare, and esports.
How fantasy sports apps survive the gaming bill?
Fantasy sports apps need to explore monetization strategies beyond real money gaming to survive the gaming bill. Esports, casual games, and skill-based games emerge as top options with a lucrative potential in India and abroad. Additionally, gamifying enterprise solutions also presents a lucrative opportunity to diversify revenue sources for fantasy gaming applications.
