The Indian market cannot be planned month by month — it is planned by tournaments. A team that enters in the off-season and draws conclusions from the result usually leaves with the wrong ones.
The calendar matters more than the geo
Major cricket tournaments produce demand peaks several times above the background level. In those weeks acquisition gets cheaper and conversion rises: the person is already looking for somewhere to bet. Between tournaments the auction does not get any cheaper while conversion falls — and the same creative produces completely different economics.
Practical takeaway: a test period in India makes sense either entirely inside a tournament or entirely outside it. A test split in half shows the average temperature.
How cricket differs from football
Match length
A match runs for hours, not an hour and a half. That changes behavior: more live bets, longer sessions, higher engagement in the app.
Depth of audience knowledge
This player knows line-ups and statistics better than the average football bettor. He scrolls past shallow creatives with generic phrases.
Local languages
English does not cover everything. Hindi and regional languages get a noticeably better response wherever the team is ready to run them.
Economics
India is a volume market, not an average-deposit market. Payout rates per deposit here are lower than in most geos, the qualification threshold usually is too, and volume makes up for it. For us that is 2,150 FTD a month with spare capacity for another 1,200 — the largest headroom among our active markets.
The payment step is worth keeping in mind separately: as in Brazil, local methods decide it. The absence of a familiar deposit method zeroes out any conversion from the click.
What to ask the team before the launch
- Which tournament the start is planned around and what happens in the off-season.
- Whether creatives are run in local languages or only in English.
- What share of the volume comes from apps — in this market they are more stable than ad accounts.
Available volumes for India and other markets — in the section “Geos and models”, verticals with numbers — on the page “Verticals”.
