MPL Lays Off 300 Employees in India After Online Gaming Ban
Mobile Premier League (MPL) has announced plans to lay off approximately 60% of its workforce in the country, a move that will affect around 300 employees. The decision comes in the wake of the Indian government's implementation of the Online Gaming Bill 2025, which effectively bans real-money games. The law has forced MPL to shutter its paid gaming operations in India, its primary market, leading to a significant restructuring effort.
LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE:The layoffs will primarily impact teams in legal, finance, marketing, operations, and engineering, as MPL shifts focus away from India.
With a heavy heart, we have decided that we will be downsizing our India Team significantly. India accounted for 50% of M-League’s revenues and this change would mean that we would no longer be making any revenue from India in the near future.
Srinivas emphasized that the company had explored alternatives but found no viable path forward under the new regulations, which classify real-money gaming as gambling and prohibit it nationwide.
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Broader Industry Concerns
The MPL layoffs signal a massive upheaval in India's online gaming industry, and signs of things to come, with predictions of up to 400 companies going out of business and over 200,000 jobs at risk.
While gaming companies are reassessing their strategies by focusing on free-to-play games or planning to expand into international markets like the US and Brazil, they are fast realizing that the monetization model for free-to-play games is less lucrative than real-money gaming.
With their primary source of revenue threatened, other major players, such as Dream11 and My11Circle, are also expected to face revenue declines and potential restructuring. Industry analysts project that the ban may result in a Rs 20,000 crore annual loss in tax revenues, Rs 25,000 crore in FDI write-offs, and a push toward illegal offshore platforms that evade taxes entirely.
Non-cricket sports leagues, like the Indian Super League and Pro Kabaddi League, could suffer from reduced sponsorships, potentially leading to closures of state-level events. The ban's impact also extends to cricket, with Dream11 terminating its $41 million sponsorship deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), leaving the board scrambling to find a new sponsor ahead of the Asia Cup.
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