MPL的现金游戏豪赌：23亿美元独角兽，28%商品及服务税，2025年禁令，然后是盈利的转身

做的是什么生意

MPL runs a mobile gaming platform where users pay entry fees to enter tournaments across 60+ games — esports, casual and fantasy sports — with winners paid from pooled entry money; it also publishes third-party games.

启动资金：$90M Series C (Sep 2020), $95M Series D at $945M (Feb 2021), then $150M at $2.3B in Sep 2021; more than $225M raised by early 2021.

起因

Sai Srinivas and Shubh Malhotra founded MPL in Bengaluru in 2018, betting that mobile esports would become India's next mass entertainment and that users would pay small entry fees to compete for prize pools. Growth was explosive: the company claimed the fastest app to 1M daily active users in India, signed Virat Kohli early, and passed 60M users and 2B+ cash transactions by September 2020.

经过

The funding followed the growth: $90M Series C led by SIG, RTP Global and MDI Ventures (Sep 2020); $95M Series D at a $945M valuation (Feb 2021); and $150M at $2.3B, making it India's second gaming unicorn (Sep 2021). In 2022 it bought Germany's card-and-board-game studio GameDuell and incubated Mayhem Studios. Then the regulatory floor moved: from October 2023 India taxed online real-money gaming at 28% of gross value, and MPL laid off 350 employees in August 2023, shut its web3 fantasy platform Striker in December 2023, and consolidated its GGX investment.

结果

After India's 2025 Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill and a blanket ban on real-money games, MPL suspended money contests in India and reportedly began cutting 60–80% of its India team. Yet the group (renamed M-League) posted its first profitable year in FY25: net profit of $4.2M on operating revenue of $166.7M, up 30%, with Europe — GameDuell — growing 66.9% to $60M while India revenue grew just 14%. The Hurun 2025 report removed MPL from India's unicorn list.

可借鉴之处

当商业模式依赖监管机构所谓的“技巧”时，真正的赌注是政策：9000万用户和23亿美元估值无法承受28%的税和禁令；复苏来自监管无法触及的地方。