Will BGMI Get a Franchise League? Krafton India CEO Sean Sohn Responds

Esports Industry

June 1, 2025

Bryan Francis

Battleground Mobile India Series 2025 (BGIS 2025) was the first official Battlegrounds Mobile India tournament hosted in 2025. The grand finals was a 3 day event hosted in Kolkata in India. During the BGIS 2025, I got the chance to talk to CEO at Krafton India, Sean (Hyunil) Sohn. In this interview, we covered various topics from the future of BGMI Esports to the growth of Krafton India and what fans can expect in the future.

Krafton India CEO Interview Excerpts

We have recently seen reports that multiple mobile esports titles are introducing franchising leagues in Southeast Asia. It has been around 2 years since BGIS 2023. This year itself, we have seen a lot of organizations leave the BGMI ecosystem as a whole due to the tournaments being open for all. Is it possible for us to see a franchising league of BGMI Esports soon?

Image Credit: Krafton India

Sean: That’s quite an interesting topic to discuss. Currently, there are quite a few esports franchising leagues around the world. The thing is, when you do create a franchising league naturally, you have to narrow down the teams to around fifteen to twenty. This makes it tricky as these teams will be a part of the ecosystem, while players and teams outside the ecosystem won’t be able to enter it. The other reason is that while I don’t doubt the popularity of BGMI in India, alternative games (Battle royale, Hero Shooter) can be pretty volatile.

There are very few cases like League of Legends and Counter-Strike, where we have seen them have leagues for a long time. In a majority of situations, we have noticed that franchising leagues are fully sustainable in the long term. That’s why the idea of having a BGMI franchising league is quite tricky. So if we do plan one in the future, we will have to design it very carefully. For me to have a franchising esports league, you need to have the right timing, the proper structure, and the right kind of partners.

While Kraton has mentioned Krafton India in multiple quarterly financial reports, there hasn’t been any exact information concerning the company’s growth. If possible, could you shed some light on the growth of Krafton India?

Sean: So, if we are taking from January to March 2025, it has been a good quarter for Krafton India. I won’t say that it was a record-breaking quarter for us. BGMI has been there for a few years now, so it has not been growing like 100% every quarter, but yes, it has been stable and has been steadily growing in the last 3 months.

I would like to say that, concerning revenue generation, India is in the top 5 countries for Krafton. Concerning DAU (Daily Active Users), one could say Krafton India comes under the top 3 in all the regional subsidiaries of Krafton.