Krafton India’s Karan Pathak on BGMI Esports Growth, Venue Challenges, and Franchising Talks

At BGIS 2025 in Kolkata, we sat down with Karan Mahesh Pathak, Associate Director of Esports at KRAFTON, to discuss the future of BGMI Esports, prize pool strategy, and why franchising might not be on the cards just yet. Here’s the full excerpts.

Esports.net Interview with Karan Pathak

The first time we interacted was during BGIS 2023 in Mumbai. Back then, you told me that the goal of the Krafton India esports ecosystem was to be open to all. Now, two years later, do you feel that the goal has been accomplished?

Image Credits: Bryan Francis

Karan: For sure, it’s actually reached out to a lot more people due to programs like the campus tour and especially BGIS. Year on year, BGIS is getting new talent and becoming a platform for new players to be scouted. A lot of third-party tournaments, the small ones that have a prize pool of just 25K INR, have been quite impactful in reaching out to tier 2 and 3 cities within India.

In our campaign with the BGMI Campus Tour in the year 2024-25, we have to reach a lot more cities in the country. This is following the success of the year 2023-24, where we hosted 3 tournaments around the country: BGIS, BMPS and the India Korea invitational.

Since 2023 we have seen a similar format to the BGMI Esports calendar with BGIS and BMPS. Why hasn’t there been a form of revamp to the structure and the number of tournaments that Krafton India host’s in a year?

Karan: Being honest, we try to plan more events, but sadly, we don’t get venues in advance. Sadly, this one situation puts us off each time. We were supposed to do an Esports event in 2024. The team was on standby, but once it didn’t get approved, we shifted our focus to the 2025 season. Venues, in my opinion, play a crucial role in helping us build our upcoming roadmap. I think that after BMPS 2024, which was held in Ahmedabad, the expectations from fans about what a BGMI tournament venue must be have increased. During that event, we had around a footfall of 24,000 fans. Sadly, not all cities in India have venues with a capacity of over 20,000 people.

While we can host tournaments online, the audience isn’t that keen on online tournaments. A significant part of them want us to host events offline, but I can promise you that you will see something new for sure in 2025.

BGIS 2025 had a total prize pool of over $370,000, making it one of the highest for a mobile Esports tournament. As BGMI is a game only focusing on India, could this lead to a bubble that could affect the health of esport in the long run?

Image Credits: Bryan Francis

Karan: It would be wrong to say that it was a straightforward increase to an amount anyone would feel would be a good thing. A significant reason for this is that players will start taking these events for granted. People will think that Krafton India will be bloating the entire ecosystem with just an official. This year, we tried some things to increase the prize pool to give players more of an incentive. So, no one expected the BGIS crate that we introduced in the game to do as well as it did.

Many of us expected a maximum of a bump of just around $11,725. Instead, we saw an increase of $140,704 due to all the support that the BGMI player base gave us. This support is something new for us, and maybe in the future we will use it for other tournaments as well. I request the fans and the community to give us time to make sure that we invest in the ecosystem in a manner that is fruitful to all of us.

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 Credits: Bryan Francis

Karan: Honestly this is a two part question. The primary reason for people leaving the ecosystem is due to the failure of management, in my opinion. Many people didn’t have the right amount of consultation. They joined the ecosystem as they see esports booming without understanding the fundamentals of the industry.

Most esports franchising leagues in other games are global while BGMI Esports is only focusing on India. So yes we are still trying to structure the roadmap and the tournaments to make it the most efficient but right now the franchising model isn’t something that we are looking at.

Globally, when a game announces its Esports roadmap, all the tournaments for the entire year get announced at once. Why has Krafton India made a choice to announce the esports roadmap in two parts?

Image Credits: @ Bryan Francis

Karan: The first and primary reason is to try to secure a venue. According to what I know, all major venues in a city like Mumbai have already been sold out for the year 2025 and the first half of 2026. That is just a sample of how tough it is to book venues around India. Let’s say I want to introduce a new format for BGMI Esports. It is not just the format that I have to keep in mind. I have to keep in mind the money invested, the various stakeholders, and investors for these events. I will need to make sure that everyone is internally aligned before the event is announced. For that alignment to happen, it takes slightly longer than expected.

The goal is always to provide a great experience to anyone and everyone who attends or watches it live at home. To make this possible, it does take much longer, but this two-tournament format is only because I have two venues confirmed. I will say this: while we have two venues for this year, there is a plan for something that will be announced later this year because right now, all the stakeholders are aligned internally.