Who we are, how we are being constituted, who will decide what, how a district affiliates, what an athlete is owed, and what happens when we get it wrong. This is a founding document, not a record of activity — nothing on this page claims to have happened yet.
The Karnataka Esports Federation is incorporated as a company licensed under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013. This is the legal form Indian law reserves for organisations formed to promote sport, education, science, art or social welfare, and it carries obligations that an ordinary company does not.
A Section 8 company must apply all of its income and property solely to promoting its declared objects. It is prohibited from paying any dividend to its members. It cannot alter its memorandum or articles without the approval of the Central Government. And on winding up, its remaining assets cannot be distributed to members — they must transfer to another organisation with similar objects.
This form was chosen deliberately. It means nobody makes money from KEF's existence. The federation's assets belong to the sport, and if the federation ever ceases to serve Karnataka's esports community, its assets follow the community rather than the founders.
A Karnataka where a talented player in any of the 31 districts has a real, visible, navigable route from their first taluk qualifier to an international stage — and where the sector around that player generates careers, not just spectacle.
To govern electronic sports in Karnataka with a published rulebook, an open registry, certified officials, protected athletes, transparent selection and honest data — and to spend the federation's resources disproportionately where the ecosystem is thinnest.
Six layers, each with a defined mandate and a defined limit. This is the structure being written into the constitution — none of these bodies is constituted yet, and the point of publishing it now is that it can still be argued with.
The sovereign body of the federation. Comprises all affiliated District Esports Associations in good standing, each holding one vote regardless of size.
Fiduciary and strategic authority. Includes independent directors, an athlete representative and a mandated minimum women's representation.
The full-time operating team. Runs the calendar, registry, certification, finance and communications. Reports to the Board; has no rule-making power of its own.
Specialist bodies that own the technical detail. Committee membership is published and includes practitioners from outside the federation.
Six regional councils that coordinate calendars, share infrastructure and run zone play-offs. Each council chair sits on the Development Committee.
The unit that actually touches players. Each of the 31 districts holds one charter, renewable annually against published compliance criteria.
Three functions are deliberately kept apart. The Competitions department runs events. The Integrity & Disciplinary Panel judges conduct within them and does not report to Competitions. The Appeals Bench — chaired by a legal professional with no other role in the federation — hears challenges to the Panel. A KEF employee cannot sit on the Panel that reviews their own department's event.
The Athletes' Commission is elected by registered athletes, not appointed by the Board, and its chair holds a voting seat on the Board. Any rule change affecting competition conditions must be circulated to the Commission before adoption.
The roles below are the constitutional offices being created. None is currently filled. Names and declared interests will be published on appointment — the structure is fixed by the constitution regardless of who eventually holds it.
Chairs the Board and the General Body. Represents the federation externally. No executive spending authority.
Chief executive of the secretariat. Accountable to the Board for operations, compliance and the calendar.
Custodian of financial controls. Presents audited accounts to the General Body and signs the annual return.
One reserved for a woman office-bearer. Deputise for the President and chair assigned committees.
Voting Board member. Carries competitor concerns directly into governance without a filter.
Drawn from law, finance, sports administration, child protection and technology. No commercial esports interest.
Direct reporting line to the Board, bypassing the Secretary General. Owns the confidential grievance channel.
Owns the ruleset, referee standard, hardware specification and the Gaming Centre Accreditation Standard.
Three routes in, each with published eligibility and a published compliance obligation. No route requires a personal introduction. Applications are open now; charters will be granted once the General Body is constituted.
Any registered body in the district may apply. Where multiple bodies apply, KEF publishes all applications and runs a structured comparative assessment rather than deciding privately.
Registration certificate, governing document, office-bearer list, safeguarding officer nomination, constituent club list and a two-season activity plan.
A zone council representative verifies claimed infrastructure, constituent clubs and the ability to run a compliant district championship.
A probationary charter with observer status. The association may run sanctioned events but does not yet vote in the General Body.
Assessed on events delivered, athletes registered, safeguarding incidents handled, and accounts filed. Findings are published.
Full affiliation with one vote in the General Body, annually renewable against the same published criteria. Charters can be suspended; the grounds and process are in the constitution.
Rights are only meaningful if there is a named person to enforce them and a route that doesn't depend on goodwill. Both are specified below.
Esports has a credibility problem it did not invent and cannot ignore. This is how KEF handles it.
Mandated anti-cheat on PC titles, device and account verification at ranked tiers, statistical anomaly review on match data, and a confidential reporting line for participants.
The Integrity & Disciplinary Panel operates independently of the Competitions department. Charges, evidence standards and sanction ranges are published in advance.
A published tariff — warning, match forfeit, event ban, seasonal suspension, deregistration. Match-fixing and betting on own competition carry a presumption of lifetime deregistration.
An independent Appeals Bench with a legal chair. Written reasons are issued for every decision at both levels, and anonymised rulings are published quarterly.
KEF draws a hard boundary between esports and online money gaming. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 makes that distinction statutory at national level; the federation makes it operational.
Competitive gaming skews heavily toward school and college age everywhere it is played, and Karnataka will be no different. A federation with that demographic profile that treats child protection as paperwork is not a federation — it is a liability.
A federation's legitimacy is the sum of what it is willing to have checked. This is the publication schedule being written into the constitution. The district baseline is the only item already live; every other row begins with the first season.
| Publication | Contents | Frequency | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audited Financial Statements | Income, expenditure, grants, prize escrow, related-party disclosures | Annual | PDF + summary page |
| Annual Report | Events delivered, athletes registered, district compliance, programme outcomes | Annual | PDF + web |
| District Baseline — live now | All 31 districts: population, estimated players, title mix, full methodology | Annual | Open data (JS/CSV/JSON) |
| Operations Report | Calendar delivery, registry growth, certification throughput, grievances handled | Quarterly | Web |
| Disciplinary Rulings | Anonymised decisions, charges, findings and sanctions with written reasons | Quarterly | Web |
| Selection Criteria | Squad selection metrics and weightings, published before qualification opens | Per event | Web |
| Selection Sheets | Scores against published criteria for every selected and non-selected athlete | Per squad | Web |
| Register of Interests | Directors', committee members' and senior staff declared interests | Annual + on change | Web |
| Accredited Venue Directory | Every accredited gaming centre, its tier and its accreditation status | Live from season 1 | Web |
| Sanctioned Event Calendar | Every taluk, district, zone and state fixture with venue and ruleset | Live | Web + calendar feed |
The governing documents the federation is being built on. Each will carry a named owner, a version and a review date on adoption. Current status is shown on each — most are drafts circulating for comment, and comment is genuinely wanted.
The constitutional document: objects, membership, general body, board composition, elections, amendment and winding-up provisions.
Owner: Board · Review: annual
Eligibility, registration, transfer windows, format standards, hardware specification, match protocol, technical pauses and remakes.
Owner: Technical Director · Review: per season
Prohibited conduct, evidence standards, charge process, sanction tariff, appeal route and publication policy.
Owner: Integrity Panel · Review: annual
Child protection standards, screening, training, communication rules, incident escalation and the confidential reporting channel.
Owner: Chief Safeguarding Officer · Review: annual
How state squads are chosen, criteria publication timing, appeal rights of non-selected athletes, and the reserve process.
Owner: Technical Director · Review: per cycle
Network, hardware, ergonomics, supervision, hygiene and incident-logging requirements for accredited gaming centres.
Owner: Technical Director · Review: annual
What athlete data is collected, why, how long it is kept, who can see it, and how an athlete exercises access, correction and erasure.
Owner: Secretary General · Review: annual
How complaints are raised, who receives them, protection from retaliation, and the escalation route past the executive to the Board.
Owner: Board · Review: annual
Delegation of authority, procurement thresholds, prize escrow protocol, related-party rules and the audit mandate.
Owner: Treasurer · Review: annual
In order, each with the test that has to be met before it counts as done. Deliberately without dates attached, because a date we invent is just another number nobody can check.
An open district estimate with the full method, and a constitution circulated for comment before adoption rather than after.
Test: both public, and open to challenge in writing.
District organisations, college clubs, cafe networks and tournament organisers who already run events in Karnataka. The federation should charter them, not compete with them.
Test: expressions of interest from a majority of districts.
General Body, Board with independent directors, Athletes' Commission, Technical Committee and an independent safeguarding function.
Test: named office-bearers with a published register of interests.
Competition regulations, integrity code, safeguarding policy and selection policy formally adopted after the comment period closes.
Test: signed, versioned documents published in full.
Free registration with verified identity and guardian consent for minors. This is where the estimates on this site start being replaced by counted numbers.
Test: a published registration count with an audit date.
Taluk opens through to a state championship, in as many districts as are genuinely ready — plus a published account of the districts that were not, and why.
Test: results, finances and failures all published.
Direct programme spend into the Emerging-band districts irrespective of how many athletes they currently produce, because infrastructure has to precede athletes rather than follow them.
Test: the penetration and participation gap narrows, measurably.
A flagship festival, an international pathway and a development academy are all worth building — after there is a functioning season underneath them.
Test: the season has run twice.
No. KEF is an independent not-for-profit company licensed under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013. We intend to work with public authorities and to align with state and national policy, but we are not a government department, we hold no statutory authority, and we currently hold no formal recognition from any national or international body. If that changes, this page will name the body, the recognition and the date.
No, and we treat the distinction as fundamental. Esports is skill-based competitive play under a published ruleset. Online money gaming is a separate, separately regulated activity. No real-money gaming or betting operator may sponsor a KEF event, and registered athletes and officials are prohibited from betting on any esports match in a competition they are eligible for.
The commitment being written into the constitution is that taluk opens are free to enter and athlete registration is free, permanently. Where a district or state event carries an entry fee, that fee will be published in advance with a breakdown of what it covers, and waivers will be available through the district association for athletes who need them. Nothing is open for registration yet.
No district has a chartered association yet — that is the current state of things, not an oversight in your district. Write to districts@kef.org.in and you go on the record for that district. When charters are granted, every application received will be published rather than decided quietly, and where several bodies apply for one district the comparison will be structured and public.
Publisher circuits are excellent at the top and absent at the bottom. They run finals, not pathways. A player in a taluk with an entry-level phone has no route into a publisher's national series unless somebody builds the rungs beneath it — free qualifiers, low-spec ladders, verified registration, referees, safeguarding, travel support. That's the layer a state federation exists to build, and it complements publisher competition rather than replacing it.
Structurally: one district, one vote in the General Body regardless of size, so Bengaluru cannot outvote the state. Term caps on elected office. A minimum of 25% independent directors. A public register of interests with mandatory recusal. An Athletes' Commission elected by athletes with a voting Board seat. And an appeals bench with a legal chair who holds no other role. None of these are guarantees, but each removes a specific failure mode we have watched play out elsewhere.
There are only two kinds of number on this site. The first is published facts from named sources — the national gamer base, Karnataka telecom subscriber data, state policy commitments — each one attributed. The second is a single clearly-labelled estimate of how many people play games in each district, with the full derivation published so it can be challenged. There are deliberately no federation performance figures anywhere: no registered-athlete counts, no match totals, no event counts, no prize money, no participation percentages. Those require a registry that does not exist yet, and inventing them would destroy the only thing a governing body actually has.
The grievance and whistleblower policy being drafted allows any athlete, official, parent or staff member to escalate past the executive directly to the Board, with protection from retaliation. Disciplinary and appeal decisions will be published with written reasons, and audited accounts will be public from the first financial year. Because the federation is a Section 8 company, its assets cannot be distributed to members — if it fails, what it holds transfers to another body serving the same purpose.
Thirty-one charters, six zones, one registry — none of it built yet. If there's an organisation in your district already doing this work, we'd rather charter you than compete with you, and this is the stage where saying so still shapes the outcome.