In 2016 Q3, the overall active user base of China’s mobile sport information platforms slid down to a small extent, mainly because Q3 coincided with the break of football, basketball and other significant games that attract great attention from users, and the European five leagues didn’t start the new season until mid-August. By type, vertical sport information platforms still took the lead in terms of active user base, user viscosity and other indicators, and integrated platforms maintained relatively stable development.   

Analysys data show that in 2016 Q3, Dongqiudi.com, Hupu.com and Sina Sports ranked the top three with a share of 20.2%, 19.1% and 16.5% in terms of active user base respectively. Dongqiudi.com, born for football, ranked the first in terms of active user base in the area of sport information. Now, after receiving the financing of nearly RMB400 million in round C, it will have more financial strengths to bolster downstream resources relating to football and thus further expand its profit modes. At present, the website mainly depends on advertisement and football e-commerce platforms. In future, it will possibly attack different segments of the football industry, including game operation. In Q3, Hupu.com overtook Sina Sports to rank the second in terms of active user base. Hupu.com is also a vertical sport information platform focusing on football, basketball and other several sports. Such platforms are easier to attract users who are highly loyal to certain area. For example, users who are fond of football and basketball news constitute a very high proportion in the entire sport information industry. Therefore, leading companies in the two areas will take a dominant position in the segment. Sina Sports defended its advantaged position as an integrated sport information platform, and the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games in August obviously propelled the user base expansion and user loyalty of the platform. 

 Analysys has observed that in 2016 Q3, vertical sport information platforms were still superior in terms of user viscosity. For example, the per capita daily operation time length of Hupu.com was close to one hour and the per capita daily opening account also exceeded seven, while these figures of Dongqiudi.com were 50 minutes and five respectively. These data would be much higher in the first half of the year with a large number of games. Sina Sports, as an integrated sport information platform, is much lower than the aforesaid two platforms in user viscosity, indicating vertical sport information platforms are more attractive to users and users are willing to spend more time on these applications. Dongqiudi.com and Hupu.com both pay great attention to developing the user community culture in product design. Extensive community and circle cultures provide rich information and social space for users and also enrich user-generated contents of the applications, thereby forging a benign content production mode. These contents featuring topics for discussion and depth represent the core competitive strength of sport information platforms and the key factor that attract new users and increase the retention rate of users. Judging from the quarter-on-quarter growth rates of major daily average indicators in 2016 Q3, Dongqiudi.com saw a robust growth of more than 30% in daily average active user base and daily average operation time length, and the continuous growth of the daily average active user base shows the growing attractiveness of the platform. In contrast, three major daily average indicators of Hupu.com all declined, mainly because the NBA season finished and the points of attention of basketball fans slid down. 

In the opinion of Analysys, as the user bases of vertical sport information platforms continuously expand, these platforms will have more options to shape new business models, while satisfying the user demand for sport information. First, users of these platforms usually share the same and concentrated hobbies, so the platforms can cooperate with e-commerce sites to convert these user resources into cash values in relation to professional sport equipment. Second, platforms can aggregate and analyze big data relating to sport information users to realize precise marketing and advertising and also instruct the future business development and satisfy user demands. Third, sport information platforms can serve as the tie between sport teams and fans, and drive offline commercial games of teams and other activities. Fourth, sport information platforms collect mass data about sport events and can perform technical analysis of these data to help coaches and players in tactical analysis and scientific training. Fifth, sport users usually have strong entertainment demand, while sport games can both satisfy user demands and also represent a very good way to convert user resources into cash values. Therefore, sport information platforms can develop or introduce some boutique games to improve their profitability. 

 

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