Rooter, the sports fan engagement platform and online sports community, has transformed its business model by adding Live and user-generated sports content to the Rooter app. The launch of the Rooter app, which is a user-generated sports content ecosystem, is widely expected to create greater traction by adding more sports enthusiasts to the platform.
Since its launch in 2016, Rooter has hitherto been focusing on building a community of sports fans via live prediction games, match chat forums, quiz, trivia and news updates. With the latest move, it now seeks to provide customised sports content and comprehensive scorecards in eight vernacular languages. It not only allows them to upload video and audio content but also to go live during the matches to comment and analyse for their followers.
The central USP of the brand lies in personalising sports content and lending a voice to millions of fans across sports and gaming. Rooter engages fans with user-generated Live audio and video content over different sports and offers a personalised sports feed and scorecards in eight Indian languages. It partners a number of technology companies in India to provide sports engagement to more than 50 million users on their platforms.
With the number of mobile internet users in India rising to 350 million+ and the number of non-English speaking smartphone users amounting to about 250 million+, the social media sector in the country presents a tremendous 10x growth opportunity with the current $300mn digital advertising market set to reach an astounding $3 billion by 2023.
With the current legion of sports content users in India set to double from 330 million viewers in 2018-19 to around 600 million (65% of which are non-English speaking users) in the next couple of years, there arises a prominent void within the industry segment of a pure sports regional content platform that can provide vernacular users with a content experience that is curated specifically to suit their sports need in their preferred languages.
The online sports platform boasts of around 200,000 daily and 2.5 million monthly users who dedicate around half an hour every day engaging with a variety of content spanning multiple sporting disciplines such as cricket, football, kabaddi and gaming. Moreover, the app allows users to go live in its just-launched merged commentary option to create an all-round immersive sporting experience for every fan.
The app provides a server to server plug-and-play integration that allows their partners to customise and present real-time sports data, content to their user’s satisfaction. As the new content mix of the Rooter’s app, features about 85% of user-generated content, it will also include not just international and domestic games and tournaments, but also school and college-level games. The new business model of the company seeks to benefit from the high user monetisation witnessed in audio and video content platforms by helping the fantasy platforms acquire users and create engaging content. Rooter will also drive social commerce by addressing the untapped sporting merchandise sector in India.
Commenting on the latest product launch, Piyush, Founder and CEO, Rooter, said, “The core mission of Rooter has always been to create a tech platform that will connect fans and create a strong community. We initially provided features around Live Sports Gaming to create the community but pivoted to content once we realised the opportunity to cater to more than 300mn non-English sports fans who are looking for content in their language and are more comfortable with audio and video to express themselves. The traction after this pivot has been very encouraging and we will have 10 mn monthly active users by mid-2020. ”
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