Xinhua News Agency, Fuzhou, February 8th (reporters Liu Yi and Zhang Yizhi) adjusted in depth and looked around. In the past year, sports investment and financing has more or less felt the chill in other fields except for e-sports projects. Many investors said in an interview with reporters recently that looking forward to 2019, under the circumstance that the industrial development trend is not optimistic, scientific and technological innovation may be a sharp weapon to break through the encirclement, or it will become a new dynamic energy to stimulate the growth of sports investment and financing.
Sports Investment and Financing entered the “low active period”
looking back on the situation of sports investment and financing in the past three years, it can be seen that no matter the number of projects or the amount of investment and financing, it reached its peak in 2016 and fell back in 2017, in 2018, if government investment and e-sports investment are put aside, social investment will continue to decline.
Dune Capital has rich investment practices in the fields of ice and snow sports, sporting goods and equipment, and its co-founder Chen Yongjin analyzed that sports investment and financing in 2018 mainly focused on venues and event operations, communication Community, mass fitness and other fields, but compared with the previous two years, the investment field has shown a trend of decentralization, indicating that many investment behaviors have the nature of trial, and the industry has not formed a unified understanding of investment outlets.
The data collected by multiple investment institutions show that the number of newly established projects and the number of projects obtaining financing in 2018 both decreased significantly compared with that in 2017. Most projects are in the initial angel round or round A stage, many acquisitions are strategic integration and do not produce good returns. A small number of sound head projects, such as sports brands or e-sports with certain market influence, have concentrated a large amount of funds, and the overall investment ability and willingness of investors have decreased a lot.
“Some projects with high attention in the industry and many financing have not been further financed in 2018. From the perspective of financing frequency, compared with artificial intelligence, chips and other consumption fields, the sports industry has suffered a cold reception, and few high-growth projects have achieved two financing within one year.” Chen Yongjin said, “many relatively active investment institutions have reduced the number of shots to sports projects and entered the stage of observation and adjustment.”
Chen Yongjin believes that both investors and entrepreneurs pay more attention to how to make the project generate cash flow quickly, as well as the future profit model and the construction of the capability of maintaining good profits, some projects that have been driven by financing have encountered problems before.
“2 Bor2C”, this is a problem
binfu Capital, who has invested in projects such as “every step” and “Love exercise”, has always been optimistic about the national fitness market. Liu ran, its partner, believes that competition and performance industry is more suitable for equity investment, while projects serving sports consumers can dig out a wide range of users and are more suitable for venture capital.
Is it for partners, customers, sponsors (namely “2B”), or consumers (namely “2C”)? Many investors adhere to the logic when choosing sports venture capital projects: create high-quality experiences and products for C- end, cultivate consumption habits and tap consumption potential, but at present, B- end pays for the time being, to ensure revenue growth.
Liu ran analyzed that it is difficult for a simple 2B or 2C project to have good performance in the sports field, which puts forward higher requirements for the compound ability of the project team, we should not only have strong ability to maintain public relations and customer relations, but also have strong ability to develop and promote products.
Ye Dan, the head of Asian capital Sports investment with investment layout in health care, basketball running and other fields, said that the new services supported by the agency’s investment technology are mainly aimed at the 2B field, such as intelligent scenarios, venue Solutions, etc., use big data technology operations to tap fan value and do accurate marketing. 2C marketing methods have been very delicate, 2B business revenue is relatively stable, accounting for more and more in the overall income structure of the company, and the internal technology research and development and service upgrading of the enterprise are mostly carried out around B- end customers.
Yifan Capital Group, which once invested in “lazy bear sports”, also has a layout in the fields of sports rehabilitation and combination of sports and medicine. Zhang Huan, its vice president, said, “the service target of sports rehabilitation program is not only sports enthusiasts themselves, but also providing services to relevant institutions and companies, for example, it can provide health management testing solutions for youth sports training institutions, and guide existing customers to fitness training institutions to achieve two-way cooperation.”
Science and technology innovation or driving investment New Dynamic Energy
according to Chen Yongjin’s judgment, the future of sports science and technology innovation is a hot investment in the world, such as multi-dimensional data collection and feedback to users, chip technology, etc. At present, existing projects are using sensors, motion capture and other technologies to apply to training, venue construction and operation and other fields. In the field of sports equipment such as treadmills, golf clubs and sports helmets, more and more new materials are applied and the technological content is getting higher and higher.
Young groups with strong consumption ability and willingness are willing to accept products with a sense of technology and fashion, have consumption demand for sports data, and are willing to share data on social platforms. Cool gym decoration and trendy bicycles have appeared in many entrepreneurial projects. Equipment iteration makes this market have investment potential. With the development of science and technology, new consumption hotspots will emerge continuously.
Liu ran believes that although some insiders are not optimistic about sports investment in 2019, the investment in leading projects and head resources will show a further trend of concentration, and the industry hopes to find a good foundation, strong partners cooperate and develop. Football, basketball and other fields with wide audience have appeared some potential projects. In minority sports such as rock climbing and rugby, venture capital projects still have a lot of competition space.
“The application of new technologies will bring new business opportunities. The industrial integration of ‘Internet + Sports’ has entered the second half. The APP platform that relies on information matching to extract commissions has already encountered the ceiling, the dilemma of projects relying on traffic monetization is that the traffic cost is getting higher and higher, and the team directly providing sports and fitness services is still online, and this part of the return is difficult to pry.” Liu Ran said.
Investors believe that new opportunities are not only on the demand side of fitness groups, but also on the supply side of national fitness-related industries. For example, in marathon competition, face recognition technology can help improve recording efficiency; New medical equipment and means intervention can detect physical signs in real time to avoid accidents such as sudden death; data mining technology can wake up the sleeping data value and make use of it twice or three times to provide runners with rich and diversified experiences, improve the communication efficiency of events, and give back to sponsors more accurately.
Ding duo, investment director of Beijing Yuanxun Investment Fund Management Center, believes that the transformation of science and technology to the sports industry has come to a new upgrade gate, such as 5G technology in the future to realize commercial use, transmission bandwidth, the computing power is greatly improved. 4K, VR, and AR technologies will find more application scenarios, which will bring revolutionary changes to the live broadcast and venue operation of the event and greatly improve the experience of watching the event. These upstream technologies will soon take root in the sports industry and bear fruit.