Image source @ Visual China
Text | Shenrancaijing, author | Shuai Zou, Editor, | Tang Yahua
Camping, surfing, skiing, skateboarding, script killing... The social activities of young people are updated and iterated, and now a frisbee movement is added.
In recent months, many young people have shared their first experience of trying frisbee on social platforms, some people "discovered a new continent", some people "felt uncomfortable if they didn't fight for a day", and some people were addicted to frisbee at ten o'clock at night or went out to play for two hours. In addition to playing frisbee, enthusiasts are also keen to share frisbee wear, collect co-brand frisbee, and smoke frisbee blind boxes.
When it comes to frisbee, many people will say that they played with it as a child, or with puppies. Indeed, frisbee is not a new thing, it arose in the United States in 1948, and the round plastic frisbee prototype is just a food packaging box. Now most people are playing extreme frisbee, also known as team frisbee.
To put it simply, Frisbee can be played as a team or by two people. Speaking of difficulties, frisbee also has many fancy ways to play, such as dodging frisbee, throwing frisbee, cross-country racing and so on. Although Frisbee is popular among young people and is labeled as "tide culture", it is also a sports project, and the international authoritative organizations are WFDF and WDSF (IY-DSF), which will be held in Chengdu in the 2025 World Games, Frisbee is one of the competition sports, and there are also authoritative organizations actively promoting the 2028 Frisbee Olympic Games.
A practitioner with more than ten years of age recalled that about 20 years ago, players, or athletes, still wore simple and monotonous team uniforms to play games. Today's frisbee and the frisbee at that time, there is a clear difference in the cultural atmosphere, young people can play while showing their own outfits, many frisbee clubs will even come with photography services, many people's impression of frisbee is "playing frisbee is very film". With the blessing of "Chao Culture", this 175g plate can be printed with various patterns, and even Chanel has launched a frisbee with a huge logo printed on it for $11,000.
Frisbee is hot, however, in the eyes of practitioners, it is far from the time to talk about making money. Penetrating the lively appearance, the tide attribute is the double-edged sword of frisbee movement, the profitability of frisbee-related industries is not easy, and there are still many problems that need to be clarified in the commercialization link.
Strong social, weak confrontation, low threshold, frisbee sports are on fire among young people
Practitioners and enthusiasts alike feel that from the second half of 2021, frisbee is working hard to get out of the circle.
The fourth season of "Talk Show Convention" in October 2021 can be regarded as an opportunity to bring the frisbee movement to the public. In one episode, stand-up comedian Xiao Bei said that many young people in Shanghai recently are keen to play frisbee, and joked that their first reaction when they saw a frisbee was like a puppy: "Use your mouth to bite!" In addition to the show, the actors of Xiaoguo Culture also organized a team building at a Frisbee club in Shanghai.
Not only "Talk Show Conference", in the second season of the reality show "Glad to Know You" in December 2021, Zhou Xun, Aya and Li Xueqin experienced frisbee sports in Shanghai, and also played script killing, swing dance, etc., which were all classified by the show as the trend social mode that young people like.
In addition to variety shows, some celebrities, KOLs, etc. often publish frisbee-related content on social platforms, and even practitioners remember that the last time frisbee sports were paid attention to by many people, it was because of a photo of Ma Yun holding a frisbee.
According to data from Little Red Book, the volume of frisbee notes increased by 113% in half a year. With the entry of some clubs and communities, frisbee sports practitioners, athletes, and enthusiasts have also created a variety of content, from simple frisbee science to rule teaching, from playing Vlogs to dressing and sharing, and there are more than 30,000 notes about frisbee on the platform.
What about frisbee on the Little Red Book Source / Little Red Book
The rules of extreme frisbee are simple. A total of 14 people participated in the competition, each team of 7 people, male and female configurations are 4 men and 3 women or 4 women and 3 men. There are divisions on both sides of the field, and after the game starts, the players of both sides run from their respective divisions to the middle of the field to start passing, and successfully receiving the frisbee in the opponent's division is counted as one point. The frisbee competition field is 100 meters × 37 meters, and domestic enthusiasts basically play on the football field of 100 meters × 68 meters.
In the final principle, the frisbee itself belongs to a kind of ball sports, but the difference is that in the frisbee game, the players can not have physical contact between themselves, and there is no mixed between men and women, there is no referee, all disputes and exchanges are resolved by 14 people themselves, and 11 or 15 points are grabbed within the game time, and the one with the highest score wins.
Extreme Frisbee Arena Map Source / Wuhan Frisbee Team Blog
It can be seen from the rules that the reason why frisbee can become a sport for young people to relieve pressure in their spare time is mainly because of its low threshold, strong social interaction, and no physical collision. If you want to play professionally, you can go to the football field, you can play easily, you can also find a vacant lot at will, as long as you can divide into two teams and run away, you can play. There are also enthusiasts who share that they and their colleagues can also pass the disk downstairs in the office building for a while during the lunch break.
"Playing frisbee is really addictive." Many enthusiasts say. In the personal experience of Ma Haotian, the manager of the Chaos Frisbee Club in Hangzhou Chaos, this phenomenon does exist. "At 10 o'clock at night, people often ask in our group if anyone is going to go to the market, but no one rents a venue at that time, so they save up a bureau and go to a nearby square to throw it home until 12 o'clock."
Some enthusiasts share on social platforms, basically playing frisbee once, you can understand the rules and gameplay. They feel that common ball sports such as football, basketball, and rugby need to sweat on the field, and beginners are often physically weak and unable to experience pleasure. In the frisbee movement, the picking up, passing and running position are relatively easy. More than one enthusiast mentioned that frisbee racing is like a Quidditch race in Harry Potter, "When you run with a frisbee, the frisbee is next to you and you are waiting for speed, and for a moment there is an illusion of flying." ”
Strong social attributes are also one of the reasons why young people prefer frisbee sports. Since a frisbee tournament requires more than 10 people to participate, young people mostly flock to private or corporate-run communities and clubs everywhere, playing script killings with strangers on a regular basis. Some enthusiasts said that for office workers who are on the two-point line between the company and home every day, playing a frisbee can meet many new friends, and because there is no physical collision, it is also conducive to the development of good friendship.
According to the understanding of Deep Burning, the average price of the Frisbee Bureau of frisbee community organizations in various places is between 100 yuan and 200 yuan per person per time, and there are also relatively cheap ones, with dozens of yuan per person per time. According to a small program of a Frisbee community in Beijing, a Frisbee bureau lasts 2 hours and costs 100 yuan per person, and the number of entries for a session is limited to 36 people. In the group chat of the community, according to Shen Yan Observation, the weekend frisbee race was basically booked a week in advance. Ma Haotian also told Shen Yan that there are currently more than 1,000 people in his community, "I opened a registration before, 5 activities, almost 10 minutes to grab out." ”
In the eyes of practitioners, Frisbee is accepted by more people, on the one hand, because after the epidemic, everyone urgently needs to find pleasure in outdoor sports, and also needs some offline social networking.
Ike Frisbee xcom manager Cong Yiban, who is 15 years old, recalled that at that time, only a very few cities on the mainland, such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Kunming, had people playing extreme frisbee, and the domestic total may not exceed 1,000 people, and the circle is very small.
As an entrepreneur in the frisbee-related industry, Satoshi said that in 2006, the team began to do branding, and it is still in 2021 to really see the signs of frisbee breaking the circle. "Little Red Book defines frisbee as a trendy fashion sport, and for us, frisbee is slowly becoming a popular and normalized sports. Because for a long time, the frisbee sports circle has been professionally oriented, and the scenes are also campus and professional events, but now it has begun to become a sport that everyone loves to play, so that it has the potential to explode. ”
Earn thousands of dollars in a single game, earn more than 100,000 yuan per month, and keep the fire club business on the frisbee
Frisbee motion is on fire, and it is also pushing the previously bleak frisbee industry into the spotlight. Around frisbee, several representative industries are frisbee equipment, frisbee community and clubs, frisbee training, etc.
There are two mainstream companies for frisbee equipment, namely Wing Kun Frisbee in Hangzhou and Aike Frisbee in Shenzhen, both of which have nearly 20 years of experience. In addition, some sports and outdoor brands and nascent Frisbee merchants are also doing this business.
From the perspective of the official flagship store, the frisbee equipment is actually mainly the frisbee itself, supplemented by a small number of frisbee gloves, frisbee clip tactical boards, sunscreen masks and other supplies.
The frisbee used in extreme frisbee sports weighs 175g and the price is around 50-70 yuan. In addition, the price of 95g and 100g used by children and 135g frisbee used by teenagers is relatively low, around 30 yuan. The price of the regular frisbee is not high, and the expensive frisbee is expensive on the customized model. Merchants involved in custom frisbee in the market, the price of a disk mostly starts at 100 yuan, which is 2 times the price of non-customized frisbee and more. Take the customized version of the Wing Kun Frisbee, the price indicated in the store is 399 yuan, and the custom 10 or 30 can reduce the price of a single frisbee to 78 yuan and 65 yuan.
Satoshi said that the price of ordinary frisbee at about 50-100 yuan, the profit is only the average level of the industry, the cost is mainly reflected in research and development, production, operation, copyright, labor, plastic prices will also be affected by international oil prices. Relatively speaking, the customized model and the artist's joint brand, in the original copyright, intellectual property rights, plus the premium of different brands, the profit is relatively considerable.
Now that frisbee sports are tied to trend culture, custom discs have become a business opportunity. As a hobbyist, Ma Haotian said that he had been trading for less than half a year, and he already had more than 40 frisbees at home. On social platforms, people often share that they save up their own bets, and will choose frisbee of different colors and different patterns according to the weather, venue, and outfit of the day, "Frisbee is also part of the wear." ”
Custom models are a way to highlight the personality and hobbies of young people, and brands are aware of this, starting and launching designers, IP co-brand frisbee and frisbee blind boxes, and even recently Chanel launched a carbon fiber frisbee priced at $11,000.
Chanel Frisbee Source / Little Red Book
The Frisbee Community Club is the "bridge" of the frisbee movement. Satoshi told Deep Burn that now the frisbee movement is being "clubized", the regular frisbee experience bureau generally has more than ten people involved, and to rent a venue, it is difficult for individuals to bear, and the market also has a gap in compliant professional frisbee coaches, so a special community operation team is needed to provide supporting services. In recent years, practitioners have unanimously felt that there are now more and more Frisbee Community Clubs.
Ma Haotian, who runs the Frisbee Club, was founded at the end of 2021, and he told Shen Yan that the current drainage method basically relies on social platforms and the circle of friends around him. He revealed that there are about three or four Frisbee clubs in Hangzhou, and since the opening of his club, it has risen from more than 20 people to more than 1,000 people. "Our way of doing business is to pull a few groups and take them to do 4-6 events a week. The venue is usually a football field, and each game will be filmed with videos and retouched pictures, and highlights will be given away. 50 yuan per person, the duration of a frisbee game is 2 hours. ”
Frisbee Community Clubs rely heavily on economies of scale. After the Frisbee circle, many private community clubs emerged, and due to the high cost of charter and the small number of players, they could almost break even. Some large community clubs that have been operating for many years, with thousands of players, can ensure the regular organization of frisbee bureaus, and the fees are relatively high, and the profit margins are not small.
Roughly estimated, the club charges an average of 100 yuan per person for a frisbee bureau, nearly 40 people participate, a total of 4,000 yuan, excluding the cost of the package venue, the gross profit of a game is about 3,000 yuan. The number of frisbee games per week, as few as 6, more than 10 games, calculated that a relatively large community club generated a gross profit of about 40,000 yuan - 140,000 yuan per month on the frisbee board.
Most of the ways to operate the Frisbee community are to first publish graphic videos on social platforms to attract users, and then establish a private domain and organize Frisbee activities on a regular basis. According to the understanding of Deep Burn, due to the difference in the time and professionalism of the practice, the frisbee bureaus of different frisbee community organizations are also subdivided according to the degree of difficulty, and there are simple front and backhand (frisbee grip) newcomer field, and the more difficult training ground, competition field and so on.
The third category of the frisbee industry is training, mainly initiated by the Frisbee Club, oriented to the community and the campus, with the aim of accumulating enthusiasts and cultivating young athletes.
Liang Zhuang, head coach of the 2019 Frisbee Asian Championship national team, told Shen Yan that the current training content direction of coaches is a community training activity, cooperating with the social frisbee club, and the community club bears the coaching lesson fee. The other is to be hired to enter the middle and high school to take frisbee classes, and the school pays the coaching class fee.
Coach Xiao Qiong of Hangzhou DC Frisbee introduced that the training of Frisbee will have different teaching stages and contents for different levels, and for beginners, it is necessary to master the basic rules, backhand passing technology and then participate in the competition. After participating in a frisbee activity, it moves on to the next stage, which is the teaching of forehand passing techniques, running positions, handling of basic disputes, etc. "The third stage is generally for players who want to improve and enthusiasts with game experience, if you want to play the frisbee well, if you want to do the technical flow, then you can continue to learn some professional skills, tactics and so on."
An industry insider revealed that the average monthly salary of Frisbee coaches in Shanghai is between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan, and the standard of lesson fees for different coaches is also different, according to the level, each game is as little as a few hundred yuan, and more than 3,000 yuan is paid. Moreover, the coach's salary is also paid by the community club, and novice enthusiasts do not need to pay additional tuition to the coach. If students want advanced and systematic learning, they can train individually, and the price is several hundred yuan at a time.
In general, in the above three related industries, the profit margin of the community club business is relatively high, as long as the scale is accumulated, it is also a small and beautiful business, and frisbee equipment and frisbee training are more dependent on repurchase, and the profit space is limited.
Niche, low repurchase, difficult to sustain, frisbee movement prospects are blank
With the breaking of the frisbee movement, some chaos was also revealed.
The first is the product. "I often see newbies who come to frisbee games for the first time buy the wrong order. Now many merchants on the Internet, there is no international authoritative certification, the number of grams is not correct, it is also very thin, this kind of plate is received in the hand, or accidentally hit the face is easy to be injured. Ma Haotian said that the price of these inferior frisbee disks is more than a dozen yuan, or even lower.
Satoshi introduced, "Although the frisbee is a piece of plastic, the international competition-level frisbee standards are strictly stipulated, including the test and subjective evaluation of many professional players, coupled with the uniqueness of the formula to form a different feel, but also to get official authority certification and endorsement, in order to be a qualified professional limit frisbee." ”
Frisbee out of the circle allows some manufacturers to target business opportunities in a plate, but they often ignore the fact that frisbee is first a sporting goods and then a consumer product. "Just like there are many manufacturers that produce basketball and football, there are only a few professional, safe and authoritative." Ma Haotian said.
In terms of frisbee training, the chaos is mainly reflected in the price difference and level difference caused by information asymmetry.
Liang Zhuang said that frisbee suddenly caught fire, and there are many new groups joining the frisbee sport, which naturally has certain requirements for the level of coaches. "Some coaches may only be enthusiasts who have played a few times, because frisbee is easy to get started, and if they learn to bring people, but if they do not accept systematic training and coach training, it is easy to make mistakes in the teaching process, misleading beginners at the same time, but also prone to danger."
It is precisely because of this that the frisbee has just come out of the circle, and beginners cannot yet judge what kind of coach is reliable, and naturally cannot know whether the coach's offer is reasonable. A enthusiast revealed that in order to get started, the first time he looked for a coach, he encountered an offer of 3,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan for two hours, "It is really difficult to accept." ”
The frisbee is on fire, which does not mean that practitioners can make a lot of money, in fact, the frisbee industry faces many obstacles in commercialization.
We can compare frisbee to several other current movements. Skiing, just to get started, you need to buy a complete set of snow suits, snowboards, snowshoes, helmets, goggles, etc., the price of each item is very expensive, and a lover can feed several brands in a snow season. This is especially true for exquisite camping, tents, tables and chairs, lamps, cooking utensils, speakers, ingredients, etc., which burn as much money as skiing.
On the other hand, frisbee, the average enthusiast only needs to buy a few dozen yuan of frisbee, and if you want to play more safely and professionally, you can also buy a pair of spikes. There are basically no restrictions on clothing, and even protective gear does not have to be bought. So casual, it is naturally difficult to dig huge business opportunities in equipment, which is why practitioners are only secretly competing in the tricks of frisbee.
Back to the practitioner's end, because the standard frisbee production requires strict material ratios and certification, it is not something that ordinary toy factories and plastic factories can do casually. Some insiders revealed that at present, the technical advantages of frisbee are in the hands of the head brand, the market is almost saturated, and it will definitely take a lot of effort for new practitioners to get a piece of the pie.
It can also be seen that although the trend and fashion sound linked to consumer goods, in fact, Frisbee is still a sporting goods, and it is difficult to be made into generalized consumer goods in large quantities, allowing brands of all sizes to grab the market.
Ma Haotian also held the same view. He emphasized the venue problem, "there are not many outdoor venues, there is a rainy season in the south, the lawn is too wet for novices, if you turn to indoor venues, it will be even less." The indoor football stadium in Hangzhou basically has a long bag of time slots, but it is far from enough. ”
He believes that for a sport, if there is no special fixed place, even if there are countless enthusiasts, there is no place to play. "In the end, whether the Frisbee can develop, whether it has commercial value, or it has to return to the real arena."
It can be seen that in the future period of time, the development of frisbee sports and even the entire industry will still crawl forward and wait for the real outbreak.
"People who sign up for frisbee for the first time often ask me: 'What if I don't have a dog?' "Ma Haotian feels that the frisbee is not finished in popularizing this link." Now it is still the early stage of traffic rise, and everyone has not really figured out how to make money. ”
On the one hand, science popularization is needed, and on the other hand, the frisbee industry is constantly maturing.
Many practitioners told Shen Yan that in fact, everyone's definition of tide culture is mixed. The joy lies in the fact that Frisbee uses the impetus of trend culture to break the "enclosure and self-emergence" of the past nearly 20 years, which is a good thing in itself. Worry, lies in the frisbee has both serious sports and trend social activities of the dual attributes, if the end of the book, excessive frisbee trend, including the subsequent emergence of premium, speculation equipment and other phenomena, it and the heart of frisbee sports gradually drifted away.
At this time, practitioners, like athletes on the frisbee field, while chasing the rapidly rotating forward frisbee, they also want to think clearly: Is the tactic of the previous step right? What's next?