Receiving virtual badges on sports apps can no longer satisfy some young people, who began to pay real money to buy physical medals issued by the platform, and thus created a new business with annual revenue of more than 100 million.
From October last year to January this year, in four months, 23-year-old Zhou Fei has "purchased" seventy medals from the sports app, with a cumulative cost of nearly 3,000 yuan calculated at the lowest 39 yuan. This does not include shelves purchased to place medals, and thermal lock membranes purchased to prevent oxidation of medals.
Behind Zhou Fei is a growing group of medal buyers, and on social platforms, these young people who have piled up medals have almost dozens of medals per capita.
These medals do not have any official authorization such as marathon events, young people only need to pay to participate in online running activities planned by sports APP, and they can get a physical medal after running more than 1 kilometer, the fee is divided into 39 yuan/69 yuan/139 yuan, and you can choose 1 km/3 km/5 km and other miles.
Take Keep as an example, at the end of last year, an event attracted 300,000 participants, and based on the price of 39 yuan for physical medals, an event earned 11.7 million yuan. Recently, there are even market rumors that Keep has made 500 million just by selling medals.
In response, Keep responded to the alphabet list and said that it was not true that Keep sold medals and made 500 million. According to Keep's prospectus, in the eight months, including the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first five months of 2022, the number of paying users participating in Keep's virtual event activities exceeded 1.1 million, and the total volume of commodity transactions exceeded 50 million yuan.
Although it is less than 500 million yuan, millions of paying users are already a huge group. According to data from the Chinese Athletics Association, in 2019, before the epidemic, the number of Chinese marathon participants was 7.13 million. The medal activity is not done by Keep, and sports apps such as Gudong and Yue Running Circle have launched paid online running activities.
Among them, Gudong's ten popular online events in the past three months attracted more than 1.6 million participants. Its Valentine's Day online run, which was launched in mid-January, has more than 210,000 registrations, and the physical medal packages range from 69 yuan/138 yuan/158 yuan, and the minimum number of runs can be 1.11 kilometers. Even at the lowest of 69 yuan, the income of this running event can reach 14.49 million yuan.
Source: Gutong and Keep
Online platforms have said that the original purpose of medal activities is to encourage sports, online platforms also provide event services, and medals are additional additional rewards.
However, it is difficult for sports apps to monitor the authenticity of data sources, and some users can even easily obtain medals by hand, stepper or riding an electric vehicle/bicycle. Based on this, the "running on behalf of the agent" business has even been derived from the buying and selling of physical medals.
According to the alphabet list, the general charge for one kilometer is 1 yuan, and the higher the number of kilometers, the higher the corresponding cost performance.
Psychological expert Wang Min believes that the medals that were originally intended to encourage young people to exercise were used as a certain social currency to show off, on the one hand, because young people are eager to get the envy of others more than pay attention to the inside, "that is, 'good' others will envy, as for how to get it, whether to improve their ability and health, it is second", on the other hand, young people also desire to create a better self-image in the hearts of others, hoping to get the feeling of being seen and even worshipped.
A
Zhou Fei is not a sports enthusiast, and usually chooses the minimum number of kilometers when registering for events, and sometimes chooses a little more kilometers for the number on the medal to look good. Recently, she signed up for a cherry balls event on a sports app, and chose 1.99 kilometers for kilometers, just because "1.990 sounds better, and long numbers look good on medals".
Most of the medals are not even won by Zhou Fei running by himself, but through hand crank or spending money to find someone to run for him: hand crank is to hold the mobile phone and keep shaking, as long as there is an amplitude, it will be recorded by the sports APP; Find someone to run for you, generally five kilometers is five yuan, this price is not expensive for Zhou Fei.
Chen Min, who is also keen on collecting medals, has bought 60 medals in the past year and invested more than 2,000 yuan. Her medals are also not purely self-run, and sometimes her boyfriend, who is a sports student, will help her run.
In the middle of last year, Chen Min posted the medals he bought from running on social platforms, and in the photo, Chen Min stood in front of a white background wall, with medals on his neck and two hands, and the text "When you have a boyfriend" attached, which received more than 14,000 likes. Previously, her content likes exceeded 30, or even less than 200 followers. In Chen Min's comment area, many netizens expressed "envy".
It was the praise from netizens that inspired Chen Min to participate in many running events to get more medals. Half a year later, she posted all the medals on social platforms, and attached the copy of "When you have a boyfriend" as the first time, although the number of likes was not as high as the first time, but the comment area was still brushed by the envy of "beautiful sister, you are so happy".
Since May last year, Li Xiaochun, who has invested more than 1,000 yuan and bought 26 medals, although she did not "cheat" like Zhou Fei and Chen Min, the medals were all run by herself, but for her, the meaning of "buying medals" is still greater than sports. For the past year, every time she registers for an event, she chooses about 3 kilometers, which is a kilometer that her body can easily accept.
Li Xiaochun usually does not run much, usually follows the sports APP to practice yoga, and has not bought sports-related courses. Her first time she bought a medal was in May last year, and because the medal with a portrait of a sheep on the reverse was so good-looking, she signed up for the 3.21km run.
For Li Xiaochun, only if you sign up for a medal event will you have the motivation to run, and signing up for a medal activity depends on whether the medal is good or not. In February this year, she bought a transparent medal display frame for 26 medals, which cost nearly 300 yuan and contained 36 grids.
There are many young people with similar ideas from Li Xiaochun. "If it weren't for the medals, I wouldn't have been able to move a few steps this year" was flooded social media. There are even some young people who choose to buy them from others in order to own certain physical medals.
B
The demand for physical medals has spawned the "running on behalf of the generation" industry.
A part-time college student told the alphabet list that he can only run a few dollars a day, go out for an afternoon tea for 30 yuan, not only do not make money but also lose money every day, and now he is no longer engaged in the running business, and has turned to a more cost-effective part-time job - accompaniment, he has classmates who have achieved the freedom to eat by providing escort services.
There is also a sports student who said that he just wanted to earn a milk tea money, and he charged a few dollars for running a few kilometers. Since I am a sports student, I usually have to exercise myself, so I provide long-term running services. There is also a young man who provides substitute running told the alphabet list, just because he wants to exercise himself, so he works part-time for the substitute running service, running four or five singles without even twenty yuan, "Now the substitute running is very rolled, and only a few dollars are charged for a few kilometers."
In fact, running is nothing new. In the Internet trading platform, the phenomenon of "running on behalf of others" has existed for several years. Taking Taobao as an example, searching for "Dai Run" can find a large number of stores about Dai Run, and the range of services available includes Keep, Gudong, Yue Running Circle and other popular sports apps.
Some store names are "XX generation running", some store names directly type "Yue running circle goo dong generation running", and some store names also type the words "K family medal generation running", and some store slogans even appear in the label of "more than 1,000 repeat customers" and "more than 10,000 people planting grass".
These stores that provide running services can not only run "medal activities", but also run other activities, such as daily running clock-ins required by the school, and can do customized personalized services for location, time, route, pace, daily clock-in, kilometers, screenshots, etc.
Alphabet list learned through a running shop that different requirements have different prices, such as a 21-kilometer medal event, the price without positioning is 21 yuan, if you need to provide positioning, the price is 30 yuan.
In addition, the higher the number of kilometers, the higher the price-performance ratio. According to one store, one kilometer charges 3 yuan, while 10 kilometers only charge 16 yuan, and 42 kilometers charge 42 yuan.
It is worth noting that some stores have not only been satisfied with providing running services, but have directly extended their hands to medal trading, playing the slogan of "XX medals straight delivery" on the platform, and flaunting the genuine brand new unopened, with monthly sales reaching more than 300.
A customer service that sells sports medals said that the medals are all genuine packaging on the XX platform, with labels and anti-counterfeiting. But the alphabet list understands that the price of these medals is more expensive than on the sports app. In this regard, the customer service said that the main reason is that many medals are out of print, and she still has some inventory here. For example, a 5.2 km Yugui dog medal sold for 89 yuan. According to its page, a medal of Kulomi Meleti 5.2 km "surrounded by love" costs 199 yuan, which has already shown a status of out-of-stock.
C
Young people's pursuit of physical medals has also helped sports apps open up a new channel for revenue growth.
Keep mentioned in its prospectus that revenue generated by virtual sporting events is included in online paid content. In 2021, Keep's online paid content revenue was 69.7 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 112%. In the first quarter of 2022 alone, online paid content revenue reached 40.49 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 728%.
But whether this business can be bigger, and whether it will become a stable and continuous source of income for sports apps, there is still a big question mark.
In fact, in 2015, sports apps represented by Yue Running Circle and Gu Dong opened the online marathon mode and won medals through paid running. Keep also started medal running activities in 2016, but from the perspective of Keep's prospectus, the volume of medal activities in revenue has never been large, accounting for less than 10%.
Moreover, young people's pursuit of "social currency" is changing all the time. Before the physical medal fever, young people also experienced the trend change from Bubble Mart to Ling Na Belle, from Ice Mound to Frisbee.
At the end of 2021, a video of a male college student organizing a relay run for dormitory classmates in order to win a sports medal for his girlfriend exploded on Douyin and received hundreds of thousands of likes. By the way, "the romance of sports students" and "the medals of boyfriend running" and other entries are also on fire, the girl in the picture is basking in piles of sports medals, once released is thousands of likes, and netizens in the comment area have also projected envious eyes. Medals have become a social currency at present, and "posting medals" has become a traffic password for young people.
In the middle of last year, Chen Min also posted his medal on social platforms, and the caption "The romance of having a sports boyfriend" received 14,000 likes; however, in January this year, the same copy and more medals did not attract more likes, and there were less than ten comments, far from the 500 comments a year ago. She told the alphabet list that she has been restrained from buying medals now, and will only buy what she likes when she sees it.
More young people are starting to retire from the medals. A user who started buying medals more than a year ago told Alphabet that last September, a medal she liked not only increased the price, but also needed to be upgraded to membership rights to participate, "I won't buy it anymore." By now, she has not spent any more money on medals.
The data also shows that this craze is gradually dissipating. Keeping had more than 700,000 paying users in one event from March to May last year, compared to more than 550,000 people in the past three months.
When young people's trend preferences are transferred to the next project, the already small medal sales revenue is bound to shrink further, and for sports apps, this business comes and goes faster.
(Chen Min, Li Xiaochun, Zhou Fei are pseudonyms)
Resources:
"Research on the Influencing Factors of Sports App Users' Willingness to Participate in Online Marathon Events", Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Yi Zhengquan
"Technology, Space and Body: Media Practice Based on Location Media Technology: A Case Study of Keep Online Marathon", Yang Juan, Fujian Normal University,
What do young people think about taking Keep medals as 520 gifts? 》Entertainment Hard Candy
"Fake running is prevalent, running to get rich, Keep makes sports tasteful? Acorn Business
"A medal triggers enthusiasm for sports: Keep links Liu Shiwen to launch an online run" Xianning News Network