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He Huali, the former general manager of the China Net Marketing Center, started a business, and he brought in a group of opinion leaders and experts such as Zhang Bendou, a well-known tennis journalist, Fu Rao, a tennis expert, Jin Xiaonan, a big V of Zhihu, and Wang Yue, former coach of the national tennis team. From the content of the active tennis, has accumulated nearly 200,000 fans, after a good opening appearance, they face the test of transformation and growth.
Project Description: Relying on content to cut into the vertical field of tennis, in less than a year, it has gathered 160,000 tennis enthusiasts, 30 WeChat exchange groups, and more than 6,000 members. In mid-June 2016, the National League of Active Tennis was launched, covering 17 cities in China, and each city played for 15 weeks.
Founding team: Founder He Huali, Peking University Guanghua MBA, former general manager of China Open Marketing Center. Co-founder Zhang Bendou, a famous tennis journalist, is the only Chinese journalist of the International Federation of Tennis Journalists. Partner Yue Wang, former national tennis team coach, American Professional Tennis Association First Class Coach, ITF Senior Coach Mentor. Partner Fu Rao, Ph.D. in analysis and diagnosis of tennis technique and tactical process, is a core member of the scientific research of the Chinese national tennis team.
Financing information: In January 2016, it received an investment of millions of yuan from Jiuhe Venture Capital. We are currently looking for a Pre-A round of financing, with a planned financing amount of 10 million yuan.
Generally speaking, the average number of fans who play tennis once a week can be counted as the "core tennis population", so how much is China's core tennis population?
This number determines the market space, determines the ceiling of tennis entrepreneurship, and is also the answer that many entrepreneurs and investors pay attention to.
Fu Rao, a partner at Active Tennis and a teacher at the Shanghai Institute of Sport, and his students have come to the conclusion that China's current tennis population is about 1.2 million people. At the same time, the number of domestic tennis courts is about 28,000, of which the four megacities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen have about 3,906 venues.
▲ See the National Tennis Center grounds through the map.
After Li Na won the French Open in 2011, the WTA official website predicted that this championship will effectively promote Chinese tennis into a new era, and China will increase the tennis population by 300 million (not only the core tennis population). For now, China's tennis population is growing at a slower pace than expected at the time.
Even so, in the past two years, a number of startups that rely on the mobile Internet and are perpendicular to tennis have emerged and received investment. It mainly includes me to play, Grand Slam tennis, daily tennis and so on. Among them, the "tennis player" founded by tennis star Zheng Jie received millions of yuan in investment in July 2015; there are also "I come to the tournament" and "tennis major league" from the amateur tennis league; and "Grand Slam" and "Daily Tennis" cut by the appointment.
Active Tennis chose to start from the content, relying on the author's fame in the circle to gather fans, and entered the amateur league market from June this year.
The content is cut in, and the card division is powerful
He Huali was able to bring in the famous tennis reporter Zhang Bendou, tennis expert Fu Rao, Zhihu tennis big V Jin Xiaonan, and former coach of the national tennis team Wang Yue to do business together, relying on "sincerity", "persistence" and "persuasion", which are the three points of experience he summed up.
He Huali was very satisfied with the lineup, and he joked: "I am the weakest one." ”
In fact, compared with many self-made entrepreneurs with no background, He Huali is not weak, he once served as the general manager of the marketing center of the China Open, and accumulated certain resources in the field of tennis.
Flipping through the WeChat public account of Good Movement Tennis, you can find that the first push began on July 29, 2015. On the same day, the famous tennis journalist Zhang Bendou posted "If you love the tennis show" in the public account "Tennis Show" with 5 figures of fans, please cancel your attention, which will divert a large number of fans to the public number of "Active Tennis". "There is our warm past in the show, and active tennis carries our happier future." Zhang Bendou said.
▲ Group photo of tennis celebrity Zhang Bendou and Li Na.
Zhang Bendou's determination to do so is not unrelated to He Huali's persistence. He Huali, who was the general manager of the marketing center of the China Open Tennis Tournament at the time, repeatedly approached Zhang Bendou and invited him to join him in founding Active Tennis. At first, Zhang Bendou's enthusiasm was not high, but he could not stand He Huali's sincerity and persistence, and finally had this franchise and diversion.
In April 2016, Active Tennis welcomed another wave of fans. "Tennis craftsman Fu Rao" WeChat signal was officially incorporated into active tennis, as a teacher at the Shanghai Institute of Sport, Fu Rao is well-known in the tennis circle, has a large number of fans, many tennis fans and even some tennis association leaders will pay attention to his technical science articles.
Subsequently, Jin Xiaonan, the big V of Zhihu Tennis, joined Active Tennis and became the exclusive special author, and he also has 66,000 fans in Zhihu. Recently, former national tennis coach Wang Yue also took a stake and joined the company. This means that Active Tennis has more chips and lays the foundation for the future of amateur events and training business.
Based on such a strong cast, Active Tennis has accumulated nearly 200,000 fans in less than a year.
In January 2016, Active Tennis received millions of yuan in investment from Jiuhe Venture Capital. Through the WeChat public account of Jiuhe Venture Capital, we can see the views of investment manager Fu Xin, who is optimistic about the rapid growth of the sports market in the next three to five years, optimistic about high-quality sports tennis, and optimistic about the complementarity and integrity of this team. "Active Tennis has rapidly accumulated users in a short period of time, which initially verifies the team's understanding of the Internet, users and community."
From online to offline
Like many companies that choose content startups, Active Tennis relies on original articles to accumulate a large number of users, but it is still far from money, and it is an inevitable choice to go from online to offline.
In June 2016, Active Tennis began to try to hold offline amateur leagues, covering 17 cities, lasting 5 months, the league format is a points elimination match, of which mid-June to September is the city points tournament, October is the city finals, and november is the national finals in Zhuhai.
He Huali told Lazy Bear Sports: "The registration in the first week has ended, and the number of applicants nationwide in the first week exceeded 600, and the registration fee was about 30,000 yuan. "The registration fee is all used to pay for the venue fee, and Active Tennis does not charge any other fees.
▲ Active Tennis National League Women's Special.
The organization of this event mainly relies on 27 local WeChat groups, and most of the group owners are senior tennis enthusiasts and court staff from all over the world. Based on this, active tennis and the field place form a resource exchange, the platform brings passenger flow to the venue, and the venue staff is responsible for organizing the game.
"Running a competition like this is a very light form, the cost is only two pieces, the first is the cost of labor, we need to find one or two people responsible for supervising and contacting the organizers of the event everywhere; the second is the finals 50,000 yuan prize money." He Huali said that other costs, such as prizes, are provided by sponsors.
In addition to the Active Tennis League, there are already many well-known amateur tennis leagues across the country, such as the CRT China Net Level Tournament under the China Net, which covered 13 cities and regions in 2016. In addition, there are some well-known team competitions such as the Minsheng Bank National Competition and the China Dragon Team Competition. There is also the "Zheng Jie Cup" junior tennis tournament from the youth, which is currently under the umbrella of the tennis player, founded in 2009, and in 2016 the tournament covered 8 divisions, with about 3,000 young tennis players participating.
Offline events have become a field that tennis entrepreneurs can't get around, He Huali said: "At present, there are many amateur events in China, but many of them are pass-by, the number of stations is very large, but each place only stays for two or three days, and the active tennis league hopes to take root in each region and do long-term events, on the one hand, let the fans play addicted, on the other hand, it can also attract sponsors and increase the contact points of fans and brands." ”
The Active Tennis League has a wide range of urban coverage, but at present, the competition is not divided into age, and many venues are not yet open. In the next step, He Huali hopes to continue to expand the city, establish a hierarchical and age-based event system, and cover the venue to as many directions as possible.
future
In 2015, the 30-year-old He Huali bid farewell to the 8-year China Net, which was his first part-time job, and he hoped that it would be the last.
Today, in the office of Shuangjing Shoucheng International, He Huali, whose title is already the founder of Active Tennis, thinks about the future profit model every day.
▲ He Huali, founder of Active Tennis.
"Amateur events and crowdfunding training" is He Huali's main idea. The logic of the tournament is simple, and the Active Tennis League is an ongoing attempt. "Crowdfunding training" is simply player management, with the addition of former national tennis team coach Wang Yue, the future active tennis platform will carry a large number of potential young players. In He Huali's view, on the one hand, there are players who need funding, and on the other hand, there are tennis enthusiasts with a large base, and the interests of both sides may find an intersection.
He Huali admitted that he has been hit a little lately, because many friends have said that they will not believe in the existence of this possibility until the "crowdfunding training" thing is not done. In China, where the spirit of the contract is not mature, this idea seems to be somewhat idealized.
Relatively speaking, the e-commerce model is more realistic, but He Huali showed hesitation about it, "E-commerce is very difficult to monetize, I prefer to sell services rather than sell physical goods, but in the future, there are hundreds of thousands of fans, and may do it." ”
In addition to crowdfunding, events, training and other models, Active Tennis is also preparing to launch a "tennis-themed" coffee shop in Beijing to create an offline tennis fan salon, so that tennis fans and football fans have their own carnival place. In addition, tennis lectures and the spread of tennis culture are also included in the active tennis program.
An anonymous investor said that the operation model of Active Tennis is relatively traditional, mainly relying on celebrities and original content to accumulate users and then use traffic to monetize.
This form has long existed in popular projects such as running, football, and basketball, and it can be observed that most of these projects have insufficient monetization ability. This is a problem that active tennis must face.
Fu Xin, investment manager of Jiuhe Venture Capital, also said, "The next step is for the active team to start trying to carry out amateur event IP, in fact, it is also to verify whether the power of the Internet and community has a good transformation and growth in such a field of sports life." ”
In the year of entrepreneurship, He Huali's Weibo, there is almost no other content, dense is "active tennis" article sharing. This is the daily portrayal of entrepreneurs, and it is also a price that must be paid.