While the road of “offline” operation is difficult, many effective “online” modes begin to emerge. People’s fitness environment, fitness methods, it is also quietly changing in the “online” scenario.
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, March 14th issue: Under the epidemic, the sports industry “online” shows a variety of formats
Xinhua news agency reporters Lin Delen and Ma Di
The stadium is closed and the event is canceled, under the influence of the new coronavirus epidemic, fitness enthusiasts spent a very special time. While the road of “offline” operation is difficult, many effective “online” modes begin to emerge. People’s fitness environment, fitness methods, it is also quietly changing in the “online” scenario.
With the rapid development of Internet technology, “online exercise”, as a new form of fitness, has gradually entered people’s attention. According to the report released by Zhiyan Consulting, the number of online sports and fitness customers soared from 10.4 million in 2014 to 0.126 billion in 2018.
During the epidemic, fitness companies with online genes also adjusted their strategies one after another and made new attempts under the condition of a new surge in demand. Fitness platforms such as Super orangutan, Keep, and Leke have launched online live courses. Super orangutans were watched online by more than 100,000 people during the peak period of a live broadcast official account. Keep also played tens of thousands of songs in each class of TikTok, while Leke played more than tens of millions of live broadcasts in Kuaishou. At the same time, many offline gyms trapped in the increasingly difficult survival of the epidemic have also begun to use the coach resources in their hands to switch online.
Li Xinyan, general manager of Keep company, said: “On the whole, we saw people pay more and more attention to health during the epidemic, and there are also higher and higher calls for various ways to exercise at home. During the period from the end of January to February, we are also rapidly adjusting and developing sports services that are more helpful to everyone’s home sports, hoping to make a modest contribution during the epidemic.”
Li Xinyan introduced that during the epidemic, Keep mainly did three actions. The first is to cooperate with many institutions and fitness experts to make a large collection of online aggregation live broadcast, form a “big class schedule” to drive more people to do home sports; The second is to jointly develop and launch the “home epidemic prevention fitness guide” special topic with the State Sports General Administration, A 7-day training plan has been created for all users for free. The third is to launch a project called “Guardian health Sports Alliance, provide online sports support for employees who work in the cloud at home.
Yi Jiandong, a sports scholar and professor of Wenzhou University, observed that during the epidemic, there were many online classes. “Because everyone is closed at home, the ratings and audience rates are still relatively high. At ordinary times, 1,000 people listen to hundreds of people, and now many of them are tens of thousands of people.” He said.
In addition, online competition forms such as “online tablet support competition” also attracted many fitness enthusiasts during the epidemic. For this kind of competition form, Yi Jiandong thinks it is very meaningful, he said: “In the 1980 s, we once had a form of communication competition, that is, in different regions and countries, everyone used the same project to compete, and there was a coordination body to count. At present, the technology is more developed and basically can be synchronized through online synchronization comparison. This competition form is also well controlled, just like a video conference.”
Under the special environment, the demand in the field of online fitness has soared, and a large number of new players have begun to enter, especially the sports live broadcast platform with online genes. Penguin sports, China Sports and other live broadcast platforms began to lay out their own advantageous resources, actively cooperated with major fitness media and colleges, and gained stable traffic. Large sports media platforms also quickly entered the huge pan-sports market, and PP Sports and Migu also launched fitness live broadcast.
PP Sports teaches home fitness skills online from afternoon to evening by inviting star coaches to launch live fitness courses. Different from the general live broadcast platform, PP Sports, relying on the interactive experience of live broadcast of past events and its advantages in sports retail, provides fitness video teaching, social networking, diet guidance, equipment purchase and other “one-stop” services to cultivate more active users for the online fitness industry.
Ali Sports and Youku children launched the “physical education class at home” program, and the “champion physical education class” also generated considerable traffic. Since the launch of the live program for two seasons, there have been stars from gymnastics, diving, badminton, figure skating, fencing, basketball, speed skating and many other projects, in the program, they took their families to demonstrate standard actions, connect friends on the spot, and interact with netizens through barrage.
Li Xinyan is still optimistic about the future of online sports. She said: “In the long run, the sports habits developed online during this period will still have some reservations, it is normal to go to sports regularly. Therefore, during the epidemic, it can be seen as the cultivation of everyone’s sports behavior habits, and here, many new forms and opportunities have also emerged, which may be the new tipping point of the sports industry in the future.”