There was once a joke circulating on the Internet, if you compare the consumption power of all kinds of people, it should be “women > children > old people > dogs > men”. Such comparison may be exaggerated, but it does reflect the fighting power of Female consumers in China.
According to Guotai Junan Research Report, the population of fashionable women aged 25-40 in China has reached 290 million, and nearly 75% of household consumption decisions are dominated by women. It is expected that the female market size will reach 4.5 trillion in 2019.
It is not hard to see that “women’s economy” is an important growth point in the consumer market at present and in the future.
With the rise of women’s economy, “women’s money is the best to earn” seems to have become a consensus in various industries. Many companies are trying to “please” female consumers by developing new products and services aimed at women. But in a sports industry dominated by straight men, female consumers don’t seem so welcome.
Men dominate sports industry, women lack love
In recent years, with the awakening of national fitness awareness and the improvement of living standards, China’s sports industry has entered a period of rapid development, especially driven by the “Internet plus”, the domestic sports market is more lively than usual. However, it is a pity that most practitioners in the sports industry are mainly male users, while female users with outstanding consumption power are “neglected” and do not get due attention.
For example, in the field of live sports broadcasting, the core of the Internet sports industry, most of the live sports content is men’s football, men’s basketball, men’s boxing and other men’s sports events, but there are few women’s sports events. The content of the head sports community platforms, such as Hupu and Livestream bar, is mostly operated for male users, while female users are not “liked”. In addition, sports goods with female characteristics are not common in the sports goods industry except sports shoes and clothing.
There is no denying that women have been neglected in many sports. As for the reasons for the “neglect” of female users, there may be three reasons.
First, influenced by China’s traditional culture, women and sports seem to “wind horse”. Since ancient times, people have asked women to comply with a series of norms of behavior, such as “virtuous and virtuous” and “dignified manners”, and spread to the present day. As a result, women have always been seen as a classy, reserved group, and most of them seem to be uninterested in sports that require sweat and collisions, only for men. Under the influence of such thinking, many practitioners are reluctant to make efforts in the female market.
Second, compared with women’s sports events, men’s sports events are of a higher competitive standard. Due to the physical differences between men and women, men often stronger than women, so men’s competition is more intense, the process of tension and stimulation, so for advocating “swifter, higher, stronger” spirit of the fans, men’s sports is more popular, while some women’s sporting event was “cold”, this also lead to narrow selective female viewers to watch sports events.
Third, the platform does not determine the user, but the user determines the platform. At present, some sports practitioners have recognized the importance of female users and tried to add some female-friendly content to attract female users, but the effect was not good, and eventually had to continue to operate for male users.
For example, hupu sports platform, which is known as a “gathering place for straight men”, has opened an entertainment section called “Hupu Walking Street”, hoping to increase the number of female users and solve the problem of single gender users on the platform. However, instead of attracting female users, the “Hupu Walking Street” was immediately occupied by straight men on the platform and became a “green street”. As a result, some female users cannot “integrate” into the group at all. As a result, “Hupu Walking Street” has little effect on attracting female users, but increases the cohesion of male users, and further solidifies hupu’s status as a “gathering place for straight men”.
As a result, the platform has been forced to continue to “ignore” female users and offer services specifically for men in a male-dominated environment. Therefore, according to the example of Hupu platform, many sports platforms do not want to increase female audiences, but have to focus on male users.
This is an unavoidable vicious cycle, that is, there are too many male users on most sports platforms, which leads to the passive operation of the platforms for male users, while the female users who like sports can only be “ignored” by the platforms, and it is difficult to get corresponding services, which ultimately leads to the “unwelcome” situation of female users.
Women are better than men: the Misunderstood women’s sports market
It can be said that women are indeed not “welcomed” by some sports industries and are “unfairly” treated, but this does not mean that women do not love sports. Nowadays, more and more women have begun to attach importance to and participate in sports, and their love for sports is no less than that of men.
More than 100,000 Chinese football fans visited Russia for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and surprisingly, women outnumbered men, accounting for 57 percent of the total, Sputnik news agency reported. And in some sports, the number of women watching is even higher than expected. At the 2018 King of Glory KPL Spring tournament, for example, women accounted for 63 percent of the total audience, almost double the number of men.
And in sports consumption, the performance of the female group is also very bright. During last year’s Singles’ Day, data from Alibaba’s self-operated stores showed that the total amount of sports goods purchased by women increased by 10 percentage points compared with 2017, accounting for 43 percent of the total number of people who bought sports goods on that day.
It can be seen that women perform as well as men in terms of sports consumption and attention to sports events, and are an indispensable force to promote the development of China’s sports industry. Relevant practitioners should regain confidence, adhere to the female market, to provide corresponding services for female users, maybe there will be better development than now.
At present, many fitness platforms have begun to provide corresponding services for female users, and achieved good results. Aurora big data shows that female users account for more than 60% of the gender distribution of fitness app users. As of June 2018, female users account for 61.6% of fitness app users, while male users account for 38.4%. This proves that the female group’s willingness to participate in fitness is very strong, which completely contradicts the previous impression that “women do not exercise”.
Of course, fitness is welcomed by female users, in addition to “exercise” this factor, “beauty, plasticity, weight loss” and other factors also accounted for a large proportion. In other words, women love sports is inseparable from the “beauty”. Fitness apps have successfully attracted many female users by capturing the feature that women love beauty.
And around the female love beauty this trait, beautiful sports clothing, running shoes, anti-sweat cosmetics and other sports goods, also have the place of use. In this regard, some sports e-commerce companies should not be limited to male sports equipment, but should consider providing more kinds of sports equipment for female users, I believe it will bring unexpected results.
In short, female users are an indispensable and important group of people in the sports industry. In addition to sports e-commerce and sports fitness platforms, other sports platforms should also face up to female groups and dig this “pink” gold mine.
With “beauty” as the axis, let women into the Internet sports center
In women today consumption, thus users can really become a new starting point, the Internet in the development of sports industry, however, if you want to dig the “pink” gold mine, the relevant practitioners need to know women, after all, women and men’s thinking is very different, although it also has a lot of female users are willing to watch sports such as football, basketball, But there’s a big difference in focus between the two.
For example, when men watch football games, they focus on the team lineup, skills and intense physical confrontation, while many women are different. They tend to pay more attention to the “male gods” and “star players” in the team, as well as their heroic posture in the game. Therefore, the Internet sports industry should not define female users according to the operation experience of male users, but should change the customs and strive to open the door for female users to enter the sports industry center from all aspects. Among them, the live broadcast industry and information industry, which are at the core of Internet sports, should make the most changes.
Sports live broadcasting platform can present the “beauty” of sports for female users and do more refined operation. According to the feature that female users love “beauty”, sports live broadcasting platforms should provide multi-perspective live broadcasting services for female users. That is, users can freely switch between viewing angles of individual players, God and the goal to ensure that female users can see their favorite “stars” from the best Angle. In addition, livestreaming platforms can also consider introducing more women’s sports events to satisfy the “appetite” of female users.
On the other hand, the sports information industry can start from content, and introduce sports information content that meets the preferences of female users, such as player gossip, sports fashion, and player status. In addition, sports information platform should be female users against the opening of a community service, in providing female users with communication, share service at the same time, also by the content of the group of women in the community to talk about, to understand their habits and preferences, more help to understand the needs of the female users platform, to establish relevant content or product, is kill two birds with one stone.
In a word, due to historical, cultural and ideological reasons, the sports industry does not treat women equally, which means that boys are preferred to girls. However, with the rise of women’s status and the improvement of living standards, “she economy” has become an important driving force for the development of China’s sports market. Therefore, both sports e-commerce industry, sports live broadcasting industry and sports information industry should recognize the importance of female groups, change the old idea of “preferring boys over girls”, and increase corresponding services to change the single gender problem of sports users. In this way, Internet sports is complete.
Article/Liu Kuang public number, ID: Liukuang110, this article first kuang Venture capital network