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“Three or four years ago, there were no strangers in the frisbee circle.” Su Su (pseudonym), a frisbee coach with seven years of “disc age”, told the “Daily Economic News” reporter that in recent years, the frisbee’s appearance has attracted a large number of players. , “I hear the name of a new Frisbee organization almost every day these days.”
Just like Su Su’s personal experience, in the past year, especially in the spring of 2022, Frisbee, a niche sport, successfully flew out of the original circle, occupying the headlines of social media and the offline fields. People are happy to throw the thin and light disc in their hands into perfect or imperfect arcs, and then chase them back. “Happiness is the Frisbee!” they said.
In addition to cycling, Lu Chong, camping, etc., Frisbee is also one of the “new urban sports” that young people are obsessed with in the post-epidemic era.
With the proliferation of Frisbee fans, the Frisbee club has grown rapidly and expanded on a large scale. From Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and other cities where Frisbee was first popular in China, the boom has gradually swept across many second-tier cities such as Zhengzhou, Dalian and Suzhou.
On the evening of August 2, 2022, Chongqing citizens participated in the Frisbee competition. Image source: IC photo-1536783669942288415
According to incomplete statistics from the Frisbee content platform “Panpanhuan”, as of May 3, 2022, there were 157 college Frisbee teams and 206 Frisbee clubs and communities nationwide.
Behind the “frisbee fever”, the life cycle of the frisbee club is not so optimistic. According to Susu’s observation, since the beginning of this year, Beijing’s Frisbee clubs have grown at an alarming rate, but there are not a few that have quietly disappeared. “Most organizations can’t survive for three months.”
Susu told reporters that most of the frisbee clubs are currently non-profit, mainly to organize daily frisbee activities or team up to play games.
The good news is that it is reported that the State Sports General Administration will host the first Chinese Frisbee League in Xi’an from August 6th to 7th.
However, will the planning of the “Guozihao” event bring more vitality to the Frisbee club?
In addition to the Frisbee club, the “frisbee fever” has also brought heat to the equipment market such as Frisbee, sportswear, football shoes, and Frisbee gloves, and even made the football field with a high vacancy rate also hot.
As this summer’s fashionable sports vane, can Frisbee retain the hearts of these wind chasers? What kind of business will the Frisbee Club become? How long will the new opportunities brought by the “frisbee economy” to related industries last?
The Frisbee movement that “will definitely catch fire”
What gave Frisbee the first chance to get out of the circle in China should be a joke by talk show actor Xiao Bei during his performance in October last year, “What’s the point of playing with a dog, it’s better to be a dog than to play with a dog.”
At the time, most Chinese were ignorant of the “addictiveness” of this niche sport.
“Addictive”, this is the key word that many Frisbee enthusiasts unanimously mentioned when describing their first experience of Frisbee.
Du Duqi (pseudonym), a post-95s boy, told the “Daily Economic News” reporter that he first saw a foreign teacher playing Frisbee with some students when he was in college in 2016, and he joined with the idea of learning spoken language, “Whoever knows will enter It fell into the pit of the Frisbee, fell into it, and went up.”
There are many Frisbee enthusiasts like Duduqi in China. Statistics from the National Frisbee Sports Promotion Committee show that in 2021, the number of people participating in Frisbee sports in my country will be around 500,000.
Not only the offline green field, but also the major online social platforms were quickly occupied by the sharp increase of Frisbee fans. In Xiaohongshu, there are more than 350,000 notes about Frisbee; related topics such as “frisbee has become a new trend in young people’s social networking”, “frisbee sold by Beijing Guoan Club” and other related topics frequently appear on Weibo’s hot search list; under the topic of “frisbee” The Douyin video has been played 640 million times.
At the same time, in the “Top 10 Life Trends in 2022” report released by Xiaohongshu in January this year, “mountain life” covering popular outdoor activities such as Frisbee, camping, and paddle board is among them.
In April 2022, a group of owners in Qingshui Bay, Hainan, are competing for Frisbee on the grass. Photo by reporter Chen Ronghao
Just like the reason mentioned in this trend report, “urban youth fall in love with mountain life”, more and more data show that Frisbee is completely popular among young people.
The veteran player Su Su did not feel that the explosion of the Frisbee was unexpected.
“When I first came into contact with Frisbee, I knew it would definitely catch fire.” One morning at the end of July, Su Su, who had just finished a Frisbee training class, told a reporter from “Daily Economic News”, “I have played a lot of sports. , there are five characteristics of the movement that can fire, and the Frisbee fits all.”
“The first is fun, a sport that can be popular is bound to make it easier for most people to get happy, and the threshold should not be too high; the second is social, this sport cannot be played alone.” According to him, A frisbee game consists of 14 to 28 players, and the sport is highly social.
In addition, “This sport needs to be able to show itself, that is, you can take photos and videos to send to Moments, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu.” Susu said.
Today, as long as you search for “frisbee” on the Internet, you will find that beautiful photos of Frisbee enthusiasts and wonderful moments in the process exist on every social media platform, and even Frisbee photographers have become the standard for Frisbee bureaus.
Whether a sport has the potential to become a “popular”, from the perspective of organizing activities, it also needs to meet some necessary conditions.
“There must be many single participants in the ‘Internet celebrity’ campaign, so that the organizer can lower the unit price per customer, and the lower price per customer can be accepted by more circles of consumers, allowing more people to participate in the campaign.” Susu said, “The last point is that this activity can be iterative, constantly creating new experiences for players, such as the evolution of escape room from the original combination lock to the setting of complex organs, to the addition of NPCs, etc.”
Regarding the reason for Frisbee’s emergence, Dong Xiaoya, the consulting manager of CIC Consulting, also told the “Daily Economic News” reporter in a WeChat interview that the recurrence of the epidemic was also one of the driving forces for the explosion of Frisbee. “After the epidemic, travel was restricted, and people turned to outdoor activities to find the feeling of sweating. Coupled with people’s attention to physical health, Frisbee has naturally become the best choice to meet everyone’s needs after the epidemic.”
Frisbee Club: “Most don’t survive 3 months”
When people were gathered by the sport of Frisbee, the Frisbee Club came into being.
According to incomplete statistics from the Frisbee content platform “Panpanhuan”, as of May 3, 2022, there were 206 Frisbee clubs and communities nationwide, of which Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou occupied the top three seats in the total number of Frisbee clubs.
Regarding this rough statistical result, he said that the actual number should be much higher, “Many teams I know are not in the statistical list, and to exaggerate, I can hear the name of a new Frisbee organization almost every day recently. “
Whether the number of frisbee clubs is accurate or not is one thing. In the “frisbee fever” that young people have created, the frisbee clubs are emerging and growing like weeds.
In Beijing, TOPWORK Frisbee Club is one of them. From the first contact with Frisbee in April this year to the opening of a Frisbee club, it took only more than a month for Liu Hang, the manager of TOPWORK.
“The reason is that a friend took me to play a game in another club, and I took this opportunity to understand the main expenses of the Frisbee club.” Liu Hang recalled the opportunity to open the club, “After thinking about its economic benefits, I think I also You can start a club.”
Liu Hang introduced to reporters that the club’s expenses are mainly the venue, coaches, and photography. In the absence of domestic Frisbee development, the activities of Frisbee fans mainly meet the demand for lawns by renting football pitches.
According to the location of the venue, Liu Hang set the ticket price for each Frisbee game in the range of 78 to 88 yuan. “The event is organized from Wednesday to Sunday, and it usually lasts for 2 hours at a time. Some people may play the game. If you go for three or four hours, you will have to pay extra.”
Since the establishment of the club, Liu Hang found that in just two months, the number of participants in the club has rapidly grown from 20 to 30 people to 3 groups of 500 people, reaching a scale of 1,500 people.
Susu also mentioned that, as far as he knows, the largest Frisbee club in Beijing has about 5,000 people. “There are 2 to 3 events held every day, with 20 to 30 people per session, and the venue fee is at most 1,200 yuan per session. In fact, it only takes as long as Four or five people can run this club, and the monthly income is very impressive.”
“However, there may only be one or two such large clubs. It belongs to the winner-take-all model, and there are only a few who can make big money.” Compared with large clubs, Susu believes that small and medium-sized clubs like TOPWORK Frisbee Club are the absolute best. “At present, most of the small and medium Frisbee clubs are not-for-profit. They drive fast and fall fast. Many Frisbee clubs in Beijing have disappeared.”
He talked about the example around him. A friend of his set up a Frisbee club in February this year, and in less than 5 months, the club has grown from more than 40 people to more than 400 people.
“But managing a group of 50 people is completely different from managing a group of 500 people.” Susu said, “And as an organizer, you often take on more risks than benefits, such as booking venues, preparing for the effort of early material consumption, members in the Injury issues at events, etc.”
He showed reporters a screenshot of the club’s WeChat group chat. On July 1, the manager of the club said in this group of 414 people, “This group is temporarily closed, and we will notify you of new situations in time.” At the same time, there are also The new members who came here expressed regret over the suspension of the club’s activities.
In the face of the disappearance of these frisbee clubs, Susu believes that the reason is the lack of core competitiveness. He said that the frisbee club can attract a lot of first-time players in the early stage, but how to retain these players is a problem that every frisbee club needs to face one day.
“It’s easy to make your first money running a Frisbee club, but if you don’t have a good coach or some other good reason for people to stay, why do they keep choosing to play with you? So, the Frisbee club’s survival is a big wave. process, and most organizations don’t survive it for three months.”
This problem was also placed in front of Liu Hang. He is considering opening a Frisbee training course in the club. “It is still in the process of exploration. The qualifications of Frisbee coaches will be screened, and they will be regularly assessed.”
As a qualified Frisbee coach, Su Su now teaches two clubs, including beginner courses for novice and professional training courses for competition teams. The average fee for one class is 500 yuan, and the total number of classes per week is 2 to 3 times. .
Susu said that special training is an important profit model for the Frisbee Club. Some more mature Frisbee clubs will offer special courses, such as forehand and backhand, arc disc, high-distance disc training, etc.
However, the institutionalization of the qualifications of Frisbee coaches has not kept pace with the popularity of the sport, and it is common for Frisbee coaches to vary in quality. “Some coaches can’t even throw the forehand and backhand well, and they are teaching the students wrongly. This kind of practice will really hurt the whole sport.” Susu said.
Regarding the problem of mixed fish and dragons in the Frisbee circle and the lack of industry standards, Liu Hang mentioned in an interview that the State Sports General Administration will hold a Frisbee League in August. Let more people fall in love with Frisbee.”
It is reported that from August 6th to 7th, the first China Frisbee League will be held in Xi’an. A total of 12 teams will participate, and the first place will receive a bonus of 25,000 yuan.
In this regard, Duduqi told reporters that the original intention of many clubs was to form a team to play games, “If you don’t create a (club), there will be a loss of personnel, then it will be very troublesome to go out to play games, and you need to form a team with others. team.”
Therefore, in his club, Frisbee participants are divided into four categories: “core players”, “official/potential players”, “ordinary members”, and “hobbyists”. Among them, the closer the participants are to the core players, the lower the fees; correspondingly, the club will have more requirements for their participation and Frisbee level.
Compared with making a profit, under the simpler and purer purpose of playing games, especially the blessing of “national brand” events, perhaps the life cycle of Frisbee clubs will be lengthened as a result.
In addition, in Liu Hang’s view, the demand for Frisbee photography is second only to the special training course for Frisbee.
There is a regular photographer in Liu Hang’s club who “belongs to the core team members”. According to him, the price of Frisbee photography now ranges from 400 yuan to 800 yuan per time, with a follow-up shooting of 2 hours, and the output of about 300 films. The workload is still huge.”
With the hot sale of equipment and the price increase of venues, can Frisbee survive this year?
With more people playing frisbee, the market demand for frisbee will naturally skyrocket.
A number of Frisbee enthusiasts introduced to reporters that the equipment for Frisbee sports is relatively simple, mainly Frisbee. The reporter opened Taobao, Jingdong and other e-commerce platforms and found that the price of Frisbee is mostly between 20 and 100 yuan. “The price difference is mainly due to the different patterns on the disc, and some Frisbees co-branded with other brands will have higher prices.” Liu Hang explained.
Nick (pseudonym), who opened a Frisbee Taobao store in 2008, told the “Daily Economic News” reporter that after the explosion of Frisbee, there were indeed many more buyers, “Our store will grow by 100% this year, and we will be open for business. The amount exceeded 1 million.”
Usually, new users will choose the domestic brand Frisbee because “the price is cheap and easy to buy”.
According to Jiemian News, the domestic well-known Frisbee brand “Yikun Frisbee” will have a revenue of nearly 60 million yuan in 2021, and will basically maintain an annual growth rate of 150% to 200%, of which more than 70% of its product revenue comes from overseas, and its products are exported to 60% of the world. multiple countries and regions.
“Many new players hope that Frisbee is a fashionable sport, so the designs are eye-catching or some imitated designs will sell well. Domestic Frisbees show a situation of ‘judging people by their appearance’, although many businesses and factories have not yet obtained international certification.” Nick said Discuss the status quo in the circle. .
If the uptick in Frisbee sales was predictable, the Frisbee craze has also unexpectedly boosted some industries. For example, the rise of the yoga wear track targeting new middle-class women is unexpected.
According to the observation of Lin Yue, chief consultant of Lingyan Management Consulting, the sales of yoga clothing brands such as Lululemon, Hoka, and Desante have increased greatly. Brands such as Lululemon and Jiaoxia are also organizing Frisbee activities in the brand community in order to seize the Frisbee clothing market. In addition, light sportswear brands such as Jiaoma and COCOFIT have also attracted the attention of capital.
On July 26, 2022, the Frisbee Bureau of Fuzhou Feizifang Frisbee Community was held. Image source: IC photo-1531792943716106305
Regarding this phenomenon, Lin Yue analyzed that because many Frisbee fans are women, and with social factors and attributes, “beauty” has also become an important appeal in Frisbee sports, so it is closely related to social, image, and sports professionals. The peripheral products related to the field have the opportunity to be moved by the Frisbee tropics.
In addition to equipment, the Frisbee venue has also ushered in a booking boom. Since the popularity of Frisbee, there have been frequent reports of football fans and Frisbee fans fighting for offline venues on social media.
Susu told the “Daily Economic News” reporter that most venue operators in Beijing have increased rental fees for Frisbee activities, “generally increased by 15% to 20%.” In July, someone in his circle of friends also posted that from August 1, a stadium in Beijing will be adjusted to 600 yuan per 2 hours for sports other than football, and 1,100 yuan for a 7-a-side stadium.
“The reason for the price increase given by the venue is very simple, because there are many Frisbee people. In fact, this reason also makes sense. Now it is a seller’s market after all.” Susu said.
Although the sport of Frisbee and the surrounding industries are hot, Susu is a little worried: Can Frisbee survive this winter?
“It’s only August, and many clubs that have just started this year have disappeared. Wait until winter, and many people may not want to go out to play. Then, how many clubs will exist by the spring of next year, or whether the sport of Frisbee is still popular? uncertain.”
Susu’s worry is not unreasonable. The Qixinbao industry chain database shows that as of June 30, 2022, the total number of surviving companies related to Frisbee exceeded 320. Compared with 295 in 2018, the total surviving growth rate in the past five years was only 8%.
And among these more than 320 enterprises, more than 50% belong to the manufacturing industry, which is concentrated in the upstream of the industry. It can be seen that the low threshold of the manufacturing industry means that most Frisbee companies do not have their own barriers, and still focus on small profits but quick turnover.
Perhaps, this also explains why when the Frisbee is hot, the capital has little action. According to Qixinbao statistics, in the past five years, only about 10 Frisbee-related companies have traces of capital. The investment community previously reported that many investors said that although the Frisbee became popular, they still took a wait-and-see attitude towards its profit model and industry prospects.
Dong Xiaoya also talked to reporters about the prospect of Frisbee sports. She believes that Frisbee has sufficient possibilities to become an enduring sport, but short-lived phenomena such as “net celebrity”, “shooting”, and “punch card”, due to the rapid popularity of Frisbee, are closely related to this sport. binding.
“After washing the dishes, how many true love players will stay, it still takes time to see. But from another perspective, is it a good phenomenon that the trend of Internet celebrities has begun to rely on outdoor sports?” she said.
Cover image source: IC photo
