Rooter Shifts Focus to Content to Create a Stronger Sports Fan Community

Rooter, India’s biggest Sports Fan Engagement Platform and online sports community has transformed its business model by adding Live and user-generated sports content to the Rooter app. The launch of the Rooter app, which is India’s only user Generated Sports Content Ecosystem, is widely expected to create greater traction by adding more sports enthusiasts to the platform.

Since its launch in 2016, Rooter has hitherto been focusing on building a community of sports fans via live prediction games, match chat forums, quizzes, trivia and news updates. With the latest move, it now seeks to provide customized sports content and comprehensive scorecards in eight vernacular languages. It not only allows them to upload video and audio content but also go live during the matches to comment & analyze for their followers, in its shimmering new avatar.

The central USP of the brand lies in personalizing sports content and lending a voice to millions of fans across sports and gaming. Rooter engages fans with User Generated Live Audio and Video content over different sports and offers a personalized sports feed & Scorecards in 8 Indian languages. It partners a number of technology companies in India to provide Sports Engagement to more than 50mn users on their platforms.

With the number of mobile internet users in India rising to 350MN+ and the number of non-English speaking smartphone users amounting to about 250MN+, the social media sector in the country presents a tremendous 10x growth opportunity with the current $300mn digital advertising market set to reach an astounding $3bn by 2023.

With the current legion of sports content users in India set to double from 330 million viewers in 2018-19 to around 600 million (65% of which are non-English speaking users) in the next couple of years, there arises a prominent void within the industry segment of a pure sports regional content platform that can provide vernacular users with a content experience that is curated specifically to suit their sports need in their preferred languages.

The online sports platform boasts of around 200K daily and 2.5 MN monthly users who dedicate around half an hour every day engaging with a variety of content spanning multiple sporting disciplines such as cricket, football, kabaddi, and gaming. Moreover, the app allows users to go live in its just-launched merged commentary option to create an all-round immersive sporting experience for every fan.

The app also provides a server to server plug-and-play integration that allows their partners to customize and present real-time sports data, content to their user’s satisfaction. As the new content mix of the rooter’s app, features about 85% of user-generated content, it will also include not just international and domestic games and tournaments, but also school and college-level games. The new business model of the company seeks to benefit from the high user monetization witnessed in audio and video content platforms by helping the fantasy platforms acquire users and create engaging content. Rooter will also drive social commerce by addressing the highly untapped sporting merchandise sector in India.

Commenting on the latest product launch, Piyush, Founder and CEO, Rooter, said, “The core mission of Rooter has always been to create a tech platform that will connect fans and create a strong community. We initially provided features around Live Sports Gaming to create the community but pivoted to content once we realized the opportunity to cater to more than 300mn non-english sports fans who are looking for content in their language and are more comfotable with audio and video to express themselves. The traction post this pivot has been very encouraging and we will at 10 mn monthly active users by the mid of 2020. ”

About Rooter:

Rooter is India's biggest Sports Community Platform that is Personalizing Sports Content and giving a voice to millions of fans across sports and gaming. Rooter engages fans with User Generated Live Audio and Video content over different sports and offers a personalized sports feed & Scorecards in 8 Indian languages. Aside from Cricket, Football, and multiple other sports, Rooter also allows gaming fans to do Live Streaming of their games and also share best game videos with other gamers. Rooter was started in 2016 by Piyush and Dipesh Agarwal and have raised funds from IeAD Fund, Venture Catalysts, Anthill Ventures, Boman Irani and a number of angel investors.