Watch a sport, and play a game on Rooter

Entrepreneurs interested in the sports segment have to either win more people who enjoy playing a game or try cashing in on viewership. A fortnight ago, this column considered one hard reality sports start-ups in India face – way more people watch sports than play themselves. Rooter, a live sports fan engagement platform, believes that if people make connections on platforms such as Tinder and Facebook, there’s no reason why this wouldn’t work in the context of sports viewership.

“There isn’t a deep understanding of the kind of engagement that can be created with sports fans,” says Piyush, Rooter’s CEO and co-founder.

Actor Boman Irani is said to have come on board as one of Rooter’s angel investors. Last quarter, the company raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Intex Technologies, a fast growing consumer electronic goods and accessories manufacturer. Rooter’s founders are looking for “strategic investors” who “believe in sports”. Piyush says, “Rooter was established to fill one major gap – no one wants to watch sports alone. One way to get fans to participate was to get them to play a game together during a match – for example, a prediction game. We’ve also have short quizzes and there’s a match forum on the platform. It’s like a chat room.” The company claims the first day of IPL 2017 led to a 70 per cent growth in daily users on its platform. Rooter plans to break-even by IPL 2018. Rooter currently claims more than 1.50 lakh on its platform.

Going by reports that live sports TV viewership increased by about 30 per cent over the last two fiscals, Rooter intends to “continue improving the product experience” and add sport categories (at least eight categories in all) by Q2 FY 2017-2018. Roping in strong brands as partners is also part of its game plan. Rooter’s founders think there’s a “golden opportunity” to ‘go global’. Not too long ago, kabaddi found a celebrity ambassador in actor Abhishek Bachchan.

There’s also a little more interest in Indian club football now than ever before. But Piysuh hits the nail on the head when he talks of a long-standing challenge in the Indian market.

“One of the reasons sports isn’t that big in India is that we’re too focussed on cricket. But there’s so much opportunity with niche sports. We could host World Cup football or the Olympics if the market is created in India,” he says.

COMMENT NOW