By Puja Gupta
Another dreadful result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is that the sports calendar of 2020 has seen all major events either cancelled or postponed.
Sports enthusiasts have been left with nothing but reliving old matches, playing e-sports and interacting with fellow sports fans as a way to keep their spirit alive. Resulting in an increase in their activity and engagement on sports community platforms like Rooter, says its CEO and founder Piyush Kumar.
"Our user growth has been tremendous in last three months. We have more than 3 million active users (7 million overall users) who are spending close to 20 minutes everyday," claims Kumar.
"People are reliving old matches and engaging with their fellow sports fans via live chat and discussions. We have also seen an increase in old-school games like book cricket and Ludo, which are shifting to the virtual world now," he adds.
"We have also seen an increase in old-school games like book cricket and Ludo, which are shifting to the virtual world now," says Rooter, CEO and founder Piyush Kumar. Pixabay
Founded in 2016, the idea behind Rooter was to build a technology product that will connect fans with each other and create a strong community. "We initially made this community using live games during sports matches and later pivoted to content where now fans chat, create content and go live with audio/ video to connect with fans," Kumar tells IANSlife.
Sports fans get a dedicated and personalised sports feed as per their sports consumption. "It's a never ending set of information on sports in multiple languages and across videos, images, polls etc. Sports lovers also get fastest and detailed scorecard of all matches across cricket, football and kabaddi in 10 Indian languages," he informs.
Another feature of Rooter is the live audio/ video session that allows users to go online and do commentary, debates, quizzes, polls, games and connect with other fans. "It is our most engaged feature," he says.
The company this year aims to create a new stream of content through e-sports and gaming. "Our user base is spending an equal amount of time watching sports and consuming e-sports, playing games and we believe we can provide a great product that will serve them right content and connect them with other fans/ gamers. We also want to build a strong user monetization feature thereby focusing on creating commerce on top of high engaged content we offer." (IANS)