At night, the football stadium in Dongfeng Sports Park is brightly lit, and the members of the HuddlerGirls of the Beijing Women's Waist Flag Football Club are sandwiched between two Frisbee communities to train. "Our weekend slots are basically empty." Yan Shen, the head of the society, told Lazy Bear Sports. The same enthusiasm is not only in Beijing, Zhang Yu, general manager of Wuhan Rugby Club Full Speed Sports, also said: "I feel that the trend of waist flag rugby outbreak is very obvious, and it ferments very quickly. ”
The staggered mix of the two sports at East Maple Sports Park seems to imply that flag football is becoming the next "frisbee sport.".
The data of the Little Red Book can also prove that the waist flag football is out of the circle. Since the third quarter of last year, flag football has become popular among young people and has gradually become popular, compared with October 2021, the number of notes related to flag football on the Little Red Book in March 2022 increased by 5990%, while the search index increased by 4279%.
The soil is ready
Flag football is a simplified version of American football – the impression of fully armed rugby is American equipment rugby. Compared with the formal equipment rugby sport, waist flag rugby is a "non-collision" sport, in simple terms, the game is not allowed to hold people and push people, the defender pulls down the belt of the ball-holding attacking player belt flag, the attack is blocked, similar to the name-tearing game. Low confrontation means that flag football does not need to be equipped with the heavy protective gear of rugby, and also gets rid of the high demands of official rugby matches on the venue, lowering the threshold of participation, so it is easier to popularize.
The origins of waist flag football in China can be traced back to the "Apple Seed Program". In 2003, as the branch of the world's largest professional football league NFL in China, NFL China began to hold "Apple Seed Program" training camps in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou from time to time, training college students to become NFL flag football coaches and referees, and these "apple seeds" were subsequently sown throughout the country and became the backbone of the development of rugby everywhere. Waist flag football has been accumulating the foundation in a silent way, and Jia Hengxuan, senior director of NFL China, told Lazy Bear Sports that after years of accumulation, the sport has become the soil for small hits.
Why can flag football be on fire?
Ding Ye, secretary general of the Shanghai Rugby Association, told Lazy Bear Sports that he sensed that the waist flag rugby began to catch fire last summer: "Suddenly a lot of people told me that they wanted to sign up for the waist flag rugby activity, and even asked if they could open the back door through our greeting to let them participate in the event. One of the communities we worked with, which used to be active once a week, has now been changed to 7 times a week, and many people still can't sign up. ”
Communities and clubs are at the heart of a sport's development, and the number of them is an intuitive indicator of the level of a sport's development. Yan Shen noticed, "In the past month or two, some waist flag clubs have suddenly appeared. Zhang Yu's rugby community is also expanding rapidly, and at present, Full Speed Sports has a total of 4 rugby WeChat groups in Wuhan, and the total number of communities has approached 1700 people.
Shanghai is one of the first cities in China to develop a flag football community. In 2020, the Shanghai Rugby Association was inspired by other niche sports communities to start cultivating local waist flag rugby clubs and running communities together with local rugby community LifeInTheHuddle. With the development of the activity, the waist flag rugby gradually spread in Shanghai, and explored a set of waist flag rugby community operation model, which was quickly used by the community in other cities to promote the spread of the sport throughout the country. At present, according to NFL China's data, there are about 45 domestic flag football communities and societies, and about 150 community institutions and off-campus training institutions.
Little Red Book is undoubtedly the best carrier of these communities, its users are extremely energetic, very open-minded and willing to try new things, generally love sports, yearn for healthy life, and flag football is playing a new connector role.
As for why the waist flag rugby suddenly accelerated? Industry insiders believe that first of all, related to the rise of frisbee, the public's enthusiasm for outdoor sports after the epidemic has rapidly fermented, 2021 can be said to be the outbreak of outdoor niche sports, in addition, the trend community platform such as Xiaohongshu also plays an indispensable role.
According to the "2022 Future Consumption Atlas" recently released by Xiaohongshu, in 2021, the number of "outdoor" related notes published in Xiaohongshu increased by 2.06 times, and one of the most popular sports is undoubtedly frisbee. Frisbee movement because of its own characteristics and the promotion of platforms such as Xiaohongshu quickly out of the circle, even now, the momentum of frisbee still has no intention of decay. To some extent, the flag rugby is taking advantage of the momentum, and the overall rise of outdoor niche sports has led to the leapfrog development of this sport. (Extended reading: Frisbee is not only a toy, but also a small and beautiful business)
"After the Frisbee caught fire last year, everyone's sense of smell suddenly became sharper." Yan Shen said. Insiders began to use the frisbee as a benchmark, this expectation is not unreasonable, after all, frisbee has, waist flag football almost all have.
First of all, in terms of gameplay, waist flag rugby is quite similar to frisbee, in fact, the predecessor of the mainstream extreme frisbee game is actually called "frisbee rugby", which is a game developed after absorbing the rules of rugby and other sports, so the two are related.
Secondly, players of niche sports such as frisbee are mainly divided into two kinds of mentality, namely people with social needs and people looking for fresh sports experiences, and these needs can undoubtedly be met by waist flag football. Flag rugby has a strong social attribute, and at the same time, as a niche import sport, waist flag rugby has a strong trend attribute like frisbee. "Some of the people who play the waist flag are from the frisbee, and some are the original gym users or sports enthusiasts, the label of gym sports masters is not differentiated and personality enough, if the label of rugby masters is added, it suddenly becomes different, plus the degree of marketization of rugby in the world is very high, representing fashion and trend culture, so young people are willing to take rugby as their additional attributes." Ding Ye said.
Not only are the two similar, but flag football even has its own advantages. Behind the waist flag rugby is the blessing of the mass foundation of rugby. According to the data of CCTV Sofrey's research, the current national rugby interest population is about 19 million people, which means that the future development of waist flag rugby will have a high upper limit; in addition, from the perspective of gameplay, rugby pays attention to strategy and cooperation, known as chess in sports, compared to the frisbee, there is more room for sharing, learning and advancement, which can continuously provide players with advanced pleasure and stronger competitive attributes.
On the other hand, it is very friendly to novices, especially girls, compared to frisbee, waist flag rugby compatibility is stronger, people with different physical conditions can find the right position in the lineup, "a lot of girls play frisbee, at the beginning of running three or five times can not catch, she may take a picture next time will not come, the experience may not be very good." Ding Ye said, "It doesn't matter if you can't run fast or jump high when playing waist flag football, you can use flexibility to run the ball to attack, which is very attractive to girls." If a community doesn't have girls, boys may go play soccer or basketball. "Therefore, many outdoor sports communities will also introduce waist flag rugby and frisbee to complement each other to enhance the stickiness of the community; at the same time, waist flag football is also entering the campus, and now this sport has become a compulsory subject in the Shanghai Secondary School Entrance Examination, with a certain social foundation."
Little Red Book "hatches" the waist flag rugby
Because of these characteristics, the Little Red Book aimed at the waist flag rugby. And the crowd of waist flag rugby and the crowd portrait of the little red book are highly matched. As of October 2021, the number of monthly active users of Xiaohongshu exceeded 200 million, of which more than 70% of the young people after 90, 50% of users came from first- and second-tier cities, users are more sensitive to new trends and new ways of playing, and are the dominant group of future consumption, and now Xiaohongshu has become a high-value, high-impact, high-activity "three high-people" gathering place, which is actually an important reason for Xiaohongshu to attach importance to waist flag football strategically.
From a practical point of view, Xiaohongshu has long had a successful case of "incubating" niche movements. Combing the process of the frisbee online circle will find that the role played by the Little Red Book is almost decisive, and now the Little Red Book has become the main traffic gathering place of the Frisbee Movement, and many communities regard the Little Red Book as the most important publicity channel.
The reason why Xiaohongshu can become an "incubator" of niche movements, in addition to the blessing of huge traffic, is also because Xiaohongshu has fully excavated the trend attributes of these movements. The Small Red Book can search for a large number of Frisbee "blockbusters", ask photographers to take pictures and then share their own Little Red Book numbers, which has become the "traffic password" of niche sports communities. In the Little Red Book, you can also see the relevant equipment planting and dressing guide, these more trendy and everyday content, increase the contact between ordinary people and frisbee movement, so it is not surprising that the frisbee can borrow the Little Red Book out of the circle.
In the process of promoting frisbee, Xiaohongshu also explored a set of methodologies for systematically "incubating" niche movements out of the circle. Taking frisbee as an example, the first is "gathering people", Xiaohongshu will let creators, clubs, and official institutions all settle in in a short period of time; on the basis of "gathering people", the content can grow rapidly, and Xiaohongshu will quickly establish a rich and practical niche sports content system including visual planting and popular science teaching in the station; at the same time, Xiaohongshu is good at excavating the cool and interesting side of the niche sports, and will accurately distribute the high-quality content produced; the popularization and promotion of a sport will eventually be introduced into the line, so Xiaohongshu will pass through " Sharing the "niche sports experience" online triggers "community interaction" and promotes other users to "offline participation", which in turn will carry out more "online sharing", eventually forming a positive cycle.
Now, Little Red Book is applying this methodology to flag football. On the "gathering people", the NFL waist flag football first Chinese social media account has been settled, the NFL choice and small red book cooperation is also to see the small red book platform influence and the previous "incubation" frisbee and other sports success cases, at the same time the little red book set up the waist flag football league, the domestic waist flag clubs have also announced the entry into the little red book and join the league, the league networked most of the official institutions related to the waist flag rugby.
In terms of content, Xiaohongshu has established a waist flag rugby community to encourage original content, and from March to April this year, Xiaohongshu launched the #Grab the Waist Flag # activity in Little Red Book, collecting content such as waist flag football experience, records, skills and equipment planting grass, and rewarding selected notes, so that the content ecology in the station is further enriched.
In addition, in order to complete the closed loop of online sharing to offline participation, Little Red Book Sports cooperated with the Light Stadium Club to carry out the "Joker Night" waist flag activity, and the FUS Club co-organized the "Spring Garden Party", and the Little Red Book Sports xHuddler held the Waist Flag Rugby League, which invited the head masters and professional athletes of various vertical categories to use their influence to drive the waist flag rugby out of the circle. After a series of online and offline operations, Xiaohongshu has now become the main traffic entrance of the waist flag rugby.
▲ Akhnar, a popular athlete at the Beijing Winter Olympics, and Xiaohongshu da ren participated in the waist flag rugby activity.
Although flag football is still a minority as a sport and is far from mature in terms of the four business pillars of competition, copyright, sponsorship and franchising, this immaturity also means great opportunities. And flag football is also ushering in opportunities internationally. The NFL recently announced at its annual general meeting that it plans to attract 50 million new audiences worldwide over the next 10 years. To that end, the NFL is trying to send the sport into the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. In response to this plan, NFL China began to plan the development of waist flag football as a whole last year, with the goal of establishing a pyramid of rugby participation in China in 5-10 years. NFL China has restarted the "Apple Seed Program" coach training program this year, and will provide brand licensing, faculty and training methods to suitable education platform partners to jointly develop the campus football market. To this end, NFL China is also bound to use platforms such as Xiaohongshu as an important channel for communication with the potential audience of waist flag football. If the waist flag rugby enters the Olympic Games in the future, it will play a huge role in promoting its development in China.
On the one hand, it is the joint blessing of a number of major benefits, on the other hand, the next support of social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, the development of waist flag football will undoubtedly usher in an important period of opportunity.
▲Little Red Book Sports established the "Little Red Book Waist Flag Alliance" and helped the club to land in Little Red Book, and jointly promote the waist flag rugby through the in-depth cooperation of platforms and institutions.
Disclaimer: This article is original by Lazy Bear Sports and may not be reproduced without authorization.