For the fans of English Premier League (EPL) giants Manchester United and Chelsea, the fun may begin a bit earlier before the new season kicks off in mid-August.
Before their teams come head-to-head on the turf on EPL, the fans in the State will lock horns in a social media contest thanks to the launch of Fun2, a sports-centric video-driven social media app developed by a startup, in Kerala next month.
Fans can create videos on their teams and post them with a hashtag with each view, like, share, and comment to generate points. Besides, the contestants can invite friends through referral code bringing in a separate set of points. A leader board will display the top 10 participants at any point.
"Four of the five contests marking our Kerala launch will be based on football considering its immense popularity in the State," said Manoj Bhanu, one of the four co-founders of Fun2 and director of operations. The startup has developed a Malayalam football anthem and enlisted 100-odd young freestyle footballers for generating videos on their skills to mark the launch. The app comes embedded with a music library of 150 copyright-free BGMs of 20 seconds duration for users.
Fun2 has launched its Hindi version focused on cricket in Uttar Pradesh in April. "Despite the hiccups posed by the second wave of the pandemic, we managed to clock 4.50 lakh downloads since then. We plan to seize the space for an independent sports-centric social media platform in Malayalam. We plan to further bolster our activities going forward," said Mr. Bhanu.
That Kerala has the second highest internet penetration in the country, nearly 1.80 crore social media accounts and a targeted audience of 13-65 years with access to internet and affinity for sports are among factors that attracted Fun2.
"Notwithstanding the exponential rise in sports-related digital content consumption, there is no social media platform that caters to sports with regularity. Its irregularly bunched up with other content though some kind of sports at the national, international, or neighbourhood-level are happening round the year. We want to plug that hole leveraging the people’s penchant for taking videos, thus maximising the reach of even local talents,” said Mr. Bhanu.
