Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RunIN (THE 1ST INTERNATIONAL UNIQUE SOCIAL ECOSYSTEM CONNECTING ATHLETS, APPS,PRODUCTS AND COMPANIES AROUND THE SPORT SECTOR.) Reporting period: 2017-01-01 to 2017-06-30 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project New technologies, their implementation in our day to day and the close relationship to sports and to the activity tracking through mobile phones, watches and new wearable devices have created an imposing universe of information, permanent evolution and search of personal growth. An estimate of 50 million Europeans, 12% of the total population, are engaged in running as a way to stay healthy and/or to challenge themselves and there has been a marked surge in running events all over Europe with more people running marathons than ever before. The total consumer expenditure per year is calculated in 9.596.363.000€ in Europe. This represents an average of 192€ per runner per year, a market with an enormous value but with significant needs. The audience demands a better quality of service received, purchasing experience as well as more detailed and personalised information, while organisers require ad-hoc digital tools to improve their management and fulfil the audience satisfaction. There is a lack of technological solutions focusing on the overall ecosystem around the sports’ sector and the business opportunities arising.RunIN solves the actual problem that sporty people and vendors face when looking for information, tickets/products/equipment or consumers respectively as there is no site of reference and it is all scattered today.. RunIN connects and integrates different vertical services related to running, biking and triathlon through a unique, usable, social and friendly ecosystem that allows monetizing this huge market since consumers easily find what they look for and vendors can also reach consumers.RunIN will disrupt the existing sports sector by changing the current business paradigm taking into account new opportunities arising from having an unique “Sport Identity” and stimulating under one single platform a more collaborative and social interaction between the different stakeholders and consumers. Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far During SME instrument phase 1, we have focused in our Euripean expansion over Germany, France, The Netherlands, Italy and UK. We successfully tested our business model across our key partners/customers (making agreements) and users. We offer a win-win deal to competitions organizers allowing them to acquire customers to their events. We invested in our customer acquisition strategy: We have 50.000 followers. 20.000 are active users with an average ticket of 20 euros. This volume has grown by 200%. According with these metrics, we expect to acquire 1,6M users by 2018 and more than 6M users by 2020, decreasing the cost of acquiring new users, due to economies of scale.We completed a SWOT Analysis and Risk Assessment, our conclusions are: External analysis: Favorable. The good habits (including sport and running) will enhance by the private and public entity across Europe. Also, the digital transform is a key driver. People use most of the time tech in their lives, including when they are playing sports or training. The results of the market and internal analysis: - Tech Obsolescence: The likely obsolescence of the product must be considered as a risk. The measure to mitigate it: RunIN ecosystem design will take into account the needed scalability to arrive to the market first. The achievement of additional investment/funds will allow speeding the market arrival and expansion.- Market Adoption: Clients might be reluctant to adopt the solution at the beginning. RunIN already tested & validated different vertical solutions. Customers’ needs have been collected.- Competitiveness - Competitiveness of the solution. The competitiveness will be ensured by devoting resources to watch over the evolution of the market and act accordingly, and, of course, having an ambitious roadmap to go beyond competitors and integrating them into the unique ecosystem- Customer acquisition - Low customer acquisition. There are many partial solutions to the users. Our efforts should be focusing on promotion to enhance our user acquisition. Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) RunIN contributes to reach European and global challenges not only in the sport industry but also in the sense of developing an European Digital single market breaking horizons limitation while bringing to business, society and governments benefits from digital tools. Of course, RunIN will contribute to invigorate the cooperation among the stakeholders in this industry and is a way to support and engage people by promoting sport, physical activity and a healthy lifestyle.The financial and organizational requirements for commercial exploitation are mainly foreseen to scale up to other countries and demonstrate the potential of the tool but also for the product further development and implementation. Hence, as a conclusion, the estimated funding need for the next round of investment would be around 3,7M€, and would be of great importance for the continuity of the project to support the capital expenditures in IT, marketing and market introduction, as well as to support the internationalization plan. minilogo-runin.jpg
