Crazy Sports recorded revenue of $286 million in 1H2022 with YoY growth of 25%, Platform users growth of nearly 50%

EQS Newswire / 25/08/2022 / 19:00 UTC+8

Crazy Sports Group Limited

瘋狂體育集團有限公司

(Incorporated in Bermuda with limited liability)
(Stock Code: 82)

 

Crazy Sports recorded revenue of $286 million in 1H2022 with

YoY growth of 25%, Platform users growth of nearly 50%

 Achieving smart upgrade of its business with metaverse strategy

Capturing strong growth from the upcoming Qatar World Cup

 

(Hong Kong, 25 August 2022) – Crazy Sports Group Limited (“Crazy Sports”, together with its subsidiaries, the “Group”, stock code: 82) announced its interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2022 (the “Period”).

The Group adheres to the nation’s strategy to become a sports powerhouse and to deeply cultivate into the trillion-worth digital sports entertainment industry racetrack. Leveraging its unique massive sports users’ database, and utilising big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology to empower traditional sports events, Crazy Sports has established the ‘‘Events + Quizzes, IP + Sports Games, Crazy Red Insights + Lottery Sales’’ as its core pathway to materialise its digital sports strategy. In 2022, the Group accelerated the development of its sports digital entertainment business and launched its metaverse games and digital collectibles platform, Crazy Sports strives to attract sports and culture enthusiasts as well as the younger generation to co-create and participate in the multi-dimensional, real-time and dynamic sports digital entertainment platform. 

Interim results highlights:

  • The Group’s revenue grew by 25.1% year-on-year (“YoY”) to HK$286.5 million, and profit attributable to owners of the Company reached HK$49.2 million. The total number of platform users grew by 48.8% to 57.9 million from June 2021, with monthly active users totalled 3.37 million, up 28.6%. The growth in user base and revenue was attributable to the Group’s precise market positioning, actively seizing opportunities in the trillion-worth digital sports entertainment market in China, and successfully creating an all-round online and offline sports community ecosystem that aligns the integrated traffic flow and diversified commercialisation positioning.
  • To further expand its presence in digital entertainment business and to attract the participation of “Generation Z” users, the Group has chosen sports and game as its entry point and launched its self-developed digital collectibles platform “Qiankun Digital Collectibles” in April 2022, offering users with richer online cultural experience through its premium IP strategy and distribution of themed digital collectibles. The platform also completed a crossover with the Group’s signature product “Ace Soccer”, paving the way for its development in the next internet era. The platform has demonstrated satisfactory progress in the first half of the year, contributing a revenue of HK$20.0 million to the Group in the quarter immediately after initial launch.
  • Leveraging its outstanding digital innovation and R&D capabilities, the Group actively pursued various smart upgrades for its products. In 2022, Crazy Red Insights continued to upgrade its Red Insights’ AI big-data model, and saw good growth momentum supported by its AI big data + content + users + channel capabilities. At the same time, major upgrades to a number of its games have been made while introducing new expansion packs.
  • By conforming to the latest trend in the sports culture industry, the Group puts effort into diversifying businesses, as well as to improving its operational efficiency and optimising cost effectiveness in various business segments. In 2022, the Group is committed to improve cost control and enhancing expense management measure, with the ultimate objective to improve its capital returns. As of the end of June 2022, the Group’s administrative expense to sales ratio decreased by 4.75 percentage points YoY to 13.4%.

 

The following is an operational review of the five main business areas: 

Paid sports information platform “Crazy Red Insights APP” Excellent growth momentum in revenue by enhancing smart upgrades, make ready for the upcoming World Cup

Revenue of the paid sports information platform increased by 42.0% to HK$96.7 million as compared with 2021. In the first half of 2022, while the R&D of AI big data ‘‘Red Insights Model’’ (紅單模型) was underway, Crazy Red Insights continued its upgrade. The 4.0 version of big data ‘‘Red Insights Model’’ was developed by well-known analyst teams in China and its core algorithm leans on real-time dynamic data and event information. The key highlight of the design is to help users to solve tedious data and to run statistics and computation of data and information, among which, ‘‘Big Head Index’’ (大頭指數), one of its flagship products, was favoured by users since its initial launch into the market.

With the top five major football leagues and major sports events were held back-to-back in 2022, users turned their attention to tournaments and sports lottery. Leveraging Crazy Red Insights’ strong matrix of ‘‘AI big data + content + users + channels’’, taking advantage of the growth of lottery sales in the first half of 2022, and lots of intensive sports events on the agenda, Crazy Red Insights sustained promising growth in 2022.

Crazy Red Insights has kickstarted the World Cup strategy in the first half of 2022. At present, Crazy Red Insights has made substantial investment in product upgrade and users’ promotion. Leveraging the resources from China Soccer Lottery and Crazy Red Insights community, its platform has successfully launched a multi-channeled interactive community for lottery users. Crazy Red Insights is currently working with over 40 existing channels to deepen collaborations, join forces to create content matrix, and forge ahead with World Cup Alliance. No doubt that the 2022 Qatar World Cup will be the center of attention in the worldwide sports community this year, and will certainly attract vast number of sports lottery users and stimulate sports lottery sales and strong demand for paid sports lottery information services.

Sports social interactive platform “Crazy Sports APP” Optimising core contents of live sportcast

Revenue of the sports social interactive platform slightly decreased by 5.6% to HK$31.1 million as compared with 2021. Crazy Sports’ live sportscast operation center caught high attention of sports users during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games; when Chinese team won AFC Women’s Asian Cup, and the Chinese Men’s World Cup Qualification. Crazy Sports, through interactive live sportcast streaming, increased users’ activities during the temporary closure of sports lottery during Spring Festival, promoted user retention, gained recognition from users, and increased the payment conversion during live broadcast. The growth in paying users was mainly attributable to our original and exclusive contents, as well as the effective marketing mix to elicit new users.

Sports events and interactive quizzing entertainment platform “Fantasy Sports Events APP” Continuously empowering local sports events

During the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, Fantasy Sports Events platform launched Winter Olympic Games-themed quizzes that include simple, easy and entertaining quizzes about daily focused events and those sports events where Chinese athletes clearly have competitive advantages. A large number of users were attracted to participate. Leveraging the passion for Winter Olympics, Fantasy Sports Events APP successfully enhanced users conversion and monetisation between sports interactive live streaming business, Fantasy Sports Events APP and the ice-snow themed games. In the first half of 2022, Fantasy Sports Events platform continued to have contracts signed with multiple sports events, including soccer, basketball, billiards, e-sports, squash, and Go, among others. A lot of sports events will be re-launched and commenced in 2022, it is believed that the contracts entered and the strategies implemented in advance will bring about some brand new experience for quiz users.

Sports lottery retail services Focus on refining operations to boost business returns

In the first half of 2022, the sports lottery retail services business continued to expand, with revenue increased by 26.7% to HK$6.4 million as compared with 2021. During the Period, the offline physical retail industry was affected by the uncertainties caused by the recurring pandemic across the country, the pace of expansion of Crazy Sports’ lottery new retail business was inevitably dragged. Nonetheless, we always drive operations with data. We are able to precisely improve our network services, enhance refined operation and management in retail stores, and improve the sales efficiency of equipment. The success in modifying the operation strategies has brought about the growth in sports lottery new retail sales and increase in business returns.

Sports and leisure gaming business Major upgrades in multiple games, introducing premium IP games to better meet demand of the younger generation

Revenue of gaming business in first half of the year increased by 7.6% to HK$132.3 million as compared with 2021. Crazy Sports strives to develop premium IP games that attract sports enthusiasts and young users alike. Driven by the ever-lasting users’ passion for long life cycle sports games and the success of the new games, the game business saw steady growth in the first half of 2022. Multiple games such as ‘‘Ace Soccer’’ and “Soccer Manager’’ underwent major updates and new expansion packs were launched. The ice-snow themed game ‘‘Dream Ski 2022’’ and the mythology themed card-based game ‘Genesis: Anthem of Deities’’ were newly released. During the same period, Crazy Sports signed contracts with Meizu and Netease to launch the co-publishing games business. Leveraging Crazy Sports’ long years of competitive edge in platforms publishing and channeled sales, as well as co-publishing premium games selected at platforms, together with the advantageous access to promotion resources from sale channels, Crazy Sports achieved a rapid growth in the revenue of co-publishing games business.

Along with the forthcoming 2022 Qatar World Cup, there are plans to release grand expansion packs for the Group’s landmarked football games with prime focus on World Cup-themed contents in the second half of the year. Soccer games will be identified into the categories of ‘‘soccer e-sports’’, ‘‘management simulation’’, ‘‘card-based game’’ and ‘‘character raising’’ respectively, by that time, the full coverage of soccer games users with different interests will be achieved. Besides, each type of games will launch World Cup-themed events, together with card packs and digital collectibles, with soccer celebrities drawn from Qiankun Digital Collectibles, will definitely bring in a new wave of World Cup passion among soccer fans.

Launch of “Qiankun Digital Collectibles” platform as a gateway to metaverse

In April 2022, Qiankun Digital Collectibles, a key digital collectibles platform developed by Crazy Sports Group, was officially launched. As a focus of the Group in metaverse, Qiankun Digital Collectibles is built with blockchain technology on BSN national public infrastructure platform and has quickly become a celebrity product within the industry because of its excellent IPs, high-quality 3D digital collectibles, and trustworthy reputation. At present, through working together with official institutions such as Art Exhibitions China, China National Academy of Painting and China Aerospace Museum, Qiankun Digital Collectibles released many excellent and rare digital collectibles. In addition, Qiankun Digital Collectibles joined hands with ‘‘Avatar Mulan’’ (虛擬人沐嵐) and ‘‘Daneng’’ (大能), a well-known journalist, to premiere the ‘‘Just for Domestic Goods’’ (國貨專場) series on the China’s Tiktok platform to promote domestic products. Through the activities in digital collectibles platform, the real economy development has been empowered, which also drew attention in the industry

Mr. Peng Xitao, CEO of Crazy Sports Group, said: “To capture opportunities from the Qatar World Cup, the Group will increase its investment in APP upgrades, while maintaining its sharp focus on its digital sports, metaverse and eSports strategies. Over the years, we have accumulated a portfolio of excellent IPs, as well as expertise in big data, AI, blockchain and digitalisation. We will plan ahead, expand our games offering, enhance our online paid sports information and sports lottery retail services, and achieve operational efficiency and digitalisation, so that we can create synergies among businesses and traffic along the supply chain. At the same time, we will continue to expand our talent pool, improve our cost control, and reach strategic collaborations with more partners, so that we can further strengthen our sports entertainment ecosystem. With the arrival of the Qatar World Cup, we have the utmost confidence that Crazy Sports will reach a new height in its financial performance.”

Dr. Zhang Lijun, Chairman of Crazy Sports Group, said: “This year, because of the pandemic situation, we saw a speed-up in the digitalisation development of the global economy. Crazy Sports has long been committed to contributing to China’s strategy of becoming a major sports powerhouse in the world, and we are delighted to see a breakthrough in the first half of 2022, whether it is on the industry or on our business. In the case of Crazy Sports, it continues to uphold its sports digitalisation strategy, empowering industry development through technological innovation, so that we can go one step further.

I am very happy that we have become an innovator and facilitator in the latest digital economy. As we continue our journey in metaverse and digital collectibles, sports, we believe we will become more profitable, and hence, much more valuable as an enterprise. Those who are forward-looking enough would find us as a hidden gem that will shine in the future, and our capability will support our development to go beyond the existing China, creating better returns for all of our stakeholders!”

25/08/2022 Dissemination of a Financial Press Release, transmitted by EQS Group via SEAPRWire.com.
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

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