Hupu, a leading China online sports community, has raised 1.26 billion RMB ($182M) in the pre-IPO round funding from ByteDance, a Chinese Internet tech giant operating several popular content platforms globally including Toutiao, Tik Tok (Douyin), Lanxiong Sports has learned recently.
·Original passage (Chinese version): 虎撲獲pre-IPO輪12.6億元融資，投資方是字節跳動
On 6th. June, sources from Hupu confirmed the deal exclusively to Lanxiong Sports. This round of funding is the largest amount of money raised by Hupu since its founding in 2004. Meanwhile, the investment will mark its milestone for ByteDance in the sports industry.
Earlier this year, Hupu rebooted the procedure of IPO, which was unveiled by Shanghai Securities Regulatory Bureau in March. And source has also confirmed that Hupu’s capital strategy, which searches for independent IPO, has been supported by ByteDance. However, it’s not yet clear what changes the funding will bring to the current stakeholder structure of Hupu. Cheng Hang, Hupu’s co-founder and CEO, is now actually holding 44.056% share of the company by his own and two of his subsidiary companies.
Hupu maintains a good relationship with ByteDance for a long time. Before the funding deal, ByteDance successfully landed several top European sports IPs on its social media content platforms including Toutiao, Douyin (Tik Tok), etc., which is rendered by a Hupu’s sports marketing subcompany. Last November, after ByteDance landed the NBA short-form mobile content rights, Hupu transferred the video links in its online community to the website of Xigua Video, another video content platform owned by ByteDance.
Recent years, ByteDance has been accelerating its business in sports industry by landing short-form mobile content rights from several top sports right holders including NBA, ITTF, China Volleyball League（CVL） and WWE. Additionally, ByteDance’s Toutiao has also attained partnership with CBA, UFC, Premier League, La Liga, PGA Tour and other sports IPs in the forms of either content or branding.
All the sports resources acquired by ByteDance constitute its own sports content ecosystem. According to the data offer by ByteDance, in 2015, more than 5700 content contributors uploaded 300 thousand reports, which were read by more than 657 million people totally. By September. 2018, the number of contributors rises to 0.17 million, reports to 3 million and, 76.6 billion people read them.
Hupu, who possesses a leading place in Chinese sports media, not only owns an enormous amount of users in China and has a wide range of clients in the business end. On completing the investment in Hupu, ByteDance could furtherly broaden its sports content ecosystem with the help of Hupu, which may be the fundamental logic of the investment choice.
The pre-IPO round of funding means a reliable indorsation from capital market, which can not only magnify the business opportunities of Hupu, but is an augmentation for the confidence of investors and a catalyst for Hupu’s IPO.
Author: Jin Chengzhou
Translator: Wan Yuxin
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