Baseball, Soccer, Golf, Basketball All Gathered... U+3.0 Integrated Community Platform 'Spoki' Launched

As Part of the '4 Major Platforms' Strategy... First Step to Expand Customer Digital Touchpoints

LG Uplus employees introducing 'Spoky'. Photo by LG Uplus

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Su-yeon] LG Uplus announced on the 12th that it will launch ‘Spoky,’ an integrated sports community platform, as part of its U+3.0 platform transition strategy.

Earlier, LG Uplus opened the U+3.0 era last month, unveiling a ‘4 major platform’ strategy that includes lifestyle, play, growth care, and future technology by creating customer-centric platforms and services based on data and technology to discover future growth engines. The launch of Spoky is the first step in expanding the ‘play platform’ strategy to increase customer digital touchpoints.

LG Uplus has integrated its existing professional baseball and golf services and significantly expanded the number of sports categories to eight, including soccer, basketball, volleyball, billiards, bowling, and fishing, with the launch of Spoky, a comprehensive sports community platform. The name Spoky carries a composite meaning such as ‘Sports Encyclopedia (Sports + Wikipedia)’ and ‘Key to Sports (Sports + Key).’

Unlike the previous professional baseball and golf services limited to domestic games, Spoky provides the latest news and popular YouTube and broadcast videos from various domestic and international leagues for each sport. It also supports the ‘Spoky Talk’ feature, which allows users to comment on all news and videos. This reflects the tendency of sports fans who want to not only consume content through various channels but also share opinions and enjoy together.

The service covers ▲domestic professional soccer (K League 1) ▲international soccer (English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Eredivisie) ▲domestic baseball (KBO) ▲international baseball (MLB, NPB) ▲golf (KPGA, KLPGA, PGA, LPGA) ▲basketball (KBL, NBA) ▲volleyball (men’s pro, women’s pro) ▲billiards (PBA Team League, PBA, LPBA) ▲bowling ▲fishing. It is available on both mobile app and web versions.

The live broadcast feature is initially provided for soccer and baseball. The French professional soccer ‘Ligue 1’ and domestic professional baseball ‘KBO’ offer video broadcasts. Domestic professional soccer and international soccer (leagues other than Ligue 1) support text commentary that delivers match updates via text instead of video, and the ‘LMT (Live Match Tracker)’ service, which vividly displays match situations graphically. The plan is to gradually expand live broadcasts to other sports categories in the future.

Until now, U+Pro Baseball and U+Golf, which have been provided, faced difficulties attracting customers during the off-season due to the clear distinction between season and off-season, resulting in significant fluctuations in service usage depending on the period. In fact, from April to July this year, when the season started, the cumulative number of users of U+Pro Baseball and U+Golf increased by 49% and 7% respectively compared to last year, but customer inflow was sluggish during the off-season.

Spoky diversifies sports categories to provide customers with entertainment throughout the year. It can secure users regardless of season or off-season. This is LG Uplus’s strategy to increase customer service usage time, collect customer behavior data, and create a virtuous cycle by strengthening the platform based on this data to further increase dwell time.

The service is available to all telecom subscribers by downloading the Spoky app from Google Play Store, Apple App Store, or One Store.

Ko Gwang-ho, head of LG Uplus Sports Platform, said, “The launch of Spoky is significant as the first step in expanding digital touchpoints following the announcement of the 4 major platform strategy in the U+3.0 era,” adding, “We will continue to strengthen competitiveness by reflecting customer needs for information and broadcasts of sports categories that fans want to enjoy in the future.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.