Lead Operator, completes the business closed loop through the contractual incentive model, and taps into the trillion-yuan incremental market for national fitness.

Recently, an innovative new player called Lingdongguan has emerged in China's sports internet track. This mini-program, which focuses on scenario-based sports social interaction featuring a "driving-oriented" positioning, relies on its original external driving system to directly address the core pain points in the implementation of national fitness, opening up brand-new imagination space for tapping the demands of hundreds of millions of potential sports participants.

Huge business opportunities are often hidden in the trivial scenarios of daily life.

The origin of the project is full of everyday life vibes. Cui Dayong, the founder, once heard a group of friends complaining about high work and life pressure and lack of exercise during a dinner party. Several people made a bet on the spot: anyone who fails to finish 20 push-ups will treat everyone to the meal. This interesting little bet made him keenly capture the core pain point of mass sports: according to the public data from the General Administration of Sport of China, there are about 270 million to 310 million people in China who have the willingness to exercise but have not taken action yet; about 210 million to 240 million people who try to exercise occasionally but cannot stick to it for a long time. In total, nearly 500 million Chinese people know clearly that exercise is good for health, but they have never been able to take the first step and persist in exercising.

Nowadays, national fitness has been elevated to a basic national policy. After more than ten years of industrial exploration, old problems such as insufficient stadium supply have been basically solved. How to stimulate ordinary people's motivation to exercise and help users develop long-term exercise habits has become a huge market gap that needs to be filled urgently. If a set of methods can be found to make these 500 million people willing to move and keep exercising, it will not only have great commercial value, but also carry far-reaching social significance to promote the implementation of national fitness.

Interesting mechanisms to arouse users' desire for competition

Taking "loss aversion" in behavioral economics as the underlying logic, the project has built a complete external driving system integrating "light bet + honor + contract + reward + exercise buddy".

Many people do not exercise, not because their physical strength is insufficient, nor because they do not know that proper exercise helps to keep fit and relieve pressure, but because they lack a reason to start and motivation to persist, just like the motivation that the push-up bet brought to everyone at the dinner party back then.

The Lingdongguan mini-program retains the basic functions of sports records such as running mileage, pace and calorie consumption, and sets a rich variety of reward categories: physical prizes include running shoes, tea sets, tea, beauty products, fascia guns, bedding, wine and so on; at the same time, it connects local merchant resources, covering local life services such as characteristic catering, boutique hotels, milk tea and desserts, foot bath leisure. Users can independently choose their favorite prizes or services, win rewards by completing sports tasks, or get a gradient rebate of 50% to 100%.

Three major business segments to build the internet barrier of low-cost customer acquisition, cash flow precipitation and high-frequency retention

- Light activity bet segment: Users only need to pay an entry fee of about one tenth of the prize value, complete the preset sports tasks, and they can win physical rewards worth about ten times the entry fee; if the challenge fails, the entry fee will be used to subsidize the prize cost of winning users.

- Contract reward segment: After paying the contract deposit, users can get physical goods or local service rights on the spot, and then get all or part of the contract rebate rewards step by step according to the check-in rules. This mode can precipitate stable cash flow for the platform, and the unreturned funds can be used to cover the commodity cost or form platform income; the average exercise cycle of users in the contract segment can reach 14 days, and the overall rebate rate is 65%.

- Skill buddy segment: It meets the needs of both sports fitness and social interaction, covering 25 types of sports scenarios such as running, cycling and pickleball. Users can place orders as needed, choose a companion sports angel or a professional guiding sports instructor. There is no head platform in this segmented track at present, the overall annual market size of the track exceeds 10 billion yuan, and it can also create hundreds of thousands of flexible employment positions.

The linkage of the three major segments forms a complete business closed loop featuring low-cost customer acquisition, cash flow precipitation, profit space and driving high-frequency use of users, which forms clear differentiated competition with traditional sports tool products.

Avoid the stock red ocean and tap brand-new increments

The blue ocean market does not mean there is no competition, but to build its own advantages in places ignored by others.

Different from "tool-based" sports software that has been deeply cultivated for more than ten years such as Keep, Codoon and Joyrun, Lingdongguan breaks away from the stock track of serving 5% senior sports enthusiasts, and its target customer group is locked at about 35% of the total population who have the willingness to exercise but have not started yet or cannot persist continuously. It is an innovative service platform of "driving-oriented" sports social interaction that is rare in the industry.

Model innovation to create two-way value

Lingdongguan does not operate as a traditional e-commerce shelf, and rich commodities are distributed in the form of rewards. Users can get commodities for free or at a price far lower than the market price by checking in for exercise.

Some people vividly call it "the running version of Meituan" and "the running version of Pinduoduo".

The sports internet industry is undergoing an upgrade: shifting from tool-oriented to driving-oriented, and the service boundary is extended from stock users who already have exercise habits to incremental users who want to exercise but cannot persist. The traditional management idea of "carrot and stick" has been upgraded to an innovative operation mechanism of "honor incentive + physical reward + failure sharing".

The core team of the project has been deeply engaged in internet entrepreneurship for more than ten years, and all have front-line market practical experience. He Chuchen, the deputy general manager, has the management ability of a 100-person team and is good at business resource docking; Yang Liu, the technical director, graduated from the School of Software Engineering of Chongqing Radio and Television University, once served as product director of Chongqing Baidu and product manager of Donghua Cloud Computing, with mature software R&D and project management experience. Founder Cui Dayong is a serial entrepreneur, who once participated in the establishment of Shanghai Lenian E-commerce and Qianmo Culture and Entertainment. The project has accumulated 32 million yuan of institutional investment, and has precipitated solid internet operation experience and sports industry resources.

In the early stage of entrepreneurship, the team also encountered problems such as capital shortage and pressure on prize redemption, and survived the most difficult period of the start-up stage relying on the industry resources accumulated for a long time. In January 2026, the Lingdongguan mini-program was officially launched for trial operation. In the first month of launch, the number of registered users exceeded 5,200, 3,120 orders were completed, the total order amount exceeded 291,000 yuan, the user repurchase rate was about 30%, and the average user retention duration was 20 days. The elite digital marathon national public welfare competition launched in the same period attracted 985 registrants; the platform also successively cooperated with brands such as Business magazine, JD Logistics, Sien Co., Ltd., and Cotti Coffee to launch co-branded online running activities, and successfully completed the minimum closed-loop verification of the business model.

At present, the project officially launches the financing plan: it plans to raise 5 million yuan by transferring 10% equity. The team hopes to accelerate development in this way, promote the proportion of domestic sports population to catch up with the level of developed countries ahead of schedule, and practice the original intention of strengthening people's physique.

Cui Dayong said that as a serial entrepreneur, he has witnessed the rise and fall of the industry, and also seen countless ordinary people trapped in the matter of "persisting in exercising". Building Lingdongguan is not to chase short-term windfall dividends, but to hope to make a long-term cause that benefits the country and the people. Even if the team continues to face challenges in capital and resources in the future, they will continue to dig deep to help the implementation of the national fitness strategy, and let hundreds of millions of ordinary people easily develop lifelong beneficial exercise habits with the help of this external driving system consisting of light bets, rebate rewards and exercise companionship.