novative framework, known as Blue Ocean Strategy,
supported for some tools, such as canvas strategy, an-
alyzes what should be created/added, removed, raised
and reduced in order to create a different and valu-
able offer to the market. In a world where business
models are evolving rapidly, and new competitors can
emerge overnight, it is mandatory, for any company,
to innovate in order to stay relevant on the market.
It’s important to understand that an innovative busi-
ness model can either create a new market or allow
a company to create and exploit new opportunities on
existing markets (Still et al., 2017; Evans et al., 2006).
3.1 Multi-sided Platforms
In 2003, Jean-Charles Rochet and Jean Tirole stud-
ied an innovative technology-driven business model
based on direct interactions between two or more af-
filiates (Rochet and Tirole, 2003). The disruptive
power of web-based platforms is transforming our
lives in ways that would have been impossible a few
decades ago. In 2014, Jean Tirole received the No-
bel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for a num-
ber of important accomplishments, but mostly due to
his pioneering contributions to the new economics of
multi-sided markets. Multi-sided platforms are de-
fined as technologies, applications or services that
create value by enabling and facilitating direct inter-
actions and/or transactions between two or more affil-
iates (multiple sides) (Rochet and Tirole, 2003; Am-
strong, 2006), (Hagiu and Wright, 2015). On multi-
sided platforms, users and groups can be thought of as
nodes and the major role of the platform is to enable
direct and valuable interactions between them.
The main questions on this innovative business
model are how many sides to bring on board and what
kind of ties to establish between affiliates. So, looking
to the current market offer it’s important to understand
what the market is already providing, on which terms,
and define the new business model, either creating
a new market, or just competing on existing ones,
creating and exploiting new opportunities. Among
the best-known examples of multi-sided platforms,
we can mention Airbnb, bringing together residence
owners and renters; Uber, enabling direct interactions
between professional drivers and passengers; Face-
book, brings on board users, advertisers and affiliated
third-party sites; and, Amazon, eBay and Alibaba, en-
abling direct interactions between buyers and sellers
(Parker et al., 2017; Evans and Schmalensee, 2016).
Moreover, Airbnb, Amazon and Uber are examples of
successful multi-sided platforms that are worldwide
recognized, not only by their customers, but as well
by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), on their annual
report as most innovative companies.
Key features characterizing a multi-sided platform
are the capacity to enable direct interactions between
two or more sides that are affiliated with the plat-
form, there is value (co)creation for the intervenient,
is a value-based platform and enable network effects
(Parker et al., 2017; Evans and Schmalensee, 2016;
Rochet and Tirole, 2003; Hagiu and Wright, 2015).
Enabling interactivity, connectivity and the cre-
ation of ties helps users to derive value from the net-
work, turning the network more attractive to poten-
tial new subscribers. This phenomenon is called net-
work effect and represents a new economic achieve-
ment, driven by technological innovation. Network
effects, sometimes referred as Metcalfe’s Law, are
also known as network externalities or, as demand-
side economies of scale. They occur on situations
where a product or service becomes more valuable
to the user as the density or the number of users
increases (Bellaflame and Peitz, 2016) (Veljanovski,
2007). Value co-creation is a very important concept
related with network effects, since users or groups can
be considered a valuable part of the value chain (cre-
ation, addition and exchange) to the network that they
belong to (de Oliveira and Cortimiglia, 2017). Based
on the basic key features described above, it’s easy to
understand that a single affiliation is not sufficient to
define a multi-sided platform. Amazon adopted, for
several years, a business model of pure retailer but
decided to move over a multi-sided platform business
model as growth strategy, by enabling and facilitat-
ing direct interactions by third-party sellers with buy-
ers using exclusively their own platform (Gawer and
Cusumano, 2015).
3.2 Understanding the Network Value
and Structure
When network effects are present, understanding the
key sources of the network’s value, is important to
understand the structure of the network itself. The
value of a product or service increases as the number
of users grow. Thus, network effects are among the
most powerful strategic and key resources that can be
delivered by technology-based innovation (Adner and
Kapoor, 2009). In (Hariharan, 2016), different theo-
ries and approaches are presented and compared, re-
lated to network-effects-value, in order to measure the
effective value of a network. Even being totally dif-
ferent theoretical approaches, and based on a distinct
value definition premises, they converge and agree on
an extremely significant conclusion, for network ef-
fect theory: that the network value is directly related
with the network size. The first network value ap-
Time2Play - Multi-sided Platform for Sports Facilities: A Disruptive Digital Platform
271