Bill M
Time-strapped hustlers looking for love, take note: The League is introducing video speed dating next month.
The League is a dating app for well-heeled high achievers with perfect genetics. Like its biggest rival Elite Dating, it targets singletons with no desire to swap bodily fluids with mere plebs like you or I. “While your mother may call you picky, we call you self-aware,” the app’s homepage proudly explains. To join, you have to verify your LinkedIn profile, and each potential user is manually vetted.
This new speed dating feature, called League Live, pairs users based on their mutual interests, allowing them to chat for two minutes. At the start of the date, the app shows users an ice-breaker question to get things moving. If sparks fly and each participant “hearts” their counterpart, they’ll match officially, giving them an opportunity to continue talking through the app.
The concept is that two minutes is enough to see if there’s an ember of a connection, without the hassle of going on a full in-person date.
The feature is expected to launch on December 1, with sessions taking place every Sunday at 9PM local time. Both paid and free users of The League can take part in League Live dates, provided they have a high enough “league score.” This is determined by the user’s activity, profile completeness, and whether they’ve been reported by other users.
Speaking to The Verge, company co-founder and CEO Amanda Bradford said the feature was most popular with users in the 35-to-40 age bracket. That’s arguably because, unlike younger users, they’ve got less disposable time to spend awkwardly making conversation with a near-stranger over a glass of pinot.
The League is the second US dating app, after Bumble, to introduce a video dating feature. The biggest difference between the two is that Bumble voice calls have no defined time limit, while The League’s offering is engineered to be brisk and brutally efficient.
For what it’s worth, this isn’t the company’s first flirtation with video. In early 2017, The League experimented with virtual reality dating, deploying headsets to a handful of W Hotels across the US.
Besides the inaugural event, that idea didn’t take off, presumably because of the hassle involved in travelling to a specific venue, and the fact that there’s nothing less sexy than someone with a bulky display strapped to their face. That is, unless you’ve got a thing for Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Geordi La Forge.
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