2021 has passed, and with the end of various large and small e-sports events, the story of the e-sports circle is about to usher in a new chapter.
In the past year, the e-sports industry has undergone new changes: e-sports as a formal project to join the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games, continue to introduce various policies to support the development of e-sports; the development of e-sports cultural tourism has brought new ideas for e-sports realization; the popularity of NFTs has also allowed clubs to find new ways to monetize; the globalization trend of mobile game events has become more and more obvious..., all of which reveal that the e-sports industry will flourish in 2021.
Gyro esports hopes to take stock of the important events in the esports industry in 2021 to see the changes in the industry and the development potential it has shown.
Sports: The narrative of traditional sports is worth learning from the esports industry
Event: E-sports officially entered Asia as an official project
From the 2017 IOC's recognition that esports can be considered a sport, to the 2018 year when six esports events became the Jakarta Asian Games' exhibition event, to this year's official announcement that eight esports games will join the 2022 Hangzhou Olympic Games as official events. Whether it is the linkage between e-sports and the sports world or the capital from the sports industry entering the e-sports industry, we can see that the integration of sports and e-sports is getting deeper and deeper.
After e-sports entered Asia as a formal project, it means that the development path of sports can be deepened again for the e-sports industry. This is also good for traditional sports. According to the "2021 Tokyo Olympic Games User Research Report" released by iResearch, the proportion of 18-40-year-old spectators is as high as 78.92%, of which the age of the 31-40-year-old audience is 39.86%, while among the 18-24-year-old and 25-30-year-old users, this data is 10.72% and 28.31%. It can be seen that the current Olympic games are some of the aging trends, and embracing e-sports can also help traditional sports attract young users.
It is worth noting that there are actually some problems or shortcomings in the development of e-sports at present. Women's e-sports is somewhat obscure in the current e-sports ecology, and when talking about e-sports players, everyone can quickly blurt out the names of some male players, and it is difficult to name a few female players with high visibility. In the period before and after the official entry of e-sports into Asia, gyro esports also found that whether at home or abroad, women's events have become active again. This may be partly due to the fact that esports events can become a resident event at the Asian Games and even into the Olympic Games.
The development goal of e-sports in the future is bound to seek to enter the Olympic Games. Compared with the IOC's statement in previous years that "refuses to promote violent and discriminatory competitions", the IOC's attitude towards e-sports has eased a lot in recent years. At a press conference, IOC President Bach said, "The development mission of the Olympic Games is to maintain contact with the younger generation, e-sports has a base of hundreds of millions of players around the world, and it is obviously only a matter of time before the Olympics consider whether to include esports in the official competition." On April 22, 2021, the IOC announced that it will partner with five international sports institutions and game publishers to host the Olympic Virtual Series. It can be seen that although e-sports and the Olympic Games are still far away, they are getting closer and closer.
For e-sports, this not only means to be deeper recognized by the mainstream, but also means that the sportsization of e-sports can have the opportunity to go deeper again. This does not mean that e-sports should be exactly the same as traditional sports, but to learn the management and narrative methods of traditional sports, and to learn to tell the story that belongs to e-sports itself.
The absence of a "winner-take-all" scenario means that brutal market competition will continue
Event: The Merger of Tiger Tooth Fighting Fish was officially called off
One of the biggest things in the live streaming industry is that the sword of Damocles, which hangs above the head of the Tiger Tooth Fighting Fish, finally falls. Before being stopped, the capital market once believed that the merger of Huya Douyu would directly end the competition of live broadcasting platforms, and from then on, only one live broadcasting platform dominated the market. In fact, the situation is indeed as predicted by the capital market, before the merger, Huya and Douyu's market share in game live broadcasting exceeded 40% and 30% respectively, and after the merger, they will occupy more than 70% of the market share. Unfortunately, the merger was halted. It also means that when a winner-take-all situation cannot emerge, the brutal competition in the market will continue.
And the game live broadcast market since 2021 has indeed revealed cruelty. In its financial reports released since 2021, Douyu shows that it has lost money for four consecutive quarters, and in the case of a small increase in monthly active users, Douyu's paying users have not been able to achieve growth or even decline. Huya, which is in better condition, also faces the same problem. From Tencent's "2021 China E-sports Industry Development Report", we can see that from 2016 to 2021, China's e-sports users have expanded from 130 million to 425 million, which has entered a stage of flat stock development. This means that the early blue ocean dividend of the market will no longer exist, and at the moment when the epidemic is basically stable, the dividend brought by the "home economy" will no longer appear.
Here, by the way, let's talk about the B station and Kuaishou that have developed rapidly in the live broadcasting industry in recent years. At present, Station B is still in the stage of spending money to buy popularity, and it is difficult to pick out several anchors with wide popularity in the game live broadcast of Station B, and the dividends given by the copyright of the event cannot bring about the take-off of the overall live broadcast business. More importantly, in the recent financial reports, it can also be seen that the money of station B "burns" quickly, and it is unknown how long it can be "burned" in exchange for returns. As for Kuaishou, judging from the absence of two League of Legends S tournaments, his game live broadcast business seems that it cannot attract more users to enter.
This also means that the position of any live broadcasting platform or comprehensive content platform is unstable, and the market will continue to play a game. With the operation stage of the e-sports live broadcast market, the development of live broadcasting platforms in the future will surely enter diversification. In other words, the live broadcast platform is no longer a simple live broadcast platform, but will be composed of video, live broadcast, live variety show and other forms. These forms will also provide more diversified user growth channels and new economic growth points for live broadcast platforms.
E-sports education: There are still many problems in e-sports professional education that need to be solved
Event: The emergence of e-sports persuasion to withdraw from the class, the first batch of e-sports undergraduates out of school
E-sports Lab, Communication University of China
In September 2016, the Ministry of Education announced the "Catalogue of Higher Vocational Education (Specialty) Majors in Ordinary Colleges and Universities" to include e-sports sports and management majors. In 2017, after a year of preparation, major universities opened e-sports-related majors to begin enrollment. So far this year, the first batch of undergraduate students in esports have entered the society and started working. It has also proved that e-sports is indeed getting hotter and hotter, and even many young people dream of becoming a professional player. This has also bred social counseling classes such as "e-sports persuasion class" and "professional player training class" similar to e-sports education.
In fact, although the development of e-sports education has attracted much attention, there are still great problems. The theoretical courses that students have learned, such as Introduction to E-sports and Fundamentals of E-sports, have not been studied by the academic community for a long time, and it is difficult to say whether these courses have a certain degree of uniformity. Moreover, at present, most of the e-sports teachers are some e-sports industry practitioners hired from enterprises, and the courses taught by teachers also rely heavily on their own experience and do not have a considerable degree of universality.
Even e-sports education itself has been questioned from within. Some practitioners of e-sports education told Gyro E-sports, "At present, many specialty e-sports education is plainly a mixed diploma, those things do not need to be learned for several months and years, and can be quickly mastered in three months of off-campus training, regardless of the profession." ”
Gyro esports believes that with the development of the esports industry in the future, esports education will slowly solve these problems. But at present, the above problems need to be solved by e-sports education, which is not only related to the industry itself, but more importantly, it involves every student who chooses e-sports majors.
Accompanying the play platform: The establishment of norms can make the industry usher in long-term development
Event: The Bixin platform was removed, and all major platforms have a certain degree of rectification requirements
The accompanying play platform has been in a stage of rapid development in the past few years, and we can see the script interpretation of the big anchors and accompaniment players on the major live broadcast platforms. According to relevant information, in 2020, the market size of the play industry has reached 10 billion. However, the rapid development of the long time has also spawned many problems, and problems such as pornography have been entangled in the play industry. Therefore, the state in September last year to a number of APP removal requirements for rectification.
After that, there are few more ads and implants on related companion platforms. It seems that the industry disappeared overnight. Therefore, Gyro E-sports also asked some of the staff of the relevant play platform, according to them, the current rectification of the play platform has been greatly affected, but other normal platforms have not been affected in terms of the number of users or the number of playmates. And many playmakers said, "The play industry is still the first choice for their own development." ”
In the general direction, rectification actually has more advantages than disadvantages for the play industry. The industry is still in a state of barbaric growth, and only through the regulation of policies can we better guide the development of the industry. For the accompanying play platform, the barbaric growth can certainly bring a part of the dividend, but if there is no correct guidance and the establishment of industry standards, then this part of the dividend will soon be covered by negative public opinion, which is not conducive to the long-term development of the industry.
Mobile game e-sports event: Competing for global mobile game events will become an important point of force for major manufacturers in the future
Event: The League of Legends mobile game is launched in China, and the fist "Valorant" will be mobile game
The development of mobile e-sports in recent years is very rapid, and many of the popular e-sports events in China are mobile e-sports events. Among them, there are not only original IP events such as the glory of the king, but also many e-sports events such as "Crossfire Mobile Game" and "QQ Speeding Car Mobile Game". But 2021 is a little different for the development of mobile game esports. The most important news for the rival game event is that the "League of Legends Mobile Game" was officially launched in China and quickly built a perfect event system, not only that, another e-sports game of Fist in the overseas fire - "Valorant" also came out with the news that the mobile game was about to be made.
More importantly, the event of "Glory of Kings" also announced in 2021 that it will be upgraded to the World Championship, with the goal of building an overseas mobile game event ecology.
And these news reveal that the current mobile game e-sports market has shown a trend of global expansion. In the past, although the global mobile game e-sports market has developed rapidly, and many regions have events or e-sports games, for a long time, there is actually no mobile game e-sports competition that is popular all over the world. Looking at the world, we can see that the achievements of "Glory of the King" overseas are not eye-catching, and regional events such as "Endless Showdown" and "Free Fire" that can only be called a safe corner of the overseas fire are still far from global popularity. In the case of Free Fire, for example, its current audience is mainly concentrated in Brazil, and although it has built a global event, the current audience is still a secondary market, and it does not have enough market share in the United States, Europe, or even China.
In view of this, it can be glimpsed that the current mobile game esports competition in major markets and regions is more or less in a vacuum or a semi-vacuum state. And whoever can take the lead in quickly building up their own global events and pulling in enough audiences can become the next "fist" of mobile esports, and this is likely to be the development path of esports in the next decade. Even the fist itself wants to copy its glory in the end game to the mobile game. So we can see the rapid construction of the League of Legends mobile game e-sports and the subsequent "Glory of the King" wants to open the market of its world championship event again, as well as the low-key opening test of "Endless Showdown" in China.
New ways to monetize esports: Clubs can expand into more diversified revenue methods
Event: Prevalence of NFTs
NFTs (digital cryptocurrencies) quickly became popular overseas, and we saw similar news such as NBA basketball superstar Curry spending $180,000 on a digital avatar. Gyro Esports also wrote "E-sports join hands with NFTs to create an emerging monetization model, is the opportunity greater than the risk, or the risk is greater than the opportunity?" "The NFT market is constantly expanding in China, if combined with e-sports, will it be different from foreign countries? These two articles elaborate on some of the developments of NFTs, which will not be described too much here.
However, it is worth saying that in fact, the NFT has some ties with the e-sports circle as early as 2020, and the foreign OG club has reached a cooperation with Socios to create OG Fan Token (OG exclusive fan token) and sell it on the NFT platform. This is also the first case of linkage between esports and NFT circles. In fact, there are many well-known overseas clubs that have reached cooperation with an NFT platform. The news that domestic e-sports and NFT are related is not a case, limited by some of the bubble properties of NFTs, and the current domestic e-sports circle is not very optimistic about this form.
But from another point of view, the combination of NFT popularity and e-sports is still of positive significance to the development of e-sports. For a long time, the argument that e-sports clubs do not make money has never stopped, and even some bigwigs in the e-sports industry have said: "Except for xxx clubs, other LPL clubs are loss-making." When Gyro E-sports interviewed club personnel in many articles, it was also understood that many clubs are currently losing money. One of the biggest problems is that the club's revenue is too single, and there are almost no more good revenue channels than sponsorship.
The popularity of NFTs and the large number of high-value cooperation with the esports industry also show that clubs may be able to rely on it for new ways to monetize and create club content for it. This is of course more beneficial to the club, and by launching a large number of club-related NFT content creation, to a certain extent, it is also possible to accumulate a group of club fans, so that the fans will not follow the players.
Of course, with the popularity of NFTs in the future (which actually has the credit of the metaverse), e-sports and NFTs will be more and more deeply integrated. One important reason for this is that both NFT and esports games have online attributes that allow esports to be combined with NFTs in more forms. This will also bring a way to monetize the huge traffic of esports. However, in the view of gyro e-sports, the current NFT circle is still in the development stage, if the club wants to do this more or to do him as a cultural and creative undertaking. If the combination of the esports circle and it produces too much negative news, it is difficult to say whether this monetization method can work.
E-sports cultural tourism: Cities rely on e-sports to drive the development of the cultural tourism industry, and e-sports obtain more positive value by combining cultural tourism
Event: Super Competition 5 billion Shanghai International New Cultural and Creative E-sports Center Started Construction in Shanghai, Peace Elite "E-sports Island" began construction
At present, in today's increasingly popular development of e-sports, we can see that more and more cities have put forward the slogan of building an "e-sports capital". And with it is also the popularity of e-sports cultural tourism. Therefore, a series of related events such as the Shanghai International New Cultural and Creative E-sports Center, which will be built by Chaojing, which will cost 5 billion yuan, the construction of the Peace Elite "E-sports Island" and the past cooperation between Sichuan Province and QQ Flying Car, have revealed that local governments attach great importance to the exposure of e-sports to the city. Just as Zhao Lei's "Chengdu" hit the country to a great extent, chengdu's tourism development was greatly promoted, e-sports can also have the same improvement effect.
In fact, from the hot search of various e-sports events and related news in 2021 that easily appeared on major platforms, we can conclude that the traffic of e-sports is indeed huge. It is indeed feasible to rely on e-sports to drive the development of the cultural tourism industry in various places. Taking Shanghai as an example, during the S10 period, the direct economic benefits generated were 30.044 million yuan, the pull effect of related industries was 86.55 million yuan, and the tax effect was 3.213 million yuan. In the "2020 Shanghai Sports Event Impact Assessment Report" released in Shanghai, the League of Legends S10 ranked second, second only to the Shanghai Marathon.
Through the way of e-sports cultural tourism, it can also find more ways to monetize clubs and events in the e-sports industry, and for cultural tourism, e-sports can also produce more interesting content. Bringing traffic to the local area will also bring more positive value to e-sports.
In the future, the new tourism mode of e-sports cultural tourism may become popular by a large margin. However, in the case of the current head e-sports competition, it is worth careful consideration whether the path of e-sports resources and e-sports cultural tourism can be obtained by small and medium-sized cities to the extent that it is applicable to most cities or only to a few large cities.
The future path of e-sports: linking more industries and realizing "super digital scenarios"
Since 2021, the development of the e-sports industry, whether it is the globalization of mobile game events has become a new blue ocean or the trend of e-sports sports, or the increasing popularity of e-sports cultural tourism, reveals the phenomenon that e-sports links more and more industries.
Taking mobile game events as an example, more and more well-known mobile game events have emerged in the current e-sports market. The convenience of mobile games also allows the e-sports industry to link more industries to find a fulcrum. The fact that e-sports has entered Asia and even the possibility of entering the Olympic Games in the future allows us to see the integration of e-sports and the traditional sports industry. Similarly, the emerging tourism method of e-sports cultural tourism also reflects that the links of e-sports have become more extensive.
In fact, this is also in line with the concept of "super digital scene" proposed by Tencent at the 2021 Global E-sports Leaders Summit and Tencent E-sports Annual Conference. Through the "e-sports +" model, more diversified business scenarios are displayed, such as "e-sports experience hall, e-sports education, e-sports café, e-sports hotel, e-sports Internet café, e-sports home" and other forms. The e-sports cultural tourism that has already shown signs is part of this concept, and the development of mobile game events provides support for the realization of this concept.
To sum up, in the next few years, the development of the e-sports industry will inevitably integrate more and more diversified industries and industries. Under such a trend, the e-sports industry will become more and more popular and popularized, and "e-sports for all" may also be truly realized.