Ignition Dimension (ID: chaintruth) original
Author | Yan Junwen Kong Yuexin
Edit | Rao Xiafei
Station B, which used to be half a beat slower in the live broadcast industry, is ushering in new opportunities.
On the evening of January 8, Station B held an annual live broadcast ceremony. Judging from the latest disclosed platform data, in 2021, the number of monthly broadcasters of Station B increased by 50% year-on-year, the number of revenue anchors increased by 59% year-on-year, the per capita income of anchors increased by 38% year-on-year, and the overall ecology showed rapid development.
In the view of industry insiders, "with the tightening of supervision in the second half of 2021, after the head live broadcast is weakened, the live broadcast industry will develop significant changes, which gives other platforms new development opportunities." ”
In the "Thousand Broadcast Wars", Station B was absent for a long time. Although the live broadcast of Station B can be traced back to 2015, And Station B launched "Bilibili Broadcast", this substantive live broadcast function lacked sound for a long time.
However, the rapid development of live broadcasting has never waited for anyone. In the past few years, some live broadcasting platforms that are one step ahead have seized opportunities, such as Douyu and Huya, which also have a large number of game users, and with the support of Tencent, they have taken the head of the game live broadcasting platform in 2018.
According to the survey data of the State Administration for Market Regulation, in 2021, the market share of Huya and Douyu in the downstream game live broadcast will exceed 40% and 30% respectively, and the cooperation between Huya and Douyu and Tencent will constitute a strict barrier to the game live broadcasting industry.
However, this barrier is no longer strong. In particular, in July 2021, the relevant state departments stopped the merger of Huya and Douyu, which indicates that the game live competition will still evolve, and the two companies are still attrition.
At the same time, other live broadcasting platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin are also eyeing live broadcasting, among them, Kuaishou has become the world's largest live broadcasting platform, and Douyin is also actively laying out.
The live broadcast of Station B started late. In 2019, Chen Rui, CEO of Station B, said in an interview with "Late Post", "Our domestic animation is late, if we do it a year earlier, there will be no other home; we do not pay enough attention to live broadcasting, Station B is China's largest game video platform, why not make China's largest game live broadcasting platform? ”
In the past two years, Station B has tried to make up for this lesson. For example, the introduction of professional teams to manage operations, the construction of MCN infrastructure, the investment of funds to purchase the rights of e-sports events and so on.
In 2019, Chen Rui said on the earnings call that the live broadcast business of station B is not only a revenue business, but also a necessary ability of station B, because this is a complete content ecology, and live broadcasting is an important part of the entire ecological environment.
By the second half of 2021, as the dust of the "Thousand Broadcast War" settles, the outside world seems to see the future of the live broadcasting industry. For Station B, the live broadcast is more like a Battle of normandy landings, but the final game has not yet arrived.
Why does Station B do live broadcasting?
For major Internet companies, live broadcasting has always been an important cash flow business for the company, and it is extremely efficient.
In the past few years, with the support of capital, the entire live broadcasting industry platform has fallen into inferior competition at any cost, and digging anchors and counter-prosecution anchors have become the concerto of the entire industry. In 2017, douyu's PUBG anchor SY jumped to Huya. Previously, there were also rumors that Huya spent more than 15 million yuan on the transfer fee to poach Wei Shen and his team of Douyu, and signed a UZI with 100 million yuan.
In 2018 and 2019, the game live broadcast business sent Huya and Douyu to the market; in 2019, The total revenue of Kuaishou was 50 billion yuan, and the live broadcast revenue was 30 billion yuan.
But for a long time, live broadcasting was not the highest priority business of Station B.
In 2018, Station B was completed on the market. At that time, the user scale and revenue scale of Station B were not large, and the monthly living in the fourth quarter of the same year was 92.8 million, with a total annual revenue of 4.13 billion yuan. In this case, Station B must make every effort to cultivate user growth and launch a circle strategy.
At that time, station B needed to face up to the platform traffic. However, live broadcasting in the community is a business that consumes traffic, that is to say, the platform traffic to live traffic penetration will be depleted, so the platform and the community do live broadcasting, the basic premise is that there is a huge user base. Only when the user market is done, the traffic can be turned to the effective penetration and conversion of live broadcasting; the platform revenue can be raised, more resources can be invested in live broadcasting, and the double wheel can be turned up.
But at that time, the monthly active users of Station B were not more than 100 million, and the resources that could be gathered were limited, so how to play live broadcasting? It's hard to control.
Therefore, the strategy of Station B is to gradually open up the easy and then the difficult.
In the top-level design, Station B introduces professional team management. At the end of 2019, Station B signed a contract with Feng Timo, and the outside world also increased its attention to the live broadcast business of Station B from 2019. Then in 2020, Station B introduced Wang Yuyang, the former CEO of Big Goose Culture, to be responsible for the live broadcast business.
On the content side, choose to carry forward the foundation of the game's B station. At the end of 2019, the industry reported that Station B spent 800 million yuan to auction the exclusive live broadcast rights of the League of Legends Global Finals for three years. In August 2020, Station B and Riot Games jointly announced the strategic cooperation of the League of Legends global event. It is reported that at the end of 2020, Station B has integrated the game video and game live broadcasting business.
This integration not only includes the integration of personnel, but also covers the integration of the two businesses in traffic, creator ecology, and operational incentive strategies. In this way, Station B can improve the efficiency and cooperation of community operations for the major category of games, and provide more intensive resources for supporting anchors and UP owners.
This is also in line with the extension of the basic business of the game of Station B. In terms of content, the game is an important content category of Station B. At the revenue level, a large part of the income of station B comes from game agency and distribution, and the reason why players get started with a game is because of good quality and good experience on the one hand, on the other hand, it is influenced by the favorite UP master. Therefore, in station B, it can form a circular chain of publishing games - game videos - game live broadcasts - users downloading games.
This also makes B station live broadcasting and other live broadcasting platforms differentiated, and major game manufacturers are more willing to invest operating costs in the B station area.
According to the latest released data, the live broadcast data and video data of the game category of Station B in 2021 have been greatly improved. In the field of game live broadcasting, the monthly broadcast volume of Station B increased by 79% year-on-year, and the number of monthly viewers increased by 60% year-on-year. In the past year, the game area has received more than 38 million video submissions, an increase of 58% year-on-year, with a total length of nearly 8 million hours.
This background is the rapid growth of the B station user base and the expansion of revenue. In the first quarter of 2020, the revenue of Station B was still 2.32 billion yuan, and the monthly active users were 172 million, and in May of the same year, the market value of Station B surpassed iQiyi for the first time. By the third quarter of 2021, the revenue of Station B has reached 5.21 billion yuan, and the monthly active users have reached 267 million.
Users and community content are two wheels each other. The increase in the user base, as well as the strategy of going out of the circle to bring richer people, driving the diversification of community content supply, such as live broadcasting, variety shows, film and television and other content, this law has been repeatedly verified in the history of the development of B station.
According to the third quarter of 2021 financial report, value-added services covering live broadcasting and large member business have become one of the fastest growing business modules of Station B. Business revenue increased by 95% year-on-year to 1.91 billion yuan, accounting for 36.7% of revenue, continuing to become the most profitable business of Station B.
Behind the "lack of attention" to the attention is that the entire industry, as well as the user and content side of station B, have undergone major changes.
Station B live broadcast out of the third way
It is worth noting that with the development of the live broadcasting industry, pure traffic platform live broadcasting is facing more and more challenges. In July 2021, after Huya and Douyu unsuccessfully pursued a merger, they had to move towards the construction of a community-based platform. But the business that relies on game live broadcasting is too difficult to do, and this ecological community that is highly dependent on the head anchor is doomed to not work.
Compared with the pan-entertainment live broadcast done by Kuaishou and Douyin, as well as the pure game live broadcast platform of Douyu and Huya, the idea and playing method of live broadcasting on Station B show slight differences.
Kuaishou and Douyin do pan-entertainment live broadcasts, naturally more to tip and revenue. Between creators and creators, between creators and users, there is a highly dramatic and tense atmosphere.
But the responsibility of the platform is to make the cake bigger and mobilize all the elements, and Station B is taking the third way in this regard, and it is trying to promote the unity of video content producers and live broadcast producers.
In the first quarter of 2021, Chen Rui said on the earnings call that in the future, live broadcasting will become the ability of every UP owner, and the live broadcast business of Station B is endogenous and has nothing to do with external competition.
Photo / Visual China
In a sense, station B live broadcasting is to serve the community ecology, it can not be independent of the existing video business and creators, and compete head-on with the outside. It needs to be more integrated into the video creation itself and become the basic tool of up master in the B station. What can up master do during the blank period of video creation and editing? Interact with fans through live streaming to enhance stickiness and retention. Live streaming and submission form a two-way loop, thereby driving overall content growth.
On the one hand, the B station digs the support station inside the UP master. For example, since 15 years ago, the game area UP main Flower Shaobei, which has been submitted on the B station, has now become the head game anchor in the station, with a fan base of nearly 6 million. On the other hand, Station B is also actively introducing "foreign talents", and the overall champion of the BLS in 2021 is Feng Timo, who signed a contract with Station B in December 2019.
The same driving model is playing out in the knowledge zone and the field of pan-entertainment live broadcasting.
More and more head UP masters are starting broadcasting, and more and more anchors are submitting articles and becoming UP masters. For example, Luo Xiang and Dai Jianye are also opening live broadcasts to share knowledge content. In July 2021, the up master of the knowledge area "Hardcore Half Buddha Immortal" began to broadcast the history of the development of the live broadcast industry, and many UP masters such as "Ma Dugong", "Dong Jianning", "Gu Zhixuan" and other UP main linkage talked about the history of industrial development. Anchors like Feng Timo and Xiao Shen'er are also trying Vlog, dance, and music submissions.
At the same time, compared with the old iron of Kuaishou and the family members on Douyin, the UP master on the B station has more respect for the fan users and is more harmonious, because the fan tone of the B station and the difficulty of becoming a UP master are relatively high.
Jin Yechen, a partner of Gao's creative services, once mentioned in the live broadcast that at that time, more than one million UP masters would be equipped with two operations, "This is a difficult thing to imagine on other platforms." ”
Station B has a rich supply of live broadcasts and has also attracted more user participation. According to statistics, the monthly broadcast time of Station B in 2021 increased by 140% year-on-year, and the monthly viewing time increased by 70% compared with 2020. At the same time, according to the financial report of the third quarter of 2021, the average monthly paid users of Station B increased by 59% year-on-year to nearly 24 million, and the payment rate increased to 8.9%. In the conference call, CEO Chen Rui said that the quality of users of Station B is very high, and it is expected that the payment rate will reach double digits in the future.
For video creators, live streaming provides them with a channel for data monetization, and at the same time as its launch, it also provides new traffic for each special area of live broadcasting. For anchors, creating videos can accumulate fans for them and bring a certain amount of video creation income.
Whether it is games, pan-entertainment, or knowledge, life, or virtual idols, with the further improvement of integration with the ecology of station B, a better self-circulating content ecology will be produced. What Station B has to do is to build a good framework and maintain basic order and service.
According to statistics, in 2021, compared with 2020, the number of live broadcast creators on station B further increased, and the number of monthly broadcasters increased by 50% year-on-year; the integration trend of live broadcasting and PUGV ecology was significant, and the number of UP masters who started broadcasting and submitted articles in parallel increased by 70% year-on-year.
In 2021, the number of revenue anchors of B station live broadcast increased by 59% year-on-year, which further encouraged the "internal circulation" of UP main-B station anchors.
In the view of practitioner Lu Jing, although the scale of the live broadcast business of Station B is not particularly large compared to platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Douyu, and Huya, the growth rate is much faster.
To maintain this high-speed growth, on the one hand, the base is relatively small, the growth space is large, on the other hand, it is due to the content creation ecology of the B station, which makes the B station live broadcast business development process, do not need to rely entirely on the "talent introduction" method, but also can convert the UP master inside the platform into the anchor.
The virtual live streaming wind blows up Station B
However, live streaming competition is still fierce, and it is obviously difficult for platforms to stand out if they do not have unique attributes. Station B also needs to find a tone that is in line with its own positioning.
Lu Jing believes that one of the most suitable categories for the live broadcast soil of Station B is the virtual anchor. "Douyu, Huya, Douyin, and even the early years of Kugou have tried, but it may be related to user acceptance, consumption habits, etc., only B station has been successful on the virtual anchor, at present, it is faster than the growth rate of real anchors."
Relying on its unique two-dimensional attributes, Station B has gathered more and more virtual idols and virtual anchors. In February 2016, "Luo Tianyi" appeared on Hunan Satellite TV's small Chinese New Year's Eve, becoming the first virtual singer to appear in China's mainstream television media. In 2018, Station B announced that it would increase its stake in Hong Kong Zenith Holdings Limited, the parent company of the virtual idol "Luo Tianyi", and become the controlling shareholder.
Virtual anchors are also in the stage of rapid growth in Station B. Station B CEO Chen Rui said that in the year ended June 26, 2021, a total of 32,412 virtual anchors started broadcasting on Station B, an increase of 40% year-on-year. The number of live broadcast barrage interactions reached 560 million, an increase of 100%; the number of virtual anchor contributions reached 1.89 million, an increase of 50% year-on-year; and the number of virtual anchor manuscripts reached 8.3 billion, an increase of 70%.
According to Lu Jing's estimates, the flow of the entire virtual plate in 2021 is about 500 million, the overall plate of the B station live broadcast may be 400 to 500 million, and the virtual plate may already account for 10%.
In addition to virtual live broadcasting, a more innovative form of live broadcasting has also grown, that is, interactive live broadcasting. That is, let users, really can influence the live content of the host, interact with it. For example, the UP main "Xiugou nightclub owner", who has 400,000 fans, has the name "Xiugou Dance Hall", which is the harmonic sound of the Puppy Dance Hall. As long as the audience enters the live broadcast room, it will become a cute little fat dog, shaking together in the dog mountain and the dog sea.
"How do you get 400,000 followers with just 4 videos?" Some users leave a message with questions. But the "xiugou nightclub owner" is indeed enough. On December 31, 2021, during the New Year's Eve live broadcast, tens of thousands of dogs with "Happy New Year" reveled wildly, making wishes online to the accompaniment of "I believe I am me / I believe tomorrow / I believe that youth has no horizon", and even some people said "Wish for world peace".
Photo / Station B xiugou nightclub owner live broadcast room
Source / Screenshot of Burning Finance
In the urging of the bullet screen and the message of the screen, the audience put the Buddha in a carnival, and a strong empathy of emotion had to be released.
This is enough to attract users, but also to retain fans to provide a strong attraction.
To a certain extent, the PUGV ecology is the cornerstone, the strong community interaction represented by the bullet screen, coupled with the high-strength fan stickiness and high retention rate, which makes the B station naturally have the soil for the development of live broadcasting.
However, this does not mean that Station B is stress-free. The minds of B station users still need to be popularized, and live broadcasting still needs to invest human, material, financial and other resources to improve infrastructure.
Station B must set parameters for the growing live broadcast ecology and provide sufficient environment. And these innovation ecosystems may only have the opportunity to develop and grow on the platform of rapid development and growth.
In the current environment, can the live broadcast of B station achieve a breakthrough with the help of the rapid development of B station? All the questions are left to 2022.
Resources:
"Behind the EDG championship brush screen, is the B station live broadcast that is making efforts", source: Internet refers to the north
*The caption and some of the inner text illustrations are from Station B. In the text, Lu Jing is a pseudonym.
*Disclaimer: In no event shall the information herein or the opinions expressed herein constitute investment advice to any person.