Wen | Zhang Shule (Columnist of People's Daily And People's Post and Telegraph, Observer of Internet and Game Industry)
On March 16, Douyu released its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2021.
According to the financial report, in 2021, Douyu achieved revenue of 9.165 billion yuan, down 4.5% year-on-year, and the net loss was 620 million yuan. Non-GAAP adjusted net loss was $400 million, compared to Douyu's 2020 net profit of $541.6 million.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, Douyu's revenue was 2.328 billion yuan, an increase of 2.6% year-on-year; the net loss was 193 million yuan, narrowing by 15.5% year-on-year. Non-GAAP adjusted net loss was $112 million, down 36.7 percent from $177 million in the year-ago quarter.
As of December 31, 2021, Douyu had cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, short-term and long-term deposits of $6,643 million, nearly $1 billion less than the same period last year.
According to the earnings report, the main reason for the decline in revenue for the whole year was the year-on-year decline in live broadcast revenue, advertising and other revenue.
Although the loss has narrowed, Douyu has been losing money for five consecutive quarters.
In this regard, the financial network Huang Yang and the Times Finance Xu Dan respectively exchanged with Shule, and the poor Dao thought:
At this stage, the game live broadcast platform for the scene has not been opened on the industry chain of the event, and the loss of Douyu is almost certain.
It can even be said that the current performance of Douyu should be said to be stable, a kind of "stability" with blood and injuries.
Douyu himself is also aware of the current dilemma and is also thinking of cracking it.
In the past two years, Douyu's financial report has been flat, compared with Huya's previous financial report data.
Especially in July last year, after the "abort" of the merger of Douyu and Huya, the two sides "went to the ring" again.
However, Douyu has lagged behind Huya significantly in terms of revenue scale and number of monthly active users.
According to the financial report of the third quarter of 2021, the revenue of Douyu was 2.348 billion yuan, which was 600 million yuan less than the 2.976 billion yuan of Huya's revenue.
For the industry, there is a lot of discussion about why the tiger tooth and the fighting fish combination failed before, why there is suddenly such a big differentiation.
But in fact, this is just a difference in strategic direction, so that the financial report data of the two sides has a certain difference, but it is not enough to explain which is stronger or weaker.
Of course, there is no essential difference between the two platforms, both take games as a vertical field, and explore user stickiness and content boundaries in and around games, e-sports and their surroundings.
In other words, the problems encountered by the current fighting fish, Huya is also facing, but the performance is not at the level of income.
The real strength or weakness is to look at the internal strength of the platform itself.
How to get users, the high cost has made Douyu difficult. According to the data, in the second quarter of last year, the marketing expenditure of Douyu was 295 million yuan, up 107.6% year-on-year.
Under the word "crazy rise", it did not bring too much user increment.
In terms of user data, in the fourth quarter of 2021, Douyu mobile terminal MAU (average monthly active users) increased from 58.2 million in the same period of 2020 to 62.4 million, an increase of 7.2%. At the same time, the number of paying users also increased to 7.3 million in the quarter from 7.2 million in the previous quarter. But the number of paying users decreased by 300,000 in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to 7.6 million in the same period of 2020.
Therefore, we must face up to the fact that the total length of users is constant, the total number of users has a ceiling, for the live broadcast platform, that is, the game in the user stock market, marketing costs naturally rise. It is not surprising that after the previous Internet industries have come out of the barbaric growth period, the cost of obtaining customers has been the same high.
Chen Shaojie, founder and CEO of Douyu, said that in the future, Douyu will continue to maintain the leading position in the domestic game live broadcasting industry and explore new growth points through rich content forms such as live broadcast, video, graphics and community, as well as innovative and interactive operation methods. ”
Cao Hao, vice president of Douyu Finance, further explained the direction of the new growth point, that is, in the future, Douyu will continue to upgrade the content linkage of live broadcast, video, graphics and community, and strengthen investment in content and research and development. At the same time, we will explore new monetization methods in addition to live rewards to improve the efficiency of monetization.
Does this new growth point really make the fighting fish stop diving or turning their bellies?
It is foolish to think that game live broadcasting itself is only a vertical track, and the commercial conversion scene of pure-blood game live broadcasting is relatively small, and it is also oppressed by the game content of other comprehensive short videos and live broadcast platforms.
In the future, live broadcasting platforms, especially game live broadcasting, need to find profit directions in the derivative fields and upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, rather than competing for anchors.
The profit scenario of the entire game live broadcast has not been opened, and the more profitable posture of the e-sports event is the direction of its attack and the story that can attract the capital market.
At this stage, if you want to break through, the core is to use the opportunity of e-sports to enter Asia, carry out e-sports events on a larger scale, use game live broadcasting as a medium, and use the revenue method of sports events to open up scenes and explore derivative surrounding markets.
According to incomplete statistics, Douyu has launched more than 300 self-made events in 2021, an increase of 60% over the whole year of 2020.
This is the real transformation of douyu, a kind of self-help, no longer rely on the anchor, all rely on the event.
As for the impact of the development of live broadcasts on Douyu and Huya on B station, Kuaishou and other video platforms, it is actually not as strong as the outside world thinks.
For the time being, in the field of game live broadcasting, friends are trial and error development, especially Kuaishou and Byte, most of which are small dishes in their own big plate, which must be but not necessarily strong. It's just the layout.
However, regarding the failed merger of Douyu Huya, there have been some new trends recently.
In March, a number of game streamers announced on social platforms that they would leave Penguin Esports.
Market sources say penguin esports will end operations in June.
In response to this news, Tencent Interactive Entertainment replied to the media inquiry that Penguin E-sports is still in stable operation, thanking all walks of life for their concern.
As a addition to the combination of tiger teeth and fighting fish in the past, this "rumor" of penguin e-sports has a different flavor.
Shule previously told the media that after the merger that was stopped, the merger would not happen. But it can happen in a different way.
Douyu, Huya and Penguin E-sports will only serve as 3 platforms to continue to race horses as game live broadcasting platforms, and carry out differentiated exploration in different areas of game live broadcasting to ensure that there is no left-right mutual competition and let the capital side "embarrass".
Although for Tencent, it does not have more impact, but it is only a small setback in its layout and exploration in the field of game peripherals.
But it is not impossible to let one or two families fall, and the curve achieves the goal of integration, although this cost is not small.