Betta fish who loves to "rub the edge", the boss is lost

Is this the end, or the beginning?

1

Lost contact

Another well-known figure has gone missing.

In the past few days, many sources have revealed that Chen Shaojie, chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Douyu, has lost contact. According to the report of the cover news, this news was confirmed by the betta side.

As the helmsman of China's leading game live streaming platform, Chen Shaojie's experience is quite legendary.

According to public information, Chen Shaojie was born in Jinan in 1984. Since the fifth grade of primary school, he has been obsessed with games, and when he arrived at university, he even spent all night in Internet cafes, and when he was a freshman, he dropped out of school.

In 2006, 21-year-old Chen Shaojie came to Wuhan, and with his 10-year experience as a veteran gamer, he found a job developing a game battle platform.

The turning point came in 2010, when Chen Shaojie bought Station A, the "originator of the two-dimensional website" in China, and established the "Shengbo" channel of Station A. Four years later, he made the "Shengbo" channel independent from Station A and renamed it "Douyu TV".

Taking advantage of the live broadcast of games, in July 2019, Douyu was listed on the NASDAQ, with a market value of nearly $4 billion on the same day. In October of the same year, Chen Shaojie ranked 1507th in the "2019 Hurun Report" with a net worth of 2.5 billion yuan.

In November 2020, Chen Shaojie ranked 34th on the "2020 Hurun Post-80s Self-Made Rich List" with a wealth of 5.5 billion yuan.

What is curious is, why did such a legendary figure suddenly lose contact?

2

fall

The reason for this is that the gossip is everywhere, and we have to wait for the official caliber. But the situation faced by Chen Shaojie is indeed not as beautiful as it was back then.

Since its establishment, Douyu has received at least 6 rounds of financing, with investors including Sequoia China, Shenzhen Venture Capital, Guozhong Venture Capital, Tencent and other well-known institutions. After the listing, Betta was once popular with capital.

However, as of the close of trading on November 3, 2023, Douyu's stock price is only $0.936 per share, which has fallen 95% from its high, leaving only a thin layer of soles.

This embarrassment is also reflected in the performance. From 2022 onwards, Douyu's quarterly revenue has been declining, with a maximum decline of 27.9%. In the second quarter of this year, Douyu's revenue fell to 1.39 billion yuan, down 24%.

Behind it is the loneliness of the core business. Back then, Douyu was once known as the "Whampoa Military Academy in the Internet celebrity world". Looking through Douyu's prospectus, the registered users of Douyu soared from 98.7 million to 253.6 million at that time, and the average total monthly active users increased from 85.6 million in 2016 to 112.6 million in 2017, and then to 159.2 million in the first quarter of 2019. From the perspective of the user base, Douyu can be said to be the largest game live broadcast platform in China at that time.

Today, the situation has changed. According to the financial report, the number of mobile monthly active users (MAU) of Douyu fell year-on-year for four consecutive quarters in 2022, falling by 4 million, 5 million, 4.8 million and 5 million in each quarter. Paying subscribers fell 23.3% year-on-year to 5.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2022.

In terms of the number of anchors, the "2021 Game Live Industry Insight Report" shows that the number of game anchors in Douyu will be 1.596 million in 2021, with a net loss of more than 30 million.

At the same time, new platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili have grown rapidly, and Kuaishou has become the industry leader in terms of the number of anchors in this field with 6.212 million game anchors.

What's more heart-wrenching is that the number of MAUs on game live streaming platforms has dropped from 104 million in 2019 to 71 million in March 2022, while short video platforms and medium video platforms have increased by 82.8% and 75.1% in the same period.

Seeing the situation change, the big anchor on Betta began to find another way. First, Feng Timo left Station B, and then Xu Xu's baby defected to Douyin, and these big anchors took away a large number of users.

Betta fish is really struggling.

3

Involved in pornography and gambling, rubbing the edge has been repeatedly banned

In the face of the decline in data, Douyu once "took risks".

Half a year ago, "Cyberspace China" announced that in response to serious ecological problems such as pornography and vulgarity on the Douyu platform, the Cyberspace Administration of China instructed the Hubei Provincial Internet Information Office to send a working group to the Douyu platform to carry out a one-month centralized rectification and supervision.

Behind this, there is the frequent rubbing of betta fish.

At the beginning of 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China released the 2022 inventory of "Eliminating Pornography and Fighting Illegal Publications", and Douyu was impressively listed. After that, Douyu was once again interviewed and punished for spreading obscenity and pornography, and was named in the first quarter of the "Qinglang Action" inventory released by the Cyberspace Administration of China, becoming the only company that was named in both counts.

▲ source network

In October 2021, some netizens broke the news on Weibo that during the annual World Series of popular games, Douyu's homemade house talk show showed off female guests' hot bodies, licking bottle caps, rubbing pillows and other sexually suggestive actions.

On August 24, 2020, law enforcement officers inspected 68 live video recordings of the "Douyu Live Platform" provided by the Office of the Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications Working Group. Through the investigation, law enforcement officials believe that Douyu provides online performance content that contains vulgar performances.

Earlier in 2016, Douyu caused a sensation on the whole network because of the "live broadcast doll" incident, and was urgently stopped by the Cyberspace Administration of China to stop the "outdoor live broadcast" column.

Tianyancha data shows that from 2016 to 2022, the Wuhan Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism and other relevant departments have imposed administrative penalties on Douyu 19 times, with a total fine of 165,000 yuan.

This can't help but make people curious, such repeated occurrence of this kind of rubbing information, where did Douyu's platform supervision go?

What's more interesting is that, according to a previous report by Phoenix.com Technology, many anchors of Douyu revealed that Douyu even took the initiative to "loosen" such violations-

Some violations no longer affect the streamer's income.

▲Source: Phoenix Technology

What's even more eye-opening is that betta fish is not only involved in pornography, but also in gambling.

In 2022, the Dujiangyan City Court in Sichuan Province made a judgment that 2 gambling anchors of Douyu were sentenced to 6 years in prison and fined a total of 1.65 million.

According to the report, since 2017, the anchor gang named "彡彡九外" has evaded supervision by applying for cards, swiping gift lotteries, and then privately distributing bonuses, but in fact gambling. In the past four years, a total of more than 4,200 lottery draws have attracted more than 4.42 million people to participate, attracting as much as 120 million yuan.

It seems that in order to save the decline, Douyu once "committed a crime against the wind" and let it go.

Now, with Chen Shaojie's disappearance, there is another layer of fog in the future of Betta. Perhaps, for this business -

There is only one way to make a real mistake, and that is to not learn any lessons from it.