2023 is coming to an end, and the game live streaming industry has ushered in round after round of shocks. The arrest of the CEO of Douyu led to a series of declines in its stock price, and the former head anchor of Douyu, Xu Xubaobao, "closed the microphone"...
On the evening of December 2, Zhang Daxian, the former brother of the king of Huya, made his debut on Douyin, with more than 60 million views, the highest number of online users exceeding 2 million, and the number of likes exceeding 1.2 billion.
However, Douyin does not have the live broadcast copyright of "Glory of Kings", and it seems that he has long expected the doubts caused by jumping to Douyin, Zhang Daxian posted on Weibo, and the key information is: He will continue to be accompanied by Glory of Kings, and the Glory of Kings official also reposted his Weibo and said: I miss you, old friend Xianxian!
Therefore, this is also interpreted as the fact that he will continue to broadcast the glory of kings.
Does this mean that the dispute between Tencent and Douyin over the copyright of game live broadcast has finally ended? Is there a new opportunity for the game live broadcast industry?
1. Live data observation
(1) User portraits
"Zhang Daxian" has more than 4.21 million fans in a week, ranking first on the list of fans.
According to the data of Giant Arithmetic, the followers of Douyin's "@张大仙" are mostly young male users: 33.66% are 18-23 years old, and 28.38% are 31-40 years old. In terms of gender, 72% of users are male. They are mainly distributed in first-tier or new first-tier cities.
(2) The volume of voice and interaction of short video content
In terms of social media communication, we invited DataStorytelling to provide relevant data (DataStorytelling's official profile: China's leading one-stop big data and AI intelligent application provider, which has built a full value chain solution from data collection, processing, analysis, modeling to business applications, and has 50+ applications such as DataStorytelling, DataTalk, DataTalk, and DataTalk).
In terms of volume: As of December 5, the number of short video content related to "Zhang Daxian" is about 33,000, and from the perspective of time, the explosion of voice volume is mainly concentrated in two time periods, (1) November 26, "Zhang Daxian" officially announced the debut time of Douyin live broadcast, (2) Douyin started its live broadcast debut on December 2.
In terms of interaction: As of December 5, the number of short video interactions related to "Zhang Daxian" was about 27.966 million, and the outbreak trend basically coincided with the time of the volume outbreak, and there were three small-scale outbreaks from mid-October to mid-November, the reason for which was that Zhang Daxian released short video content on the same day, and the video likes and comments were high, including a fat loss life content on October 16, accompanied by the text "This beauty is what I deserve!" received 1.16 million likes and 44,000 comments.
(3) Statistics on the video with the highest number of interactions
DataEye Research Institute counted the Douyin video categories of the TOP200 interactions (likes and comments collection) related to "Zhang Daxian" in the past 90 days, excluding the 76 video content released by the author himself, we classified the rest of the video content, which can be seen that there are multiple types.
The content is mainly created around the "premiere", of which the trailer accounts for the highest proportion (26%), followed by the premiere highlight screen clip, accounting for 21%.
2. Douyin and Zhang Daxian achieve each other?
Why did Zhang Daxian choose this point in time to start broadcasting? And why did he choose the Douyin platform? DataEye Research Institute tried to analyze it from three aspects.
First, the Huya and Douyu platforms are in deep trouble, and anchors need to seek new growth points.
According to Huya's 2023 Q3 financial report, in the third quarter of 2023, Huya's total revenue was 1.65 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 30.7%, and the revenue from live broadcast decreased to 1.532 billion yuan from 2.017 billion yuan in the same period last year.
Similarly, Douyu's net profit has declined sharply in the three years from 2020 to 2022, with 540 million yuan, -620 million yuan and -90.4 million yuan respectively in the three years.
According to the latest financial report data, Douyu's revenue in the second quarter was 1.3922 billion yuan, down 24.1% year-on-year, and its net profit was 6.8 million yuan, compared with a net loss of -38.8 million yuan in the same period in 2022.
In addition, Douyu CEO Chen Shaojie was arrested in accordance with the law, and the chain shock reaction was also caused by the head anchor of Douyu, and now Doinb, Da Totoro, I am Da Kunkun, etc. have collectively stopped broadcasting, and the platform is in deep trouble.
Under the theme of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency", Huya chose to streamline sales, marketing, and R&D expenses, while Douyu reduced content costs. Both are decreasing in terms of revenue share and content costs, and in the case of reduced revenue sharing, it has become a matter of course for the top anchors to find another way out.
With more traffic, richer content, and more diverse commercial models, Kuaidou and Station B have become the next place for anchors.
In addition, the previous head anchor "Xuxu Baby" has cooperated with Douyin to explore the way for "Zhang Daxian".
Second, the player group of users of the game "Honor of Kings" broadcast by "Zhang Daxian" is highly compatible with the users of the Douyin platform.
According to third-party data, there are slightly more female users of "Honor of Kings" than male users, accounting for 53.16%. The main users are concentrated between the ages of 24 and between the ages of 24 and 35, accounting for 42.02% and 41.51% respectively, which is highly consistent with the user portrait of the Douyin platform, which is active among young people, especially young female users.
Third, Byte withdrew from Tencent's hinterland, and Tencent needed new traffic.
When Zhang Daxian joined Douyin, Byte announced that it would retreat from the game business, and its Chaoxi Lightyear large-scale business was reduced, divesting the games that had been launched with good performance to ensure operations, and all non-innovative projects that had not been launched were shut down.
In other words, Bytecom withdrew from Tencent's hinterland. And back to Tencent, this year's Tencent "Glory of Kings" and "Peace Elite" market are declining, and there are still no other popular new games to fill the vacancies, at this node, Tencent's new game "Yuan Dream Star" will be launched next week, so Douyin's huge traffic pool has to try for Tencent.
Third, the new battlefield brings new opportunities
From April this year, Tencent's games can be invested in byte traffic, and then to Xu Baobao, and then to Zhang Daxian, game anchors have settled in Douyin.
Byte Tencent embraced each other, Byte ushered in giant advertisers, and Tencent had new traffic in buying volume and talent marketing. are releasing positive signals, which are of great significance to the game industry and the live broadcast industry.
Significance 1: For the entire game live broadcast industry ecology: Huya has become an outcast, and Douyin game live broadcast has further risen.
The departure of anchors of leading companies and the decline in financial reports are not unrelated to the general environment.
According to Gamma Data and iResearch's report, the growth of the game live broadcast industry is slowing down, in 2017, the fastest growing year in the industry, game live broadcast once achieved a growth of 188.5%, and from 2020 to 2022, this figure has become 32.6%, 26.7% and 21.8%, and the growth rate of the market size has begun to slow down.
This proves that it is difficult for Huya to return to its peak state by relying on the live broadcast business alone.
For Douyin, game live streaming has always been a huge cake, but due to copyright restrictions, some popular games have never been able to be presented on Douyin live broadcast. This is also very detrimental to the richness of Douyin's content and potential user conversion.
Douyin does not have the copyright of big DAU games, which also means that many game anchors have little choice to carry out game live broadcasts on Douyin, and even many anchors who only broadcast one game cannot broadcast live on Douyin at all.
So this has put Douyin game live broadcast in an embarrassing situation, not only wanting to make this market bigger, but also powerless. And this time, Douyin can use the name of Zhang Daxian to release a signal: in the future, "Glory of Kings" may be broadcast live on Douyin.
This may also create a precedent for Douyin game live broadcast, and the follow-up may also mean that more other game anchors will come to Douyin to broadcast "Honor of Kings", or even more big DAU games.
Significance 2: For manufacturers: It is a huge benefit to Tencent's big DAU games, such as "Honor of Kings" and "Yuanmeng Star".
In the live broadcast, Zhang Daxian has already played this game, and next week "Yuan Dream Star" will be launched, and he has warmed up the game in the live broadcast.
According to last year's data, Douyin planned and launched the "Warm Chinese Year" online activity, netizens in Douyin, Toutiao, Watermelon Video and other 8 clients, not only can exchange blessings, grab red envelopes, but also set off fireworks and play games together, making the Spring Festival file traffic inevitably increase greatly, I believe Tencent must be aiming at the time of the Spring Festival.
In other words, this Spring Festival is the first round of showdown between "Yuan Dream Star" and "Egg Boy Party".
Significance 3: Accelerate the live streaming of games, bringing more traffic and monetization possibilities.
This year, game manufacturers are also looking for new growth points, NetEase, Thunder, Sanqi, Kaiying and many other leading game manufacturers have started live streaming on Douyin, and the goods they bring are mainly divided into two categories: game recharge services (including props and fashion) and game peripheral products.
The DataEye Research Institute found that after Zhang Daxian officially announced the debut of Douyin live broadcast, many domestic brands interacted in the comment area and tried to carve up a little traffic during Zhang Daxian's premiere.
At the same time, Zhang Daxian's e-sports team XYG began to interact with this year's "Internet celebrity" domestic brands, including bee flower, Huiyuan, Man Ting, Baiyu and other brands, and the Douyin window of the XYG team also hung a series of "XYG fans-exclusive" promotional products.
From November 27th, the XYG team began to make a first attempt to bring domestic products while warming up for Zhang Daxian's premiere on Douyin live broadcast.
Judging from the brands that XYG currently cooperates with, most of these products are general items such as daily necessities and snacks, with a unit price of 10-30 yuan, which is more suitable for game live broadcast viewers to test the water consumption on Douyin.
In short, for game anchors, the traditional game live broadcast platform has already entered the stock competition mode, and before there is no new traffic coming in, the ceiling is visible, and Zhang Daxian's choice is actually the choice of many game anchors in the future.
From the perspective of platforms, Douyin, Kuaishou and other platforms are still growing in traffic, and the content model is also more inclusive, which can bring more opportunities for game anchors to try.
It is foreseeable that although Tencent and other game giants will not open the moat of game copyright at once, the two sides are already looking for more possibilities for cooperation.
The resulting pattern changes, opportunities and challenges deserve attention.