According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, in March this year, the well-known anchor "Yi Xiaotuan", who had been off the air for more than a month, was confirmed to be arrested. People familiar with the matter said that "Xiaotuantuan" was suspected of large-scale gambling and was related to the Chen Shaojie case. In November 2023, Chen Shaojie, the founder and CEO of Douyu, was arrested by the Chengdu Dujiangyan Public Security Bureau on suspicion of the crime of opening a casino. After the incident, Douyu set up a temporary management committee and said to the outside world that "at present, Douyu Company is operating normally".
Since the news of Chen Shaojie's arrest in November last year, any news about his gambling case will attract the attention of the outside world. Today (April 23), rumors about the change in his case, as well as the news of the arrest of his anchor "Xiao Tuantuan", are both on the hot search. In fact, the public has always been very interested in this self-made post-80s billionaire: what kind of person is he? How did he go from an Internet addict teenager and a college dropout to a billionaire and CEO of a listed company to achieve a counterattack in life? How did he slip from the peak of his life and finally become infamous for gambling?
From an Internet addict teenager to a live broadcast giant
Internet addicted teenagers, ordinary colleges, freshman dropouts, squatting at home...... Compared with many business tycoons and executives of major Internet companies, Chen Shaojie does not have the title of graduating from a prestigious school and a glamorous resume. Before the age of 20, he was a "negative textbook" in the eyes of outsiders, and his only specialty was playing games.
According to public reports, in 1984, Chen Shaozhuo was born in Jinan, Shandong, and since the fifth grade of primary school, he has been obsessed with games, and when he arrived at university, he even stayed up all night in Internet cafes. When he was a freshman, he dropped out of school and became a "family squat". After becoming famous, he did not shy away from dropping out of school: "The (university) school is not very famous, and I feel that after four years of study, there is no good future." ”
The turning point in his life occurred after the Spring Festival in 2006. Chen Shaojie, 21, came to Wuhan with a high school degree and a 10-year experience as a veteran gamer, quickly finding a job developing a game battle platform. During this time, he met his partner Zhang Wenming, who graduated from Wuhan University of Technology and specializes in technology and products. The two "code farmers" hit it off and jointly developed the "Boss" game platform. After operating for a period of time, the platform was acquired by Shanda Games in 2009, and Chen Shaojie alone cashed out 4 million cash and got the first pot of gold for entrepreneurship.
This year, Chen Shaojie was only 25 years old.
In 2010, Chen Shaojie acquired AcFun, commonly known as Station A, at a very low price. He also learned from the experience of Japanese live broadcast platforms, and took the lead in introducing the "barrage" function in China, anchoring the popular games at that time, such as League of Legends and DOTA (Guardian Ruins), etc., and quickly accumulated a large number of high-paste users.
In addition, Chen Shaojie also took the lead in setting up a "live broadcast" channel (meaning live broadcast) at station A, where users can conduct various live broadcasts, including games, sports, variety shows, entertainment and other content. In 2014, he separated the "Shengbo" channel from Station A and renamed it "Douyu TV".
Taking advantage of the east wind of the mobile Internet, the live broadcast of the game has a soil for growth, and after Douyu became an instant hit, well-known live broadcast platforms such as Huya, Battle Flag, Dragon Ball, and Panda were born, and the "live broadcast of a thousand regiments" was formed at its peak.
At that time, Douyu had top anchors such as "Brother Betta" Xu Xu, "Sister Douyu" Feng Timo, Zhang Daxian and other top anchors, which were unrivaled for a while.
Adventurous "ruthless"
On the Internet, Chen Shaojie is called "the ceiling of self-made" by netizens, and his entrepreneurial history is as legendary as a novel. Chen Shaojie's Zhihu signature is "Pick the cake on the flat ground, and take the thief on the other side". From this, it can be seen that he is somewhat charlatan.
Why is the live broadcast platform named "Betta Fish"? Chen Shaojie once publicly explained that Betta is a fierce and aggressive fish, and the meeting of the two males must be a fight, which is consistent with his mood at the time. It has been reported that Chen Shaojie is adventurous and likes to lick blood from the knife, and he has a famous mantra, "If others dare not do it, I will do it (do it and see)".
Perhaps it is this courageous entrepreneurial spirit that has attracted the attention of investors. Betta quickly obtained a large amount of "grain and grass ammunition". In April 2014, Cai Dongqing invested 20 million yuan in Douyu in his personal name and became the earliest investor of Douyu. Two months later, Douyu TV received another $20 million Series A investment from Sequoia Capital.
Chen Shaojie spends money, and he is also a "ruthless person". He spent 20 million in the angel round of financing to only 5 million in a month, and almost all of it was spent on signing the head anchor.
Douyu's crazy money-burning has led to the "war of grabbing people" in the live broadcast industry. Major platforms began to copy the "coin scattering tactics" and spent a lot of money to sign head anchors. Douyu was once short of funds and had a crisis of unpaid wages.
But fate still favored Chen Shaojie, and in early 2016, Douyu announced the completion of a $100 million Series B financing led by Tencent and followed by Sequoia. Equipped with a new round of ammunition, Douyu has been invincible since then, and has successfully become the head live broadcast platform in China.
Highlights are always accompanied by hidden worries
In 2019, 35-year-old Chen Shaojie ushered in the highlight moment of his life.
In July of that year, Betta was listed on the NASDAQ in the United States, with a market value of nearly $4 billion on that day, and Chen Shaojie's personal wealth also skyrocketed. In October of that 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.
However, just after Douyu climbed to the peak of live broadcasting, the domestic network ecology has changed dramatically.
The rise of short videos has launched a fierce impact on Douyu, which belongs to the camp of traditional live broadcast platforms. In November 2019, Kuaishou officially disclosed that its daily active users of game live broadcasts reached 51 million, and the daily active users of game short videos reached 77 million. Station B also won the 3-year live broadcast copyright of the "League of Legends" Global Finals in China with 800 million yuan in the same period, further encircling and suppressing the "live broadcast veterans".
Douyu, who believes in the principle of burning money, can't afford to burn money, and the head anchor Feng Timo, who was cultivated by it, is rumored to have switched to Station B in 2019 because the contract renewal offer was not negotiated.
The larger fish continues to move closer to the betta. In April 2020, Tencent became Huya's largest shareholder. Previously, Tencent held a 37.18% stake in Douyu and was the largest shareholder. In October 2020, Tencent promoted the merger of Huya Douyu, swallowing the two major live broadcast platforms in one gulp, and Chen Shaojie became the co-CEO of the merged company. However, in July 2021, Douyu announced on its official website that it would terminate the merger agreement with Huya.
After taking charge of the betta fish alone, the performance declined
With Douyin, Kuaishou and Bilibili entering the field of game content one after another in 2019, Douyu's business situation has also been greatly affected, even to the point of struggling. For nearly three consecutive years, there have been double-digit declines in key metrics such as revenue, profit, core business and mobile.
At the end of 2021, co-venture partner Zhang Wenming withdrew from Douyu, and Chen Shaojie took full control of the future of Douyu. Douyu fell from a net profit of 540 million yuan in 2020 to a net loss of 620 million yuan in 2021. In 2022, the loss narrowed to 90.4 million yuan, and the total annual revenue was 7.108 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 22.44%. Its investment in marketing expenses and brand expenses has also dropped significantly. In the fourth quarter of 2022, sales and marketing expenses decreased by 45.9% to RMB123.9 million from RMB229.2 million in the same period of 2021, and quarterly R&D expenses also decreased by 39.2% year-on-year to RMB80.6 million.
Large-scale live broadcast platforms continue to enter the ranks of game live broadcasts, and there are many full-time game live broadcast platforms on the rise, and Douyu's life is always difficult.
Since 2023, Douyu has seen two quarters of declines in terms of average mobile MAU (monthly active users) and average number of paying users. Douyu's MAU in the second quarter was 50.3 million yuan, compared to 55.7 million yuan in the same period in 2022, and the average number of paying users was 4 million, compared to 6 million in the same period in 2022. The number of monthly active users on mobile has been declining one after another.
Arrested on suspicion of opening a casino
In October 2023, an official account issued a document saying that the person in charge of a large-scale live broadcast platform was recently arrested by a public security organ in Sichuan on suspicion of opening a casino. Soon, Douyu CEO Chen Shaojie was revealed to be missing, and many netizens speculated whether the two things were related.
On November 21 last year, Douyu announced that the company's CEO Chen Shaojie was arrested by Chengdu police around November 16, 2023. On November 22, 2023, the Chengdu Dujiangyan Public Security Bureau issued a police notice: After investigation, our bureau found that Chen Moujie (male, 39 years old) was suspected of opening a casino, and has been arrested in accordance with the law.
According to reports, Chen Shaojie's last public appearance before his arrest was during a conference call after Douyu's second-quarter earnings report on August 14, 2023. At that time, he said that he would continue to build a healthy and sustainable game community ecology of Douyu and attach importance to the operation of core users.
During Chen Shaojie's disappearance, a number of media reported that Chen Shaojie's disappearance may be related to the previous Douyu live broadcast room "Changsha Rural Death Squad" or "Ganggang Nine Outdoor", both of which used Douyu's various lottery rules to carry out suspected gambling activities.
Take the "Changsha Rural Death Squad" as an example, it is known as the "largest casino of Douyu", and users can participate in virtual currency lottery worth 1,000 yuan to tens of thousands of yuan by purchasing designated props within a period of time. The "Changsha Rural Death Squad" then buys virtual currency in equal amounts through third-party channels such as Alipay or "backpack merchants" to cash out the bonus. The live broadcast room often starts gambling lottery at 10 p.m., calling the gambling game "10 o'clock economic class", and "starting classes at 10 p.m." is the public code. Many teenagers are addicted to it and suffer heavy losses. Some users frantically bet more than 300,000 yuan in the live broadcast room within half an hour.
In fact, the betta fish at the helm of Chen Shaojie has been frequently swimming on the brink of danger in recent years.
In addition to the gambling problems in the live broadcast room, there is also a large amount of vulgar and pornographic content that fills the live broadcast of Douyu's show. At the end of March 2023, "Douyu's official push soft performance" rushed to the hot search, and some netizens said, "This is no longer a rubbing, it is really vulgar".
As early as February 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China released the 2022 inventory of "Eliminating Pornography and Fighting Illegal Publications", and Douyu was named. In April 2023, in the first quarter of the "Clear Action" inventory released by the Cyberspace Administration of China, Douyu became the only company that was named in both counts. In May 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) entered the Douyu platform to carry out a one-month centralized rectification and supervision in response to serious ecological problems such as pornography and vulgarity on the Douyu platform, which shows the seriousness of the problem.
According to the financial report, the attractiveness of the Douyu platform to advertisers is declining. At the same time, the "one brother and one sister" of Betta in the past are also going their separate ways, busy settling in other platforms, making Betta's situation even worse. In the face of internal and external troubles, the betta platform with the name of "Betta Fish", can it still fight?
Upstream news: comprehensive daily economic news, elephant news, financial associated press, science and technology innovation board daily, new yellow river big fish finance, etc