The wind of game live streaming is going to blow in a different direction again
The popularity of a third-party League of Legends event can directly match that of MSI, which was unimaginable in the past, but the Huya Legend Cup has done just that.
At the turn of spring and summer this year, it is probably the months when Chinese esports fans can feel the strong esports atmosphere the most. IEM Finals, League of Legends MSI, and Valorant Shanghai Masters were held in Chengdu and Shanghai one after another, fully mobilizing the enthusiasm of players to watch the game.
Generally speaking, most League of Legends events organized by third parties will choose the off-season after the MSI or S tournament to avoid collisions with official popular events, which plays a role in filling the needs of players to watch the game. However, the momentum of the Huya Legend Cup now has the meaning of a "competition for hegemony" with major official events.
Open up the content ecosystem and expand the influence of the platform
In terms of time arrangement, the Huya Legend Cup did set the time of the main match one day after the end of MSI, but its early selection and training sessions have already received great attention. In particular, the training matches organized by various retired players and streamers coincided with the end of the daily MSI events, which made full use of the popularity of the official events to focus the attention of players and supplement the blank period of the official events.
The interesting name of the Huya Legend Cup, "Old Man's Cup", has been on Weibo, Douyin and other platforms
In fact, it can be seen from this point that the cooperation between Huya, as a Tencent holding company, and Tencent is getting closer and closer, which also makes it easier for Huya to obtain official endorsements and allocate platform content resources. For example, Jin Yibo, CEO of Tengjing Sports, also attended the selection ceremony of the Huya Legend Cup, and in addition to the direct cash rewards of the Huya Legend Cup, the champion team can go directly to the Demacia Cup; Anchors on other platforms such as Douyu, Bilibili, and Douyin can also participate in the Huya Legend Cup to maximize the spread of the event.
In addition to the event setting and official support, the author believes that the abundant anchor resources and the long-established core user group are the core strength of Huya to create high-standard third-party events.
It is understood that Huya currently has more than 40% of the industry's top anchor resources, and the content value that these anchors can create is undoubtedly very large. Like Uzi, The Shy, Posture, etc., are all legendary players in "League of Legends", and they are also the top anchors in the entire e-sports ecosystem.
The e-sports industry does have the problems of short careers, limited employment after retirement, and declining attention, and live broadcast is the choice of most professional players after retirement. After heated discussions on the Internet these days, we can find that third-party events like the Huya Legend Cup can not only allow retired professional players to relive their enthusiasm for the event, but also provide a better stage for active professional players. And this is the important role that Huya and third-party events play in the esports industry.
It is precisely because of the long-term platform content construction and anchor training that Huya has also gathered a group of high-value core users. Most of these users are also active participants on social media, and the topic discussions they initiate and participate in on major social platforms have further boosted the popularity of the event and helped the event expand its circle.
Generally speaking, the initial success of the Huya Legend Cup is inseparable from Huya's overall planning and connection of various elements such as official cooperation resources, event production capabilities, rich anchor resources, core user groups, and opening up the platform ecology. This is indeed a barrier-type advantage for Huya to create third-party events and create game content.
The success of the Huya Legend Cup will allow Huya to continue to firmly promote the production of third-party event content, which actually puts forward requirements for Huya itself to consolidate a number of core resources such as anchors and users.
It is true that the rapid rise of short video platforms in the past two years has indeed brought certain competitive pressure to traditional live broadcast platforms, and some creators have also switched to short video platforms, which is the objective status quo of the industry. If it wants to continue to maintain its core strengths, Huya must make changes.
In this regard, Chen Peng, senior executive vice president of Huya, believes that in the context of competition and cooperation in the live broadcast industry, Huya anchors should actively integrate into the whole network ecology, and Huya has also begun to fully embrace the ecology of platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou to help Huya anchors access more public domain traffic pools.
Objectively speaking, under the concept of resource sharing and cooperation and open creator ecology, Huya is expected to cultivate more creators of different types and directions in the future, and integrate into the game publishing ecology globally, and these creators can also enrich the resource reserve and influence matrix of Huya's self-created content.
High-quality content and diversified business
In order to continue to ensure the high quality, high specification and high impact of the platform's content, Huya also recently announced the launch of the "Tiger Billion Plan", which will "divide 10 billion for game commercial anchors in the next three years", so as to retain more creators, which is undoubtedly a huge incentive.
So, what is the confidence of Huya to launch the "Tiger Billion Plan"? This has to start with the transformation of the live broadcast industry.
In the past, one of the problems faced by the live broadcast industry was that the profit model was too simple, and most of them only relied on tips and gifts from top users. As a link in the game distribution chain, game manufacturers cannot intuitively understand the actual revenue brought by live streaming to the game itself.
With the rise of short video platforms, business models such as CPA, CPS, and live streaming have been introduced, as well as decentralized distribution, the business model of game live streaming has become more visualized, and the distance between anchors, platforms, and manufacturers has been further shortened.
These new business models have expanded the business areas and revenue sources of platforms, guilds, and anchors, and manufacturers have been able to reach users more accurately, successfully mobilizing the enthusiasm of all parties, and only when all parties benefit will it be a long-term and stable business model. For Huya, it is necessary and feasible to promote such a diversified transformation.
Since Tencent Vice President Lin Songtao became Huya's chairman last year, Lin Songtao announced that Huya will carry out a strategic transformation, focusing on the development of game distribution, game item sales and game advertising and other businesses, and has formulated a three-year plan to promote the revenue structure from a single user tipping to a diversified game additional monetization.
Lin Songtao, chairman of Huya Company
Specifically, in terms of content, we will continue to promote the production of third-party events to reach the sinking market through the "Village Games" and other forms, and hold a number of "E-sports World Cups" and "Global E-sports Summits" to expand the influence of Huya E-sports and consolidate and expand existing advantages. Secondly, in terms of ecology, Huya plays the role of a content service provider and pushes platform content to traffic platforms such as Tencent, Douyin, and Kuaishou.
The above two reforms and upgrades, on the one hand, can enrich the game live broadcast content of the traffic platform and gather the vertical core users of game live broadcast; On the other hand, it can also help Huya radiate more incremental users, improve the user growth rate and payment enthusiasm of the Huya platform, and find the second growth curve for Huya.
According to Lin Songtao, since the formulation of the "three-year plan" in August last year, Huya has effectively promoted the growth of props sales, game advertising and distribution services by deepening cooperation with game companies - from August 23 to April 24, Huya's live broadcast props sales increased by 1,800 times, game distribution increased by 12 times, and game advertising increased by 2 times.
On the one hand, while continuously exporting the original high-quality live broadcast and event content, we can continue to polish the platform's visualization and refined operation capabilities, and on the other hand, it also distinguishes and differentiates from other live broadcast platforms from the perspective of development strategy and strategic positioning.
From the perspective of Huya itself, the number of paying users and the overall revenue capacity of Huya have always been at the head of the live broadcast platform, and it is a reasonable development path to expand users through advantages and capabilities. In addition, from the perspective of the development trend of the entire industry, Huya's change in its own positioning also meets the needs of the lack of high-quality live broadcast content and reaching users in all fields under the new competitive situation of the game industry.
And the latter is particularly important for Tencent, Huya's big brother.
To be the moat of Tencent's game traffic platform
In the author's opinion, Huya's series of changes are essentially to answer two questions: first, how to continue to grow under the new pattern of the live broadcast industry; Second, in the face of the rise of short video platforms, the question of what role Huya, as a subsidiary of Tencent, will play in the Tencent system in the future.
There is no doubt that the background of competition and cooperation between Tencent and Byte cannot be ignored. The game industry has indeed encountered a bottleneck due to the problem of user growth, so it needs to expand and reach users in an all-round way, which is also the core reason why the game publishing niche has become more and more important in recent years, and the two giants have put down their barriers and worked together. Huya's strategy is also based on this.
The live streaming industry has experienced the rise of short video platforms, and the gaming industry has also undergone earth-shaking changes in the past few years. In the short term, Tencent's aggressive stance in the game field has slowed down, and Tencent COO Ren Yuxin also emphasized at this year's Tencent annual meeting that Tencent should maintain the basic market of competitive games.
For Tencent, which has a significant advantage in the competitive track, the importance of e-sports in the distribution and ecological side is self-evident, and Huya, which has been deeply involved in the e-sports market for decades, has a unique advantage. This also means that as long as the competitive market is there, Huya has always been the most critical link in the chain.
Huya has abundant resources of competitive game streamers
It is worth mentioning that Huya's core executive team, composed of Chairman Lin Songtao, Co-CEO Huang Junhong, and Senior Executive Vice President Chen Peng, has successful experience in both products and businesses, and has also promoted the in-depth integration of content platform business and games, as well as the integration of multiple ecosystems, which can help Huya consolidate its leading position in the game live broadcast market and release the long-term commercial value of Huya in the game industry chain.
It can be seen that the core goal of the "three-year plan" promoted under the leadership of Chairman Lin Songtao is to base Huya on the transformation of the content ecology of the whole network, better integrate rich creative resources and content into the Tencent system (open up video accounts, Tencent videos, etc.), and become an important starting point for connecting Tencent's content ecosystem in the future, further consolidate the live broadcast ecological niche that Huya has occupied, and continue to integrate and reform to put more resources, traffic, and users in their own hands.
The video account can already watch the live broadcast of some Huya anchors
Of course, the author believes that opening up the Tencent ecosystem through Huya is a long-term goal, and it is also complementary to the diversification of Huya's platform and profitability. The more gratifying Huya's second growth curve is, the more stable Tencent's advantages in game publishing and marketing will be.
Because of this, Huya did not limit content sharing to the Tencent system, but began to actively embrace short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou. This move not only retains creators, but also uses content to slot the game live broadcast ecosystem.
So far, the road of transformation and growth that Huya has drawn for itself has been particularly clear. For the entire game live broadcast industry, the wind of change brought about by Huya is bound to reshape the ecology and pattern of this track. The live broadcast industry we are familiar with will once again become unfamiliar but exciting because of Huya's three-year practice.