Author | Hu Shu Editor| Luo Lijuan
Last night, LPL (Chinese mainland League of Legends Pro League) esports club Edg won the S11 global championship with a 3-2 victory over the defending champion, South Korean team DK (formerly: dwg).
In the S11 final, Egd won the first set
This is the first time that the LPL team has defeated an opponent from South Korea's LCK on the S-Match Final Stage, and it is also the third League of Legends championship in the history of LPL Chinese mainland E-sports!
Edg won the championship and lived up to the 350 million views on the b station:
Excited fans went on a spree online:
Even CCTV News sent a weibo congratulatory edg team on winning the championship.
The international s competition of lol (League of Legends) has always been the "touchstone" of league teams in all regions of the world, which is not only sought after by players in the circle, but also attracts the attention of capital.
According to the data released by The Fist Company, in the 2020 s10 Global Finals Championship and Runner-up Finals, the average number of spectators per minute reached 23.04 million, breaking a new record high. According to the information of all-weather technology told by Tengjing Sports, this year's attention is higher than last year.
Here, with the traffic and users valued by many investors and brands, the commercial value of China E-sports Club is also more reflected in the quantity and quality of sponsors and partners. According to the previous 2019 data, the average valuation of the head club in the LPL league has exceeded 1 billion yuan.
Profitability should be an important reference indicator to support valuation. However, most of the current LPL clubs have not achieved profitability, still relying on blood transfusions from parent companies and investors.
For Lol's developer Fist Company, mature and perfect esports events are an important way to postpone the vitality of its games.
Just a few days ago, Zhu Qinan, director of the Competition Department of the Hangzhou Asian Organizing Committee, announced the e-sports sub-event settings of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou in 2022, and 8 projects such as League of Legends, Glory of Kings (Asian Games version), Peace Elite (Asian Games version), Hearthstone, Dota 2, Dream Three Kingdoms 2, Street Fighter 5 and fifa online 4 were selected.
Affected by relevant policies, the e-sports industry has developed from breaking the circle to breaking the outbreak to rational and stable development in recent years. Although the industry is gradually maturing, investors in the nugget esports industry hope to smell more business opportunities.
How to make the lol club "make money" and explore more commercial value is a proposition that e-sports clubs, fists, Tengjing and other parties are exploring.
Many fans who have long followed League of Legends for edg to reach the final were surprised.
Breaking into the final of the s-tournament, which is also the best result achieved by the edg team in the s-competition since its establishment.
In the esports world, Edg often discusses with Ig, not only because the two clubs have a "long history" - both are the teams established in the early days of the alliance, but also because the two founders are from the "second generation of real estate".
Zhu Yihang, the founder of edg, is the son of Zhu Mengyi, the founder of the real estate company Hopson. Zhu Mengyi's daughter Zhu Jurong has officially taken over the family business, while Zhu Yihang has focused more on his hobbies and interests; behind the ig club is Wang Sicong, the only son of Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin, whose e-sports territory also includes "banana game", "titanium", "imbatv" and so on.
In fact, in the early days of the LPL League, many e-sports teams have the figure of the second generation of the rich behind them, in addition to Wang Sicong and Zhu Yihang, there is Also Jiang Xin, the son of Jiang Quanlong, executive director of China Rare Earth Holding Group, the son of Wang Wenyin, the richest man in Anhui, and Hou Geting, the son of the founder of Young Eagle Agriculture and Animal Husbandry... In 2018, He Yanjun, the son of the gambling king, also gathered a team to march into LPL.
The picture comes from the WeChat public account: mobile game matrix
However, because most clubs are still extremely dependent on the parent company or capital for blood transfusions, the clubs are also facing great uncertainty in operation, and the fate of the team is closely related to the operation of the blood transfusion company.
In November 2019, Wang Sicong was listed as an executor by the court due to an investment dispute arising from the collapse of the Panda tv live broadcasting platform and was restricted from spending. Subsequently, Wang Sicong's real estate, cars, and deposits were seized, and the equity of many companies under his name was frozen. After nearly 2 billion yuan in compensation, Wang Sicong's equity in Pulse Investment was unfrozen, and the incident was resolved.
After the incident, Ig entered one trough after another. The teams that once won the S8 championship, even the 16 teams that have not entered the S10, have also lost bo5 again and again in the domestic LPL field. Regarding the IG salary cut, the rumors that the star players are about to transfer are also very loud.
This year's S11 team LNG, formerly known as e-sports club Snake, has been turning around many times in the hands of the "second generation" and has reached the hands of Hou Geting. In 2019, Hou Geting's family business, Eagle Farming and Animal Husbandry, was delisted at a loss, and then Hou Geting sold from snake to Li Ning.
In recent years, as the development of LPL has entered a mature period, more and more industrial capital has also begun to devote itself to e-sports.
Image courtesy of: Commercial people
In 2017, Station B established the brg e-sports club and started its own e-sports story. Just a few months after its establishment, the League of Legends division of the BLG campaigned for LPL on behalf of Station B. In January this year, Bilibili E-sports announced that it had completed its first round of financing of 180 million yuan, and according to the proportion of this investment, Bilibili Esports, which has only been established for more than two years, is valued at 830 million yuan.
Outside of station B, many Internet companies and sports shoes and clothing companies are also entering e-sports; in August last year, Kuaishou acquired the ytg team and officially entered the kpl, and the club was renamed ks.ytg e-sports club; Weibo acquired the kpl team ts, tt voice acquired the dmo e-sports club; Li Ning and Tao Bo won lng, tes respectively...
It can be seen that e-sports clubs are becoming hot investment targets from relying on the love of the second generation of the rich to generating electricity.
But the commercialization conundrum still lies ahead of everyone.
In fact, the commercialization of domestic e-sports clubs is still in its infancy, and most of them have not achieved profitability themselves, and there is no profit model yet formed.
Among the earnings of the club, on the one hand, it comes from the prize pool of major events.
According to the total prize pool data for 2020 global esports events released by esptionaryarning, the total prize pool for League of Legends is $8 million. The $8 million prize money will be distributed in different proportions to 16 teams from around the world, and the proportion of prize money won by the champion in previous years will not exceed 50% of the total prize pool. Even if you get a $4 million prize, you can't actually cover the cost of a championship club.
In contrast, the commercial value of China E-sports Club is more reflected in the number and quality of sponsors and partners.
After winning the S9 global championship, fpx has won the favor of many brands such as oppo, Huya Live, Shanghaojia, Semir, Nongfushan and so on, and in 2020, it has become the only Chinese e-sports club with BMW, becoming one of the most commercially valuable e-sports clubs in China.
Sn went all the way up the S10 field, the commercial value of the team rose, two days before the final, KFC and the car brand Roewe became the new sponsors of the team, bringing the number of its club sponsors to 9.
However, only clubs that have achieved excellent results in the event will be favored by the brand side and get a lot of sponsorship fees. The secondary teams are more dependent on the share of the league's broadcast rights.
At the end of 2019, Station B won the exclusive broadcast rights of the S-Games for three consecutive years for 2020-2022 at a price of 800 million; in April this year, Huya Live signed a media copyright agreement with Tengjing Sports to obtain the right to use the content resources (including live broadcast rights and on-demand rights) for the next 5 years of LPL, LDL, LPL All-Star Weekend and Awards Ceremony for the next 5 years.
The LPL and S Games copyright income will eventually be given to the club in the form of a commercial share, and even clubs that do not receive the ranking and competition prize money can rely on the commercial share to maintain their operations.
But these revenues alone are not enough. Under the heat of live broadcasts and e-sports events, the price of good players has also risen. Taking Ig's two Korean aid rookie and theshy as an example, the industry rumors that its annual salary is as high as tens of millions. Moreover, in addition to the salaries of players and coaches, the operating expenses of the entire club, the construction of youth training camps, etc., are all expensive expenses.
Previously, edg coach Abu revealed to fans in a live broadcast that only edg is profitable in the whole league, because the boss has developed a lot of business and given a lot of protection to the players. And said that other clubs say that making money is a lie, and edg's so-called making money is only a break even.
The main business of the Super Competition Group behind edg includes industrial education, theme industrial parks, new cultural creation and other sectors in addition to the operation of the e-sports industry.
Without making money, why is capital still willing to invest in e-sports clubs? In fact, capital values the traffic and users behind e-sports, as well as the potential to empower the industry.
The 2020 China Game Industry Annual Conference disclosed that the actual sales revenue of China's e-sports game market in that year was 136.557 billion yuan, an increase of 41.83 billion yuan over 2019, an increase of 44.16%; the scale of China's e-sports game users reached 488 million people, an increase of 9.65% year-on-year.
Taking the domestic top professional league LPL as an example, the number of live viewers of professional events in 2020 exceeded 21.8 billion, and the number of event content views exceeded 100 billion.
Last year, when SN fought for S10, Suning also took advantage of the momentum to create momentum for Double Eleven. Zhang Kangyang, the son of Zhang Jindong, chairman of Suning Holding Group, tweeted that if SN wins the championship, 100 iPhone12 will be sent, and this topic instantly rushed to the hot search list.
The B station invests in the e-sports club, on the one hand, it is very consistent with its live broadcast business, on the other hand, the audience of e-sports and its users also have a high degree of overlap, which is conducive to deepening the cultivation of users.
As sportswear brands, Li Ning and Tao Bo are very consistent with the cultural attributes of the company and the sports competition itself, and can also prepare for the incubation of the brand.
In the case of lng, its predecessor can be traced back to Li Ning's high-end fashion sports collection launched in January 2010. After Li Ning acquired the Snake Esports Club, the club also changed its name to LNG.
Li Qilin, CEO of Extraordinary Sports and head of the LNG brand, described the core of LNG in this way: "Always exploring the most cutting-edge trend methods, continuously working with trend leaders to create more fashionable and trendy products, and making some integration and tribute to traditional sports and e-sports." ”
Gu Yuhao, founder of Jingyuan Investment, once said in an interview with the media: "E-sports is a cross-border industry, which exists as an empowerment of business models. ”
For the development of the esports industry, few people will question its prospects these days.
In the upstream and downstream chains of the e-sports industry, the business model of many members is not e-sports, but the audience is e-sports users. Based on the core traffic to do industrial extension, the market size of e-sports will also be enlarged.
But as the most popular S-main lol, how long can it be loved by young people? This issue has never stopped being discussed in the game circle.
This large-scale hero battle moba competitive online game developed and produced by Fist Games has been operated by Tencent Game Agency in the Chinese market since 2011, and has firmly occupied the leading throne of e-sports games. However, around 2016, in China, the United States and other regions, the market share of mobile games began to reverse the end of the game, and lol was obviously also impacted.
"The problem of aging games and IP, any product will face. But lol's innovations and changes have always been good. The League of Legends side responded to the all-weather technology statement.
According to its introduction, on the one hand, the company is very bold in optimizing and improving the game level, on the other hand, it is like the "Marvel Universe" learning and vigorously creating the game world of the "League of Legends Universe". After 2017, the "League of Legends Universe" has increasingly become the core supporting force of games and derivative cultures, extending diverse and wonderful cultural content in different forms such as worldview, novels, comics, and music.
Not only that, in the past year, Fist Company has also vigorously launched other series of lol, "League of Legends Mobile Game" was launched in overseas markets and domestically, and "Genting Game" and "Battle of the Golden Shovel" have also been launched.
According to data released by Riot in October, the number of monthly active users of the four games of League of Legends, Genting Game, Legend of Rune Land, and League of Legends: Guild Canyon reached 180 million.
The e-sports event can be regarded as the most critical step for lol to retain users and prolong life.
John Nidham, head of Riot's e-sports business, said in a recent interview that Riot began to hold e-sports competitions as an important marketing tool for League of Legends 10 years ago. Over the past three or four years, Riot has focused on making sure that the teams in the esports league are profitable, not just adding to Fist's wallet.
"If Fist can't make esports a big deal for clubs and sponsors, Fist won't survive for long." Niederham said.
As the agent operator of lol, Tencent Games has also made a lot of efforts to lpl. In 2019, in order to create a dedicated e-sports team to be responsible for the "League of Legends" event, Tencent Games built an alliance system - Tengjing Sports was also established, which is the first market-oriented company in China to do "League of Legends" professional e-sports.
According to Teng Jingfang, this year, LPL's related event sponsors have reached 18, more than in the past, and will also be fed back to the good operation of the league.
And back to the LPL esports Club itself, it's still an industry that speaks for results. Domestic fans always look forward to a wonderful, bloody competition, but also the birth of a champion.
Before Ig won the championship, LPL's team had never won the championship in the S Race. The attention brought by the ig victory that year detonated the e-sports market, making the popularity of the s event in China more and more high, and also allowing the capital to see the opportunity and have a large amount of follow-up investment.
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