2016 is an unusually hot year for the Zhengzhou property market, only one month in August, the average price of real estate in Zhengdong New District was 2475 yuan;Housing prices in Huiji District, which ranks last among the eight major urban areas, exceeded the 10,000 yuan mark. Adjacent to Huiji District, there is "Zhengzhou Xinxiang two cities of new satellite urban area" positioning of the Xinxiang City Plain Demonstration Zone is also very lively, after the opening of 3 hours of sales of 1.5 billion Evergrande new real estate delivery in this year, the average price of some real estate later rushed to more than 10,000.
This year is also an unusually busy year for Guo Chendong, the former host of Henan Satellite TV's "Wulin Wind" program. In April, the fighting event "Glory of Warriors" founded by him kicked off at Shenzhen Bao'an GymnasiumIn September, he left the TV station after 14 yearsA month later, he led the construction project called the "World Kung Fu Center" to break ground in the plain demonstration area. The official website of Pingyuan New Area mentions: "After the completion of the project, it will be the largest competitive martial arts exchange center in China and even the world, and become another beautiful city card of Pingyuan Demonstration Zone."
Although it has just been founded, "Glory of the Warriors" has attracted much attention with Guo Chendong's past resume. Industry recognition, years of accumulated resources, and the mastery of the Dadongxiang Fight Club, which was once known as the Chinese Fighting Whampoa Military Academy, have many characteristics that make this event among the top ranks in China as soon as it starts. However, as if this was not enough, Guo Chendong set his sights on a piece of land in the plain demonstration area. In his vision, the venue can get supporting residential land, and the money from the sale of the house can be fed back to the venue project, once the venue is completed, "Glory of the Warriors" will have its own fighting home, further increasing the advantage of the event.
Everything went smoothly. As soon as the opening game was broadcast on Henan Satellite TV, the ratings were among the best in many lists. After the broadcast of Shenzhen Satellite TV in early 2017, Kuyun Eye statistics show that the ratings of the program have repeatedly entered the top three in the country. If the venue can be completed by the end of 2018 as scheduled, "Glory of the Warriors" may be able to go further, after all, Guo Chendong's goal for the event is to build it into a "league of events like the NBA". Having a home stadium is essential.
But then it suffered a recession in the real estate market, and the housing prices in the plain demonstration area were cut in half. After weighing, Guo Chendong gave up the plan to repair the residential area to feed the construction of the venue, and the World Kung Fu Center project, which had already started, lost its funds and was almost unfinished.
Then the epidemic broke out, and the event could not be held. After completing "Honor of Warriors 46" in January 2020, "Honor of Warriors 47" was not renewed until the end of the year. Dadongxiang was reduced from more than 300 people to more than 100 people. For nearly three years after that, the Honor series was not relaunched.
Everything is put down", Guo Chendong told Lazy Bear Sports.
The willows are bright
In May 2020, the Rise of the Warriors, a sub-brand of Glory Events, held a press conference in Hangzhou, and Guo Chendong said that he would invest 90 million yuan to play 90 games every year, and the game officially started on June 9. But on the day of the opening match, the fans didn't wait for the fight, but waited for Guo Chendong's apology**. With tears in his eyes in the ring, he apologized to the fighters and staff behind him, announcing that the bout had been postponed due to containment policies.
There are a lot of personnel expenses every day, hundreds of thousands a month, what should I do?Guo Chendong said that when he felt that there was no way out, he thought of doing short-term e-commerce.
Guo Chendong's Douyin account part of the **cover.
On October 18, 2020, Guo Chendong carried out a live broadcast on his Douyin account for the first time, including electrical appliances, beauty and skin care, snack meal replacement, etc. The official *** tweet of "Glory of the Warriors" the next day wrote that the live broadcast took 166 minutes and sold 800,000.
In order to avoid accidents, the company directly arranged the dormitory, and everyone lived together and broadcast when they slept. "I stumbled at the beginning of the live broadcast, 95% of my followers were men, and I didn't know what to sell. Guo Chendong recalled that he tried to sell all the categories that could be sold at that time, and finally found that it was still the most reliable to sell wine. So at present, he sells almost exclusively alcohol in his live broadcasts.
Today, Guo Chendong broadcasts at noon and evening every day, broadcasting 3-4 hours a day, six days a week. In the afternoon, the guests take care of other things, and the review ends at 11 o'clock in the evening, and sometimes they still sleep directly in the company. "There is basically no entertainment now, and I am reluctant to come out of the team, in fact, it is not pretending, and I really don't have enough time. Guo Chendong gave time to calculate the account, and if he went out for a meal, he would broadcast one less time, and if he used a 200,000 GMV and converted into a 15% commission, he would earn 30,000 yuan less.
There is no tea table in his office. "A tea needs to be brewed three times to come out with the best taste, the first two bubbles are said to be said, and the third brew is just chatting. Guo Chendong said.
With the launch of the live broadcast business, not only did the company maintain normal operations, but the World Kung Fu Center project, which was in a state of suspension, also ushered in a turnaround. According to an article on the official website of the Plains Demonstration Zone, "Resolving Enterprise Problems and Optimizing the Business Environment - The Finance Bureau of the Plain Demonstration Zone of Xinxiang City Injects Vitality into the World Kung Fu Center Project", the Finance Bureau and the Commerce Bureau of the Plain Demonstration Zone of Xinxiang City took the initiative to connect with the project, coordinated with financial institutions such as Everbright Bank and Zhongyuan Bank, actively planned to apply for project loans, and coordinated the introduction of capital flow by means of purchasing part of the assets of the company through its own funds.
I think the only good thing about the epidemic is that you can just put this thing down and stop. Then in the past three years, I have been doing live broadcast e-commerce. I broadcast live every day day and night, so that many people, including leaders, including those who can help me, can see it, and I feel that Guo Chendong is very tenacious. ”
So, the stadium was rebuilt.
"Play the boss".
At the beginning of February, the well-known fighter Yilong came to Xinxiang to visit the World Kung Fu Center project under construction. Someone in the comment area left a message saying, "This factory is an old actor."
Since the beginning of this year, a large proportion of the Douyin account "Guo Chendong" has been related to venues. From the progress of projects such as wall soft decoration and square lighting, to the display of leadership inspections and customer visits, several issues will be updated from time to time. Guo Chendong said that like the live broadcast, the establishment of short ** content has also taken a lot of detours, and finally decided to set up an account. "I should be a boss now, short of money but still have dreams, pressure and motivation, and then I can communicate it accurately. ”
Guo Chendong and Yilong inside the unfinished venue.
The door change series, which is updated synchronously with a dragon visit, is in line with this kind of personality. At that time, Guo Chendong said that the iron gate of Dadongxiang Club was often said by netizens to be too broken, but it cost 10,000 yuan to change the door, and he couldn't afford it. He introduced Dadongxiang's enrollment policy in **, and then said: "You have to spend the money on the blade and put the money on the faculty." Don't worry, if there are more people (referring to admissions), and a hundred more people, we estimate that we will be able to change this door. ”
After that, he sent several ** related to changing the door, including "bargaining" with the factory owner who offered to sponsor a new door for free - the other party insisted on giving some money himself, and wanted to sell the old iron gate ** to the boss who came to give sponsorship - the result was that the door was landlord's and could not be sold, etc. The last ** is the installation of the new door, and a string of 30,000 firecrackers was set off to celebrate the opening ceremony. After a series, not only did it get a new door, it solved the enrollment of Dadongxiang, and the image of a boss who picked and searched but did practical things was also reflected.
Hou Chuangye, the founder of "Fighting Fans", told Lazy Bear Sports that the previous revenue model of fighting events mainly relied on attracting investment or collecting sponsorship fees after being broadcast on TV stations, and then top events can get some local hosting fees. However, with the decline of TV stations and the deterioration of the investment environment, the TV era of fighting events has passed.
In Guo Chendong's view, whoever runs through the short ** platform first will be able to do things again. How to monetize live broadcasts, how to use people to set up solid fans, and how to use content for marketing, he said that he "spent three years studying this matter and understood a little rule".
And a construction site under construction, the process of slowly taking shape from scratch is perfect for creating such a persona. Therefore, Guo Chendong not only often goes to the construction site to shoot **, frequently takes the initiative to mention the "unfinished" statement and responds to doubts, and sometimes shows some places that are not well decorated for fans to see, so as to prove that although things will not go well, he is still working hard.
However, at the beginning of October, the project, which started in October 2016, seems to have finally entered the final stage after seven years. The ** cover copy related to the venue has words such as "big change" and "see you on the top of the mountain".
Overlooking the night view of both venues.
In the original plan, the World Kung Fu Center has a total construction area of 34,867 square meters, which is divided into three major functional areas: business center, training center and studio center. At present, the World Kung Fu Center has been renamed the "World Kung Fu Art Center", and the original training center has become the "Central Plains Agricultural Valley E-commerce Center". The two buildings stand side by side and have a similar diamond shape. An internal employee introduced to Lazy Bear Sports that after completion, the "World Kung Fu Art Center" can host indoor and outdoor offline events, cultural and entertainment performances, etc., with 1,034 fixed seats, plus movable seats to meet the needs of nearly 2,000 peopleThe "Zhongyuan Agricultural Valley E-commerce Center" provides live broadcast and office space, not only to solve its own live broadcast needs, but also to try to attract local e-commerce companies to settle in.
With the completion of the project, "Glory of the Warrior" was finally restarted, with the first stop in Alar City, Xinjiang on September 28, and the competition was held at the World Kung Fu Art Center in October and November. The tournament returned after three years, and the venue ushered in the opening performance after seven years of construction.
Build a loop
On November 17, "Warrior's Honor 50" kicked off at the newly completed venue. A viewer held his mobile phone to open a Douyin live broadcast, and after being stopped by the staff, he began to take photos with various people in the infield - these people are all well-known local short ** talents, such as Brother Giao. That night, many Internet celebrities appeared as award presenters, and the final gold belt was awarded by Brother Giao to the winning player Liang Hongjie.
When Guo Chendong made short ** content, he found that there are many millions or even tens of millions of Internet celebrities in Henan, and everyone also has traffic anxiety, so they are in contact with each other and appear on each other's cameras. He recently came up with an idea to organize these talents and hold a Henan Internet celebrity chef competition outside the venue. Each person stir-fried a big pot dish, invited 100 fans to come, and after tasting it, they scored to determine the champion. After the event, everyone went directly to the arena to watch the fighting competition, and various Internet celebrities could also sell goods during the competition. In this way, the interaction of influencers brings up topicality, and the event can also be obtained through everyone's content and live broadcast**.
In fact, by constantly posting ** on his own account before the game, the attendance rate of Xinxiang's two games was quite impressive. On the day of the "Glory of Warriors 50", Xu Ning, the founder of Henan's local sports platform "Lao Xu Shuoqiu", who has worked in Henan TV for many years, went to the scene, and he told Lazy Bear Sports that the locals are not familiar with the location of the venue, but the scene is still almost full. The Douyin ticket sales interface before the start of "Warrior's Glory 50" shows that more than 600 tickets for 88 yuan were sold, and more than 100 tickets were sold for 188 yuan. However, this is still a gap from the attendance at some of the top martial arts competitions before the pandemic.
Warrior's Honor 50 match scene.
The epidemic has recovered, but the domestic fighting market has not recovered, and the core reason is not actually the problem of the epidemic", Hou Chuangye mentioned, "The epidemic is only an objective factor, and the essential reason is that domestic fighting competitions have not been commercialized. Those more mature foreign commercialization models have not been able to get through in the Chinese market, and everyone is basically not profitable to hold competitions. ”
In 2017, "Glory of the Warriors" announced the completion of a round of financing of more than 100 million yuan. Guo Chendong told Lazy Bear Sports at the time that this round of funds will be used to create a channel for multiple profit models for events. Looking back now, he feels that he didn't live up to expectations.
If you still invest now, you won't spend as much money as you did then. At that time, all the voices around you, including investors, were asking you to spend your money. The idea of capital is to burn money, to influence, to ask for data, and to raise valuations. It would be wrong to think about it now. Now, in the new short-term ecology, Guo Chendong hopes to make the company's multi-line parallel business, including e-commerce, events, venues and Dadongxiang, into a cycle: youth training outputs talents, events bring traffic, venues output content, traffic and content are converted through e-commerce, and the profits generated are fed back to youth training and events. Everything is in the service of achieving self-hematopoiesis.
On the evening of November 17, Guo Chendong conducted two live broadcasts with goods on the sidelines of the "Glory of Warriors 50" competition. The "live room" is located just below the ring, facing the VIP seats in the infield. There is no superfluous arrangement, several boxes of wine are stacked on the edge of the ring, and a sign stands at the top, marked with the conspicuous number "99" to remind **. Guo Chendong and the assistant broadcaster stood under the stage and shouted directly. When the first sale started, there was a burst of laughter from the audience, and some people responded to the anchor's words from time to time, and when the second sale was made, many people ran out to the toilet, and most of the seats were empty. At the end of the live broadcast, Guo Chendong shouted with the microphone: Those who go to the toilet can come back!
Guo Chendong told Lazy Bear Sports that the difference between live broadcast during the game and daily live broadcast is that it can be combined with event sponsorship. For example, the sponsorship fee of 100,000 yuan, 60% of which is used as the product promotion fee, is guaranteed through live broadcast and short exposure40% is the cost of live broadcasting, which is converted into 1:3 GMV and returned to customers through live broadcast during the competition. If you can't digest it during the event, you will go to the daily live broadcast room to digest it, and if you can't sell it, you will be refunded proportionally.
On October 13th, it sold more than 500,000 yuan, and there were more leaders that day, and I was not too embarrassed to sit in front of me, so I only sold two products. Then yesterday (November 17) it sold more than 200,000. Guo Chendong commented on his performance, "Yesterday, because after the double 11, the double 11 actually overdrew the consumption, and it didn't sell well yesterday." ”
Guo Chendong brought goods live during the competition.
In addition to sponsorship, copyright should be an important source of income for sporting events in general**. In 2019, "Glory of the Warriors" signed a broadcast cooperation with Byte Watermelon**, and this year's game is still live on Douyin. However, Guo Chendong believes that it will be difficult to sell copyrights in the next few years, and he attaches more importance to paid live broadcasts: using short ** to create popularity, and finally monetizing through live broadcast payment.
The audience of yesterday's game was more than 800,000, and the number of games was more than 1.3 million, with an average of 1 million **, if there is 500,000 yuan paid and 3 yuan a game, then there will be 1.5 million. Guo Chendong said that the current problem is that the three-year window period has led to the loss of star players, the lack of interesting competitions, and the event is still in the process of star-making.
Xu Ning also felt that the look and feel of the game was not as good as before: "First of all, the Chinese players are all young people around 20 years old, even if the young guys are strong, the experience is definitely not enough, but even so, against those foreign players, almost all of them won that night." In a way, it can be seen that the quality of the game is definitely declining. ”
In recent competitions, the Chinese players are all young athletes from Dadongxiang, and compared with their predecessors such as Qiu Jianliang and Wei Rui, they are still lacking in popularity. The cost of running the tournament is enough to reflect this. When it was first created in 2016, the production cost of "Glory of Warriors" was claimed to be nearly 10 million per game, while the production cost of "Glory of Warriors 50" that just ended was only 960,000, and the appearance fee of players was an important savings.
When asked how long it would take to achieve paid live broadcasting, Guo Chendong's answer was: "One year if it's fast, three years if it's slow."
Dream a dream
Guo Chendong himself revealed that his Douyin account created 70 million GMVs last year, and this year the company hopes that the overall live broadcast revenue will exceed 100 million. When asked why he had to spend energy to restart the event, he claimed that he was a dedicated personality and had a better face, and that he was the first team he brought after starting his business, and he always felt that he couldn't give up. Moreover, he firmly believes that sports are the soul of the whole team. Two years ago, someone proposed to let him file for bankruptcy, but he weighed that the epidemic would pass sooner or later, and he was only 50 years old, and he couldn't become a seller for the rest of the time, so he persevered.
What is the significance of your presence on the Internet?Isn't it because of martial arts?Isn't it just because of the event?If there were no events, would you still have the point of being?Guo Chendong said, "One is that the flag cannot be fallen, and the second is the unpaid bill, which is dreamy and realistic." ”
This is not the first time he has expressed similar feelings, in a ** on Douyin, he stood in front of the square, pointed to the World Kung Fu Art Center behind him, and then pointed to the e-commerce center, and then said to the camera, "On one side is a dream, and on the other hand, there is a reluctance".
Before the game, spectators line up to receive a free roasted whole lamb.
It's just that the time is turned back a few years, and the word "reluctant" doesn't seem to have much to do with Guo Chendong.
In 2016, the martial arts industry was on the rise. At that time, WME-IMG, which had not yet been restructured and renamed Ende**Or, acquired the UFC for more than $4 billion, Yao Wei Capital, which Yao Ming participated in the initiation, acquired part of the shares of Glory Glory Fight, "Kunlun Duel" announced the completion of Series B financing of more than 200 million yuan, and ONE Championship opened an office in China and held three fights. According to statistics from Sina Sports, citing "Fighting Big Data", within a year, dozens of event brands organized more than 500 fighting matches. At this juncture, Guo Chendong resigned from Henan Satellite TV to start a business.
A year later, "Glory of the Warriors" received 100 million yuan in financing. In the past few years, the event has traveled to more than 30 provinces and cities in China and to more than 10 countries and regions overseas.
Three years later, Watermelon** also bagged the broadcast rights of the three most popular fighting events in China, "Wulin Wind", "Kunlun Duel" and "Glory of Warriors". At the signing conference of "Glory of Warriors", the heads of the three major tournaments attended together and made their own speeches. Guo Chendong took the stage in the finale, and he joked: "There have been people talking about who can become the martial arts overlord in our several events. Today we have the answer. The martial arts overlord is Watermelon** and Today's Headlines. ”