Reporter Wang Yun.
This winter, what kind of life is the game live broadcast platform where capital gathers, heroes compete with each other, and countless entrepreneurs enter the game?
On December 7, Douyu (NASDAQ: DOYU) issued a "belated" third quarter 2023 financial report, which was originally supposed to be led by CEO Chen Shaojie, but was instead released in the tone of the interim management committee.
According to the financial report, the net income and gross profit of Douyu in the third quarter decreased year-on-year. Net income decreased by 24% year-over-year42%, gross profit decreased by 234%。
However, this is the third consecutive quarter that Betta has been profitable. The net profit of Douyu in the third quarter was 76.4 million yuan, compared with a net loss of 6.6 million yuan in the same period last year, and the adjusted net profit also increased to 71.9 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1799%。
This report card also has the thorny problem of "the departure of the top anchor and the decline in the number of users".
Douyu's average mobile monthly active users fell to 51.7 million in the third quarter from 57.1 million in the same period in 2022, which is far lower than Huya's 86 million in the same period. Douyu's quarterly average number of paying subscribers fell to 3.9 million from 5.6 million in the same period in 2022.
In addition, since Chen Shaojie's "accident" last month, some industry insiders told ** that after Chen Shaojie**, the live broadcast teams of Douyin and Kuaishou have begun to take the initiative to contact the head anchor of Douyu and throw an olive branch. Moreover, Feng Timo, who switched from Douyu to Station B, and Xu Xu Baobao, who was once known as "Brother Douyu", have now "jumped" to the short ** platform.
At the beginning of the month, on December 2, Zhang Daxian officially entered Douyin to start his live broadcast debut and became the head anchor of Douyin. Zhang Daxian went from Penguin E-sports to Betta, to Huya, and now to Douyin, which is also a shot of the great migration of game anchors over the years. Saobai, the top anchor in the Glory of the Douyu King section, also returned to Kuaishou at the beginning of this year. In the third quarter financial report released this year, Kuaishou's live broadcast business revenue was 9.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 86%。
At the end of the year, let's look back on the "past" of the game live broadcast platform: Panda Live fell, Penguin E-sports left the table, and the Huya Betta failed to merge...A few years ago, it was the platform that threw money to "grab people", and now it is the head anchor who takes the initiative to migrate.
Recently, the incident of "many anchors being claimed 80 million by Douyu" has once again attracted attention. In the ** meeting after the release of Douyu's third-quarter financial report, Cao Hao, director and vice president of Douyu, said that at present, Douyu is operating normally, and will continue to closely monitor the investigation and disclose it in a timely manner if necessary.
"In the third quarter of 2023, we actively implemented and optimized our growth strategy, and the company's business achieved steady development, which is in line with our goal of continuously building a healthy and sustainable game community ecosystem," Douyu's interim management committee pointed out in the financial report. During the quarter, we continued our robust marketing strategy, combined with the launch of new games, strengthened our efforts in game promotion and game cooperation with manufacturers, and continuously optimized the user experience through high-quality game content and efficient operations. ”
I remember that at the 2023 China Game Developers Conference, the person in charge of Douyin game operations revealed that Douyin games have covered more than 300 million users, with an average monthly game content consumption time of more than 9 hours per capita, and an annual increase of 100% in game content creators. It is not only Douyin that has entered the game live broadcast, but also Kuaishou, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, etc., are all creating new business logic in the field of game live broadcast according to their own advantages.
Correspondingly, the days of the game live broadcast platform are becoming more and more difficult, and in the cycle of survival of the fittest, betta fish seems to be the most dangerous one. As of December 7**, Betta's share price has fallen to 0$739 shares. According to the relevant rules, if the price of Douyu does not return to more than $1 before April 22, 2024, it may face delisting.
Now that I think about it, the stock price three years ago was already "far ahead", and at the beginning of 2021, the highest share price of Douyu reached 20$54 shares. That was also the year in 2021 when Tencent promoted the merger of Douyu and Huya, and Huya was also as high as 36$33 shares, while as of Dec. 7**, Huya closed at $3$44 shares.
I still remember that Douyu's third quarter report in 2021, judging from the live broadcast business, which occupies the absolute share of Douyu's revenue contribution, shows its decadence, achieving 22revenue of 1.1 billion yuan, compared to 234.9 billion yuan, down 54%；Advertising and other business revenues outside of the live broadcast business even appeared by 305% reduction. According to the statistics of the Oriental ** Research Institute, in January 2021, the number of Kuaishou game anchors has surpassed the total number of Douyu + Huya + Penguin e-sports anchors.
This week, on December 5, Tencent Now Live announced that due to business adjustments, Now Live will cease operations at 11:00 on December 26, 2023. Judging from the announcement of the transfer of user assets, all the user assets of Tencent Now Live can be migrated to Huya Live, which can be seen that Huya Live is important to Tencent.
However, Huya proposed a strategic transformation plan in August this year, trying to drive a shift at the business level by providing more game-related services such as game distribution, game item sales and game advertising within three years. The implication is that the focus of the future seems to be no longer on live games. All in all, it has long been a well-established fact that game live streaming platforms themselves do not make money.
Moreover, in terms of game business, Tencent will continue to close products whose revenue does not meet expectations, and the recently closed games include "Fairy Tail: Wizard Boy", "MapleStory 2", "Street Basketball", "Wind Blade", "Infinite Law" and so on.
Not only Tencent, on November 27, ByteDance announced that its game business will carry out large-scale business contraction, that is, it will seek to divest the games that have been launched and perform well; For projects that have not yet been launched, except for a small number of innovative projects and related technology projects, they will be shut down.
According to a relevant report previously released by TalkingData, mobile games account for 90% of Douyin's game live broadcasts, which is much higher than that of vertical game live streaming platforms such as Douyu and Huya. Although mobile games are now the mainstream, there is still a huge stock market for terminal games at this stage.
The new schedule of the game live broadcast platform has already started as early as when Douyin and others began to disrupt the situation, but the current betta fish's weight forward and survival in danger are particularly eye-catching.
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