Tencent’s investment in the two platforms at the same time, can not help but arouse a variety of speculation in the industry, some say that the game live broadcast has no second half, some say that the live broadcast platform will enter the closing period, some say that Tencent’s move is to eventually merge the two platforms. Among them, the biggest suspense for the audience is that, under the promotion of Tencent Capital, Douyu and Huya, the two former game live streaming platforms have always been at dagger dagger, is it really possible to merge?
From the perspectives of Tencent, Douyu, Huya and users, we analyze the possibility of the merger of the two livestreaming platforms.
Tencent: income is a general appearance, merge two for one is fundamental
The game business is an extremely important revenue segment for Tencent, and it is understandable that the company will now add the two livestreaming platforms to expand its gaming portfolio.
According to aurora Big Data, a third-party data monitoring platform, douyu accounted for 3.6% of the top three live streaming apps in the mobile Internet industry in 2017, with a year-on-year growth of 49.4%. YY Live accounted for 3.3%, with a year-on-year growth rate of 3.3%; Huya accounted for 2.9%, with a year-on-year growth rate of 38.1%.
This data at least shows that douyu and Huya, which are positioned as game livestreaming platforms in the top three of the first tier, have a relatively large increase in market penetration. In addition to their respective development limitations, there is still a lot of market space to be explored for game livestreaming platforms.
Since the two games live platform has a good momentum of development, Tencent is eyeing in common sense.
On the one hand, game live broadcasting is the key source of platform traffic. With the guarantee of traffic, Tencent can benefit from the layout of users and channels, and impact competitors’ business to a certain extent. Secondly, with the support of the two major game live broadcasting platforms, Tencent can benefit from both the construction of its own game e-sports ecosystem and the layout of the entire game industry chain.
But to promote the maturity of their own game industry chain, only by investing money is not directly to promote. The author believes that behind Tencent’s investment in the two game live broadcasting platforms, there must be a larger layout hidden, and its ultimate purpose is to promote the merger of the two platforms.
This point, from Tencent’s previous layout in the field of live games can be glimpsed. And for Tencent this kind of head game manufacturers, generally do not play unprepared war, everything is in control. It is well known that Tencent has invested in both livestreaming platforms, as well as its own mobile esports platform, E-Sports Penguin, but it is difficult for the development momentum of E-sports Penguin to catch up with Douyu and Huya.
In that case, why not grab both platforms and become your right-hand man? As far as Tencent is concerned, if Douyu and Huya continue to spend their money on useless battles, one of them will inevitably suffer in the end. Regardless of which side wins, Tencent will win, but consolidation is surely the best way to achieve greater output.
As a result, Tencent development of live game is not so laborious. This also just fulfilled everybody’s that sentence, money is really can “follow one’s inclinations”. But this kind of “follow one’s inclinationsis not blind to cross the river, Tencent has its own small plan, after all, in addition to the investment event, it has invested douyu twice before.
Moreover, while Mirage will continue to have effective control of Huya after the investment, Tencent will be able to buy up to 50.1 per cent of the shares at an open market price in the second and third years after the investment. In this way, once Tencent has absolute control of Huya, it will not be long before the company is taken over for its own use.
As for why we invest in two platforms at the same time, I think it may be related to the upcoming IPO of the two platforms. Obviously, with the promotion of capital, the pace of listing of the two companies will be further accelerated, Tencent’s move is equivalent to acting as a powerful booster role, Douyu and Huya IPO may be waiting for. Once both sides achieve this goal, all three parties are happy.
Therefore, no matter how fierce the previous battle between the two sides, now bow for capital, shake hands and move towards “common prosperity” seems to be the ultimate goal of Tencent. As for when the two sides will merge, how long the transition period will be, and what changes may occur during the transition period, that is another story.
Fish and tiger tooth: continue to burn money fight useless, shake hands or the best choice
For douyu and tiger teeth, whether to continue to fight or to merge, it is better to start from the game broadcast industry.
In the Internet industry, the money-burning war between platforms is common, but in the end, both sides may be difficult to get benefits from it, and even in a long-term loss, difficult to profit in the sub-health state. Mobike and Ofo are a typical case in which ofo is faced with a shortage of funds due to the long-term land and user wars. Although Ofo just announced an $866 million funding round on March 13, we can expect the two platforms to continue to fight for cash.
For game broadcast platform, this is also a money burning business, not to mention the low user conversion rate, the lack of liquidity is its biggest weakness. If both sides continue to spend their money fighting for the market, they will end up suffering not only from internal troubles but also from external ones.
Therefore, before the final winner is determined, whether to continue fighting or take a step back is also given by many enterprises, such as Tongcheng and elong, which were revealed to be planning an IPO in Hong Kong three months after the merger, and Meituan and Dianping, which are still hot after the merger.
On the other hand, if the merger were so easy, the war between Mobike and Ofo would not have lasted so long. How can mobike suddenly compromise its position as a giant in the industry, and each of these platforms has a dream of becoming a dominant one?
Sometimes, however, the platform doesn’t have to decide whether or not to merge.
Remember the game plug-in incident at the end of last year? This event caused douyu’s reputation to decline sharply and faced a serious crisis of trust. In addition, the loss of nearly 20 anchors at the end of last year has also become an urgent problem in front of Douyu. To put it plainly, douyu needs more investment in order to fill the vacancy of anchor and seek the long-term development of the platform.
In addition to the high cost of bandwidth required for live broadcast, Tiger Tooth still lacks the hematopoietic ability in cultivating anchors, which also implies that it is also facing the problem of funding gap. Huya, which has been included in Tencent’s game system, will also have an easier source of funds in the future. After all, the current owner Of Hujia times can give limited support, otherwise Tencent would not have proposed the details of acquiring a majority of the controlling stake in the future.
Therefore, it can be concluded that whether Douyu and Huya will eventually merge is not Tencent’s wishful thinking, nor is Douyu and Huya “reluctant”, but should make a choice according to the actual situation of both sides. Even if Douyu and Huya share the same desire to conquer each other as Mobike and Ofo, perhaps they will eventually move towards compromise, driven by strong capital. If there is a word to describe this game, perhaps it can be said: “I would like to buy a thousand pieces of gold, but 100 million can.”
What’s more, with more regulation in the industry, there is less room for livestreaming platforms to “do whatever they want”. In addition to avoiding risks and moving forward prudently, today’s live broadcasting platforms also need to explore diversified live broadcasting ways to seek long-term development. This is also visible to all. Although many platforms are testing the waters of pan-entertainment live broadcasting business, it is conceivable that the process of getting rid of the inherent label is long and tortuous.
All in all, when Tencent game industry ecological development to a certain stage, the need for resource integration, perhaps from douyu and tiger teeth handshake is not far away.
Users: The merger is easier, no need to follow the host and race migration
By entertainment think-tank jointly issued the “2017 China network performance (live) development report shows that by the end of December 2017, live online users in the field of scale, shows broadcast on user scale for 312 million, entertainment live up to 360 million, the game is live to 247 million, including the game live together the e-sports and competition aspects of the resources.
Although compared with the other two livestreaming fields, livestreaming, which is too vertical, is a little weaker in terms of user scale, from the perspective of users, those who have advantages in esports and events can easily master game user resources. That is to say, the user stickiness in the field of live game broadcasting is not very stable, and it is easy for users to follow events and anchors to switch platforms.
This is not difficult to understand. In general, a major factor for users to choose a live broadcast platform is closely related to the live broadcast copyright held by the platform. For example, Douyu won the live broadcast rights of LPL China and Huya won the live broadcast rights of LCK Korea in League of Legends. That way, if the two companies can merge, users will no longer have to switch platforms to watch games. For fans of games like LOL, their passion is what drives the platform forward.
From the perspective of game anchor, another important factor for users to choose a platform is also closely related to the platform where the anchor is located. To put it simply, the platform where the anchor is, the user is on the platform, and the influence of the anchor on the platform is self-evident. At the end of last year, douyu popular game anchor job-hopping tiger tooth incident, the platform between the rapid heating up of the war.
And to cultivate a skilled and popular anchor, the platform also needs huge capital investment. If the two platforms can realize the merger, the sharing of anchors and events may become a reality, which will reduce the loss caused by anchors’ job-hopping and reduce the frequent transfer of users due to the differences between the platforms where the events and anchors are located.
In a word, livestreaming platforms are similar to other Internet industry platforms. No matter what changes are made in their business, the final service object should focus on users. Since the merger of game broadcast platforms can bring practical convenience to users, perhaps the merger is the end of tiger tooth and Douyu.
Before the merger, betta fish and tiger teeth are still full of gunpowder
Generally speaking, as the two game live streaming platforms are favored by the capital, the whole live streaming industry begins to enter a period of collapse. The two game live streaming platforms will also enter an era of constant strength, and the position of platforms in other echelon will be further squeezed. In the fierce struggle, these platforms will also choose to take sides.
Douyu and Huya are favored by Tencent Capital, and a series of phenomena also indicate that the merger may be the best outcome, but in the short term, the two sides may continue to spend money war for some time. That is to say, the civil war between the two sides will not end because of the interference of capital. The competition between the two platforms is ultimately the competition of talents and resources, while providing excellent content services is the judging standard to demonstrate strength.
In the past two years, online live streaming platforms have stepped into more differentiated live streaming fields, such as “live streaming + variety shows”, “live streaming + tourism”, “Live streaming + short videos”, etc., to bring more diversified live streaming content to users. As competition in the live broadcast industry becomes increasingly fierce, the road of content innovation becomes more and more difficult, and cross-border integration becomes a common battlefield for live broadcast platforms.
In general, for douyu and Huya, it has become their common development direction to seek diversified development with game business as the core, but they also inevitably become direct competitors with other live broadcasting platforms. In order to seek greater development for the platform to seize the land, live broadcast platforms will continue to explore the road of “live +”, but how long this money war will continue, and it depends on Tencent’s layout in the game.
Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110