On June 16, 2017, Shanghai Pearl River Creative Center set up a venue, where Tencent brand launch conference was held. Touch Music, as an invited media, participated in the press conference and press conference, and presented first-hand information here.
Tencent has invested more than 10 years in e-sports. In 2016, LPL (League of Legends Professional League) saw 5 billion people watching the game, while in 2017, KPL (the glory of the king Professional League) saw 15 million people watching the game on the first day. At the same time, in the "2017 China E-sports Industry Report", it was shown that the e-sports audience reached 335 million people worldwide, of which China accounted for 220 million; E-sports in China is no longer an accessory of a certain type of game, but an industrial system, which belongs to the golden age of e-sports.
In the words of Cheng Wu, vice president of Tencent Group and CEO of Tencent Pictures, China e-sports has gone through three stages from 1998 to today:
- Bronze Age 1998-2007: E-sports relies on a single game platform.
- Silver Age 2008-2016: The rise of online games promoted the rise of e-sports.
- Golden Age 2017- Future: The industrialization and social attention of e-sports are becoming more and more mature.
The e-sports market in China now has a huge user base, and the competition system, as the core of the industry, is becoming increasingly perfect and mature. Together with the accumulated industrial base and social identity, it has a very large development space. The "Five-year Plan" is the plan set up by Tencent Athletic under this background. These five years will start from four aspects: competitions, alliances, personnel training and e-sports industrial park, so as to accelerate the pace of industrialization. Tencent believes that if it develops smoothly, China e-sports has reason to usher in the diamond era and the king era in five years.
E-sports has been listed as an official sport by the State Sports General Administration in 2003, and the e-sports project is also determined to be on the stage of the traditional sports hall of the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020. At this conference, Ding Dong, director of the Sports Information Center of the State Sports General Administration, announced that he would reach an overall strategic cooperation relationship with Tencent E-sports, which is good news for the entire e-sports ecology.
The sports information center is actually the e-sports management department. This cooperation means a deeper control of the industry and professional norms, which is of great significance to the conscience development of the platform. Ding Dong believes that e-sports, as a sunrise industry, has brought positive changes to the society. During his research visits to Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou, he can feel the cohesion of this force.
"I hope that in the near future, e-sports, like football, basketball and badminton, will become a sports event with both professional characteristics and national characteristics. I hope to show the good spirit of the younger generation in China through e-sports. I hope that e-sports born in the Internet era will become a bright business card for a new generation of young people in China. " Ding Dong also expressed his beautiful vision.
Li Gaoli, general manager of Tencent Interactive Entertainment Mobile E-sports Business Department, believes that the e-sports industry is still facing the problems of insufficient professionalism, underestimated commercial value and imperfect ecology. Therefore, it is necessary to explore valuable business models.
The series of League of Legends and the glory of the king are the two main forces of Tencent’s e-sports, and Tencent has begun to make strategic plans for these two single events.
League of Legends will learn from traditional sports and realize alliance operation. Among them, there are three policies worthy of attention: the LPL summer competition will cancel the relegation system, LPL will invite public tenders in detail, and all LPL teams will get permanent seats from 2018; In this way, we can break through the barriers of the event and expand our influence.
From September to November this year, China will also host the 2017 Global Finals. This is the first time that China has hosted the world’s top e-sports events, which will be held in Wuhan, Guangzhou and Shanghai one after another, and finally compete for the finals in Beijing. League of Legends, as a veteran who has experienced and witnessed the development of e-sports in China, still has a large market share. This year, a company jointly owned by Major League Baseball and Disney spent $200 million to buy out the broadcasting rights of League of Legends e-sports league.
Another product, the glory of the king, KPL League only took 11 competition weeks to make the content broadcast amount reach 2.1 billion, and it took KPL less than one year from its establishment to the offline competition. On March 24th this year, the glory of the king Professional E-sports Alliance was formally established, and began to implement rules including income, salary, return, tripartite economy and vocational training to promote the professionalization process. This MOBA game, which reduces the difficulty of getting started, expands the influence of popular e-sports. Tencent e-sports industry takes this as a starting point and focuses on entertainment cards, so there is a star cross-border program "Assemble!" King. Vivo has also reached a cooperation with KPL, and the customized mobile phone launched for KPL will also face the market in the near future.
In addition, "FIFA Online3" also welcomed the French club Lyon to join, and started the football e-sports league CEFL (China Football E-sports League). Ten super clubs joined in this league and set up their own e-sports club, which formed an online and offline linkage.
Other star products, such as Tencent Chess and Cards, Dungeons and Warriors, and QQ Speeder, are also exploring offline and carnival events. In addition, the "Star Project" for campus and the competitive development and exploration of more products with e-sports potential, such as NBA2K Online and Call of Duty Online, strive to create a multi-domain differentiated overall layout.
As a content provider, VSPN will move into a new production building next month. This production building is praised by VSPN CEO Teng Linji as "the largest and most advanced e-sports event and content production base in the world", which consists of 10 studios, media centers, players’ lounges and other functions. It can not only host competitions, but also broadcast them.
And Teng Linji also said that VSPN is building a large-scale content production team and media resource library, so that the content and creativity produced can be liberated.
Nowadays, VSPN can intervene in 50 live broadcast signals in the live broadcast of the event, and has the first e-sports broadcast vehicle with 4K and 12 fast tracks, and the broadcasting profession has better served the audience.
In this regard, Teng Linji said: "We hope that in the future, the audience can see more e-sports events in various public scenes such as living rooms and bars, and they can have the best viewing experience. The audience of e-sports, like the audience of football and basketball, is entitled to better and more diverse services. "
VSPN, which became famous through the e-sports teaching program "7M Teaching Encyclopedia" and the interactive reality show "FireWire Brothers", has already caught up with the traditional sports program ESPN in just five years.
The gap of e-sports talents in 2017 is 260,000, and there are obvious disadvantages in academic qualifications and professionalism, which is not good news for the booming e-sports industry. Tencent released the "Gathering Plan" at the end of last year, which is a management plan for the whole life training of competitive talents. It will involve curriculum development, textbook compilation, subject research and practice. In elite education, Tencent Athletic has also started field cooperation.
In April this year, League of Legends co-published The Art of Interpretation with Sichuan University, cooperated with Tongji University to coach athletes, and jointly released E-sports between China and the United States: Foundation, Current Situation and Future Challenges with MIT at the end of 2017.
Lu Jingchao, Dean of Broadcasting Hosting College of China Communication University, and Gao Fei, President of Chaojing Education were invited as guests. China Communication University was the first 211 university in China to introduce competitive courses, while Chaojing Education established e-sports majors in three independent colleges. Lu Jingchao said that he is 60 years old and played the glory of the king for the first time at noon. I don’t know this field, but I have seen people around me’s love for e-sports and the potential of this industry. As an important part of the media, a good explanation can expand the depth and breadth of e-sports, which is why I support the cooperation between the college and Tencent.
Coupled with the derivative open courses and course training, Tencent e-sports has sown seeds in the fields of academic education, vocational education and popular education.
"If you wanted to be a professional e-sports player ten years ago, you would be regarded as doing nothing; Five years ago, if someone thought that e-sports could form their own industrial chain and could involve the fields of science and technology, sports, culture and entertainment, it would be considered wishful thinking. " This is the feeling of Zhu Yihang, the chairman of Chaojing Mutual Entertainment, as an e-sportsman.
In the concept of the pan-entertainment e-sports industrial park jointly launched by Tencent e-sports and super-competition and mutual entertainment, e-sports is one of the basic links, and will eventually be built into a physical space with the nature of e-sports experience and the function of holding events, which will also involve peripheral sales and leisure entertainment, as well as the e-sports home integrating business office and education. Tencent’s online advantages and super-competition offline advantages are integrated in this project.
Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Chongqing are the first landing cities of industrial parks, and it is expected that there will be no less than 10 pan-entertainment e-sports industrial parks in the plan. It can be seen that the choice of first-tier cities and the multi-dimensional plate concept make it different from the geographical limitations of e-sports towns and face a wider range of groups, which can be regarded as a creation and exploration of a new ecology of e-sports content.
Gao Li, general manager of Tencent Mutual Entertainment Mobile E-sports Business Department, Hou Miao, deputy general manager of Tencent Mutual Entertainment Marketing Department, and Wu Lihua, CEO of Chaojing Mutual Entertainment, accepted questions from reporters. (The content has been streamlined and refined)
Reporter: It is rumored that there will be cooperation with WCG. Is it true?
Hou Miao:WCG should be closed now. We are only cooperating with WCG in an event. This year, we also released a more comprehensive plan for future e-sports.
Reporter: Have you considered making a bigger event to accommodate more competitive events?
Gao Li:There shouldn’t be. Based on our understanding of e-sports, content and games are inseparable. We do a lot of events online and offline. In the future, most of our events will be based on Tencent’s own operating game IP.
Reporter: What do you think of the trend of e-sports alliance fever and star-making fever?
Gao Li:Because we will see a lot of our own league events in the past two years, we will constantly optimize its rules. There are some new games, and we have also launched a new alliance system. If e-sports is operated as an ecological zone, the alliance is a very important cornerstone. Star-making is an important link in the whole ecology and entertainment culture. I think the driving mode of fan economy is not artificial emphasis on star-making, but with the advancement of the competition, many star players stand out.
Reporter: Why did you choose Tencent E-sports as the partner of E-sports Industrial Park?
Wu Lihua:Since 2013, we have paid attention to the field of e-sports and explored many business models. We found that the e-sports industry is a young industry and cannot learn from foreign cases. In this way, we can only achieve our goal under the resources of strong alliance. The strongest resource is of course a partner like Tencent. Strong alliance can rapidly promote the development of e-sports, so that we can have an international position. This is our starting point.
Reporter: What are the specific measures of the Star Project?
Gao Li:"In terms of popular layout, we have offline teams in 28 provinces, and online game events cover campuses and Internet cafes."
Reporter: League of Legends events have changed a lot. Does KPL have this consideration? Based on what factors has this home and away system been adjusted?
Gao Li:At present, the home and away system is not promoted as a very important direction. We have some thoughts in this regard. We need to look at some attempts in the whole e-sports system. The mechanism of the alliance will be refreshed every year. At present, we have not made any clear measures.
Hou Miao: I would like to add that the home and away NBA league itself is also implemented, which has a strong physical space attribute and regionality. Our products are all on the Internet, and we will pay more attention to this nationwide or even global fan management. Moreover, the construction of our industrial park and future system are all oriented to China, and even we will develop abroad in the future, so in fact, the home and away system of League of Legends is an attempt, but we will pay more attention to online and offline in the future, but we will not just stick to traditional sports to learn.
Reporter: Is the reason why the EDG team didn’t put its headquarters in Guangzhou because Guangzhou is not very developed now?
Wu Lihua: If EDG Club is one of the layouts in our super-competition and mutual entertainment club plate, our initial stage is in Guangzhou. Because the whole e-sports development at that time was the reason why a very spontaneous market formed and gathered in Shanghai. At that time, the e-sports events, including the overall environment, were all gathered in Shanghai. According to this demand, we also built all the physical spaces of our club headquarters in Shanghai. Of course, for the emotional connection in Guangzhou, we will have more bias and some geographical attributes in the Guangzhou area in the future, which will be the case.
Reporter: Tencent e-sports also mentioned that LPL and KPL are two drivers. Now there is a view in the industry. Is there a competitive relationship between LPL and KPL? Where is the overall differentiation of the event?
Gao Li:In fact, KPL and LPL are not directly competing products, and the experience given by the two games is very different. Although they all have their own competition systems, the overlap of users they face is not high. When League of Legends began to do professional e-sports, it should be the silver age. In fact, there must be some practices in different times to adapt to the objective situation at that time. Including the NBA league we saw this year, in such a mature system, many rules are refreshed every year, and the e-sports league is the same. Why do we have to keep pace with the times? We have to do a lot to conform to the current rules.
Reporter: I just mentioned LPL and KPL, because the fist figure behind LPL’s League of Legends competition is relatively heavy. Compared with LPL, are some of KPL’s operations in the competition more representative of Tencent’s e-sports brand? What does the glory of the king think about international competitions?
Gao Li:League of Legends and the glory of the king are both owned by Tencent, including the two most important games and events owned by Tencent E-sports. Actually, there is no problem you mentioned. The content of the league matches is slightly different, because League of Legends is a global game, which has a global system to support the global finals in addition to the events in China. In fact, the glory of the king has just started in China, and the whole product has only been on the line for about two years.
Reporter: Next, I want to know if these six cities are self-built or seek cooperation. I don’t know what form you want to develop the industrial park.
Wu Lihua:Chaojing itself has very rich experience in real estate development, but in this project, in fact, we will fully expand our arms, and we hope to work with various cooperative enterprises with resources in society to jointly build such a project. At the present stage, all our preparatory work is to develop this project completely independently, taking this direction as our current work goal, but we very much welcome all parties and resource partners to join this project.
Hou Miao:On the whole, the industrial parks that we (Tencent) cooperated with Chaojing this time will be treated based on our big data. More importantly, we all choose first-tier cities, which is very important. Because we hope that e-sports can become an ecology with more social influence and more future development value, you need to go to the front line and go to the stage with greater influence. In addition, it needs a more complete set. Today, we are in the Pearl River Creative Park, which is their attempt in this field. There are many discussions in the early stage of our future industrial park, and there will be more perfect content and construction than the industrial park we see today. With Tencent’s own online ability, the experience of offline real estate operation with the whole Chaojing Group, and the need to manage the whole park, it doesn’t mean that you can make an industrial park just by getting a piece of land today. There are many venues in the Olympic Games. After the Olympic Games, if there is no good content and operation management, the venues will be abandoned in the future. We don’t want our industrial park to face such a dilemma. We hope that all preparations in the future will be step by step. Once we find the opportunity, online and online work will be carried out much faster than you think.
Reporter: Supercell is also doing e-sports events. Will this brand join the layout of Tencent e-sports?
Hou Miao:Supercell is the company we acquired. Apart from developing and operating our own enterprises, we will also cooperate with many large developers. They will also have a lot of thoughts on their own products and the development of their competitions. We will fully communicate with them. In the future, Tencent e-sports itself is also a rich content platform. We will accommodate all projects and partners, and at the same time, we can also establish a complete ecological package to serve all projects.
Reporter: People often argue about the differences and similarities between e-sports athletes and traditional sports athletes. For example, can e-sports athletes be regarded as traditional sports athletes? Want to know how Tencent e-sports interprets or views the difference between e-sports athletes and traditional athletes?
Gao Li:I think you just talked about traditional sports repeatedly. I think e-sports should be understood as modern sports, because it is also a formal sports event recognized by the State Sports General Administration. We will see that the team spirit and individual hard training in the enterprises including the competition, because the achievements achieved by training, including many in traditional sports, the star-making and fan effect just mentioned, I think many models are very close. So this doesn’t seem to be a problem that bothers us.
Reporter: From the perspective of traditional sports, he has a clear path to become a professional player and an ordinary athlete. I can enter through, for example, a draft, for example, a low-level league and youth tournament. What are the ways for them to become professional players? What advice does Tencent E-sports have for them?
Wu Lihua:Let me answer. You have just mentioned traditional sports all the time. I think it is difficult to distinguish the boundary between traditional sports and e-sports just like Gao Li said that e-sports is modern sports. Why do you have this illusion, and this problem will arise? I come down to it myself, because I am also involved in traditional sports for half a career. Because traditional sports are basically managed by the State Sports General Administration, provincial, municipal and district sports commissions. You mentioned the real traditional sports. Many promotion systems in China are from sports schools, then to sports teams, and then to the corresponding cities and provinces. In the field of e-sports, the Internet brings us a bonus, because all the information is in the background of the game developer Tencent, and then we can find some players we want through some information published online in our club. There is a very clear registration channel for trainees, which also allows aspiring young people to find a very clear door to communicate and contact with us.
Reporter: We are a game media. We just saw that at the press conference, there was a grand vision and a huge plan, and we invested a lot of capital to do this. I know that as Tencent, where is the revenue point of this matter? Growth point? How to get back to Ben? How to make this thing profitable? And in this industrial chain, how to make money together with the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain?
Gao Li:In fact, we were just talking about the business model in e-sports. In fact, we have invested in Tencent for many years. In the past two years, we can see that copyright is a very important aspect, as well as sponsorship. In the past two years, there have been more and more sponsors in our professional leagues, involving more original non-digital industries, and these two pieces will be more. However, we see that there are still many tickets in the late week, including some offline ticket modes, including derivative income, and we will feel that there is still a lot of room in the future. We have a lot of content producers in the whole e-sports ecology, and there are many modules driven by the industry, including many education industries today, so we will feel that the space here is very large.
Hou Miao:Let me give you an example. Our company was founded in 1998. Everyone has read many stories about QQ online. In fact, QQ didn’t make money before. Today, Tencent’s revenue is very large. It’s not that we have sold a lot of money on QQ, but that we have generated many business opportunities based on the users and platforms gathered by QQ and the upstream and downstream industrial chains. From this point of view, there have been many reports just now, both our own research and many external studies have said that the future e-sports industry, whether it is fan economy, related content production, copyright sales, and education, is now online education, offline education, and vocational education. Even today’s industrial parks will generate many business opportunities, and we are in no hurry to make all these clear. Because the benign mechanism of Tencent’s revenue scale and operation today helps us to lay out in the new industry, and what we see is a bigger opportunity. When we hope to achieve a higher level of industrial opportunities, we can discuss with our partners, including Chaojing and even more, how to make the cake bigger in each field. If you divide the cake from the beginning, I think the bigger cake may be missed.
Reporter: Many new games, including some small mobile games, hope to cooperate with Tencent and use this platform to give full play to their advantages. What criteria does Tencent consider when screening partners?
Gao LiI think the most important thing is to look at the products. In fact, we will look at the products instead of the origins. We have some processes such as strict product testing, including our own analysis of different products in different types, because Tencent is a big platform, and we will welcome different types of games on this platform.
Reporter: Many new e-sports stars have been born in the e-sports industry. Recently, the cooperation between traditional entertainment stars and e-sports stars has become closer and closer. Is there a plan to cooperate with stars in the new industrial park?
Wu Lihua:We feel that the entire e-sports industry has a very strong quality content output attribute. In addition to the content of the event, Tencent came out a pan-entertainment part a few years ago. In this process, anyone who focuses on this industry will have people and stars. In the attributes of the stars themselves, recently, because the overall industry is very hot, many traditional variety shows hope to capture the hot spots in this market, and some stars of e-sports will also be invited to enter this cultural field. You said that in the park, these elements are also a part of the park. You just mentioned that it includes some peripheral sales, including some internal activities, and there will be a lot of more e-sports related spaces in it. I think everyone can use this part offline and use the physical space of the park to achieve it.
Hou Miao:I would like to add that I don’t know if you have just noticed that our industrial park is called Pan-Entertainment E-sports Industrial Park. Everything must be carefully planned and realized step by step. We will focus on this aspect at the beginning, and they also have corresponding live broadcasts and artists. Including just now, Mr. Wu also said that EDG Club also has related star players and commentators, and they will gradually discover their acting careers, and there are many platforms including movies and television, stage performances, etc., all of which are the objects of our cooperation. These will create a more complete or diversified development path for all cooperative enterprises in the whole industrial park, including these stars produced in them, so I think the future is actually very possible, but today we hope to focus on the creation of e-sports content ecology step by step, and gradually introduce pan-entertainment methods and our partners.