According to the Nikkei Shimbun on July 28, Chinese game live broadcast platform Douyu will enter the Japanese market in September and is currently planning to establish a new company with Japanese company Mitsui Co.. In addition to recruiting popular anchors for Douyu's new platform launched in Japan in September, the new company will also release new games to Japan. In addition, Douyu also plans to launch content and e-commerce modules other than games.
Douyu Home Page Source: Douyu
Douyu is a barrage video live sharing website focusing on game live broadcast. Its formerly was ACFUN Shengbroadcast live broadcast, and it was officially renamed in 2014. In July this year, Douyu officially landed on the Nasdaq in the United States and was listed on the market. Before this, it had obtained approximately RMB 7 billion through six rounds of financing. Tencent participated in four rounds, indirectly holding about 43.1% of Douyu's shares, and is one of its major shareholders.
As the domestic live broadcast market competition is becoming increasingly fierce, Douyu has long regarded overseas expansion as one of the company's main investment directions and wrote the prospectus disclosed in April this year.
For Douyu, the attractiveness of the Japanese market may come from the growth potential of its live broadcast market. According to the Nikkei News above, the current size of the e-sports live broadcast market in Japan is about 50 billion yen (about 3.171 billion yuan), and this figure is expected to reach 360 billion yen in 2022.
However, in Japan, Douyu will also face competitors from both home and abroad. First of all, there are live game broadcasts and Twitch, which entered the Japanese market in 2017. Twitch's parent company is Amazon, which was launched in 2011. It can currently provide users with multilingual live content, with about 15 million daily active users. When entering Japan, Michael Aragon, senior vice president of content at Twitch, said in an interview with the Japan Times that viewers spend an average of 106 minutes watching Twitch programs every day. In Asia, this number soared to more than 300 minutes.
Twitch Japan District Source: Nikkei News
In addition, the game live broadcast section has long existed on the famous online barrage video sharing website in Japan; and YouTube, a video website that is popular among the Japanese, also provides game live broadcast functions.
As Michael Aragon pointed out in the above report, language barriers and different gaming habits may also become obstacles to Douyu. It is not difficult to understand why it set up a new company, recruit Japanese game anchors, and develop localized games.
At present, Japanese people prefer mobile games compared to computer games, which may become the direction for Douyu to launch new games. Gamma Data and the "2019 Japan Mobile Game Market Survey Report" released by Newzoo show that in 2019, the size of Japan's mobile game market is expected to reach US$11.48 billion, with a compound growth rate of 18% in the past three years, making it the second largest mobile game market in the world after China.
Pokemon Go, a Japanese mobile game that was once popular all over the world. Source: Internet
In fact, Japan is not the first choice market for Douyu to go overseas.
Douyu first looks at the Southeast Asian market. In June 2017, Douyu, Weiying Capital and Alibaba , invested in Nonolive, a mobile video live broadcast platform for China's overseas mobile video for Southeast Asian markets. Nonolive was first launched on Indonesian in early June 2016, mainly providing pan-entertainment content such as singing, dancing, and challenges. Since then, Nonolive has entered markets such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore .
Just last October, Doyo, a live broadcast platform that focuses on the Southeast Asian market, was launched. Two months later, Douyu was exposed to lay off about 70 employees, and Doyo also became a "abandoned" product.
This time, Douyu found a partner Mitsui Products, which is very famous. As a comprehensive group listed in Japan, Mitsui Products has a wide range of businesses, including media, energy, metal manufacturing, machinery manufacturing, chemistry, finance, logistics, food and mining industries. In terms of segmentation, Mitsui involves technical fields such as broadcasting, content services, and network security.
Currently, Chinese video live broadcast platforms that have entered the Japanese market include YY, Up Live, Inke and SayHi.(Text/Zhang Hanyu Editor/Liu Bingyan)
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