Although there is no LPL ( League of Legends Professional League Mainland China competition area) team to the finals, the related topics of 2022 League of Legends Global Finals (S12) still topped the hot search list on November 6, "T1 vs. DRX", "DRX defeats T1", " Wang Jiaer Makeup"... As long as it is related to S12, it is within the attention of netizens. From the start of the game at 8 a.m. to the decision of the championship at 1:30 p.m., the barrage of the live broadcast rooms of S12 official website, Tencent video, B station and other live broadcast rooms almost filled the entire screen. The new song of singer Jiaer Wang's first release at the opening ceremony of the S12 final has also become a popular song of the day.
The popularity of the e-sports industry is obvious, but the penetration of Internet companies into the e-sports industry is little known. Compared with traditional sports, the Internet and e-sports are more related. Although the commercialization level is not enough to compare with top sports events such as football and basketball, there are Internet companies in all aspects of the e-sports industry. Some of them acquire teams, some hold events for their own games, and some enter the talent training track.
played 5 games, DRX won
"DRX won, the biggest dark horse in history". As soon as the S12 final ended on October 6, e-sports fan Zhao Lei (pseudonym) excitedly shared with Beijing Business Daily reporters. Not long after, "DRX defeated T1" ranked first on the hot search on Weibo . "Faker", "keria cried bitterly", "Deft Meiko", and "DRX won the championship" also entered the top ten on Weibo's hot search list. This is still the case when the LPL team is not entering the finals. "If there is a domestic team, the response will be greater." Zhao Lei still feels deeply sorry that JDG has stopped at the semi-finals.
Xiaolu (pseudonym), who has been inviting friends to watch the live broadcast since November 4, has been staring at the screen, "The competition has been reversing for more than five hours." Like Zhao Lei, he was surprised by the DRX winning the championship. At least before the game, they and the e-sports enthusiasts around him were not optimistic about DRX.
"DRX is the fourth seed of S12. This time it was played little by little. The semi-finals made two chases and three create history. Today it was also a two-game consecutive game, a real dark horse," Zhao Lei told a reporter from Beijing Business Daily. It is precisely because DRX defeated the match point when T1, S12's finals played 5 games. "This champion has finally fulfilled the dislocation all the way." This is the most praised fan message on the official Weibo of League of Legends event "DRX Wins the Championship".
League of Legends Global Finals is the annual global e-sports event of League of Legends, and it is also the highest honor, highest gold content, highest competitive level and highest popularity among all League of Legends events. It has been held so far. This is why the 2022 League of Legends Global Finals is simply called "S12".
"There are few people who follow e-sports who don't know the S game, even if they don't play League of Legends in normal times," Xiaolu said. After all, when IG won the S8 championship, FPX and EDG points, the League of Legends Global Finals broke the circle.
According to the official introduction of the event, the 2022 League of Legends Global Finals can be watched throughout the entire process on B station, League of Legends client, League of Legends and League of Legends events, Huya live broadcast, Tencent Video, Tencent Sports , Tencent AppTrea, BesTV . At the same time, Sina Weibo , WeChat Video Account, QQ Small World, and Migu can also watch some games.
"I can only turn off the barrage to see the live broadcast screen. There are too many barrage, and the entire screen is spread." Wen Qing (pseudonym), who was planted in grass to watch the live broadcast of the finals for the first time, told the Beijing Business Daily reporter.
The Internet company that grabs topics
. A user who doesn't pay much attention to e-sports is also accidentally recommended by Amway. "Today, a special effect suddenly appeared in a WeChat group. Click to open it and it's a rain of League of Legends expressions. A villain, it's quite interesting."
According to the event team, "This is a linkage between League of Legends ecological games, professional events and WeChat . Enter 'LOL Mobile Game' in the WeChat chat box to participate in the League of Legends Ecological Expression Rain event, and you have the opportunity to unlock the all hero + all skins and League of Legends ecological gifts sold in the " League of Legends Mobile Game " mall."
Tencent Interactive Entertainment League of Legends Market Head Fang Kewei told Beijing Business Daily reporters, "In order to provide domestic e-sports enthusiasts with more diverse e-sports viewing experience, Tencent and its partners have launched watch activities in many places, including cinema viewing, camp viewing, merchant viewing, etc., and have also implemented the "League of Legends Town" that integrates the characteristics of business districts in some cities. It is hoped that through the integration of e-sports X business districts, urban activities with more young people's characteristics can be created, so that e-sports enthusiasts and citizens can fully experience the richer e-sports cultural content, thereby driving the increase in the business district's customer flow and accelerating the development of the regional economy."
Other Internet platforms have also made a lot of preparations for S12. Taking B station, which started live broadcasting the League of Legends Global Finals in 2020 as an example, when live broadcasting S12, it continued to launch barrier-free live broadcast rooms, launched self-developed AI real-time subtitles, and also used one of the commonly used game terms for League of Legends players, "Pagoda Guarding", in conjunction with Shanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, etc., to launch the "Pagoda Guarding Program" on the basis of the "Cultural Relics Umbrella Guarding Program".
Because of his first performance of the theme song "Qihuo" in the S12 final opening ceremony, singers Wang Jiaer and "Qihuo" are also very popular. A Beijing Business Daily reporter logged into QQ Music and found that the current search for "Qihuo" will show "Recent Hot Search". As of press time, there are 1,812 comments on this song.
In addition to Tencent and B station, Internet companies such as Perfect World , Weibo, Kuaishou, JD also have layouts in the e-sports industry. Establishing their own teams is the standard, and there are also many companies that operate events, such as Perfect World is the exclusive operator of Dota (DOTA2) and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) in mainland China.
"Many e-sports players have Internet genes, especially in the past few years, Internet companies have entered the market in a swarm." An e-sports practitioner told the Beijing Business Daily reporter, "It is mainly because e-sports itself has Internet genes." Liao Xuhua, a senior consultant of the cultural consumption industry in
, also told the Beijing Business Daily reporter, "E-sports users are Internet natives and are the core target groups of Internet companies and brands. Therefore, whether it is investing or sponsoring e-sports, it is a very convenient way to reach the target groups." What is the difference between
and traditional sports
Internet industry observer Zhang Shule 's focus is on non-online game companies. He also believes that this is one of the ways for enterprises to "please" users. "Non-game companies enter the e-sports industry more to establish a certain sense of intimacy with young users and form a potential user incubation and daily marketing exposure. After all, Internet companies are more eager to stick to the new generation of netizens, that is, Generation Z."
third-party data indirectly proves this. The "2022 China E-sports User Behavior Research Report" released by iMedia Consulting shows that 52.5% of e-sports users who have purchased members in e-sports videos in China, and 49.1% of those who have purchased supporters who like teams. Penguin’s relevant data pointed out that among e-sports users, 27.9% of them are under 24 years old, and 38.1% are users aged 25-34.
comes from the "2022 Global E-sports and Game Live Market Report" released by Newzoo, which shows that the global E-sports event revenue in 2020 was US$996 million, and will reach US$1.384 billion in 2022. Currently, the revenue of global e-sports events mainly comes from six parts: sponsorship, media copyright, game publisher subsidies, peripheral products and ticketing, virtual products, and live broadcasts. Taking 2022 as an example, sponsorship is the largest source of revenue for global e-sports events, contributing US$837 million. The second and third largest revenue share are media copyright and game publisher subsidies, which are US$208 million and US$131 million respectively.
"E-sports' revenue source is relatively single. A sports event often has a very long industrial chain. The revenue source of international top sports clubs and events is richer than that of e-sports. At present, e-sports is not enough to compare with top sports events such as football, basketball, rugby , etc., but it is better than sports events that are relatively backward in commercialization such as Go, table tennis, track and field," said Liao Xuhua.
From the project itself, "the biggest difference between e-sports and traditional sports is the existence of intellectual property rights," e-sports practitioner CiCi believes.
Zhang Shule and Liao Xuhua emphasized the life cycle and long-term expectations of the event. In Zhang Shule's words, "Due to the nature of games, the life cycle of each e-sports event is roughly about ten years, and once a traditional sports or sports event is established, it will almost be immortal."
Where to fill the talent gap
Do Internet companies staring at the e-sports track only enter the event level? no. The lack of e-sports talent is an openly invisible problem, and Quwan Technology is one of them. The relevant person in charge of
Quwan Technology told Beijing Business Daily reporters, "In 2019, Quwan officially established the TT e-sports brand. It now has the League of Legends branch, King of Glory branch, League of Legends mobile game branch and Peace Elite branch, and holds e-sports events with regional characteristics in various places. By holding mass events across the country, Quwan has discovered talents to enter the youth training reserve team; cooperated with Guangzhou Sports College , Sun Yat-sen University Tourism College and other universities to carry out research projects to jointly build a compound talent training base. In the future, Quwan also plans to establish a talent training mechanism that integrates introduction, incubation and transportation."
In 2016, the Ministry of Education added the " e-sports sports and management" major. In 2017, many schools including Communication University of China opened e-sports-related majors. In 2019, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and other departments officially listed "e-sports operators and e-sports athletes" as new professions. In late August 2022, the first batch of "e-sports technicians" professional skill level certificates were officially issued.
Although e-sports are breaking the circle from various dimensions, market share and user scale are constantly increasing, since domestic development is still in its early stages, the talent gap is a recognized shortcoming. According to incomplete statistics, as of 2020, the talent gap in the e-sports industry reached 500,000.
In 2021, Guangzhou Sports College announced that it will open the major of e-sports sports and management, becoming the first public university in , , to open an undergraduate major of e-sports.
Wang Xiaodong, dean of the School of Leisure Sports and Management, responsible for e-sports major in Guangzhou Sports College, told Beijing Business Daily reporters, "Cultivating e-sports talents is not about cultivating professional e-sports athletes. The real professional players are those who the public believes that the 'playing games' are mostly trained by professional clubs, and they are young. Most of them have passed the peak of their careers by the age of college. In 2022, all 31 students recruited by the first e-sports major of Guangzhou Sports School are sports students."
Regarding e-sports products, Wang Xiaodong's view is: "The e-sports products on the market currently lack the sports attributes of digital sports and are of no benefit to the physical and mental health of young people. We run e-sports majors to develop real e-sports (digital sports). It is to develop or transform existing products and improve their sports and fitness functions, such as transforming online racing games into truly doing it in a racing simulator."
Beijing Business Daily reporter Wei Wei
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