185: Chapter 185 Undercurrents, Sponsorship Quantity Contrary to Popularity

"After the removal of viewing rewards, how are there still so many players watching the match?"

"Is it really that exaggerated?"

Looking at the numbers on the statistics panel, Sun Qiang's voice was full of disbelief, and one could even hear a hint of trembling.

The expressions of the others in the room were much the same.

This number far exceeded their previous expectations.

You have to understand, the viewership for the league of legends Great Xia region Opening Match was only over forty million, and those viewers had initially gone there for the skin treasure chests.

Without the treasure chest rewards, it was impossible for this group of people to have such a high retention rate!

After all, many new season Opening Matches of traditional sports events basically find the two most popular teams in the region to compete, and the heat of subsequent matches will slowly cool down.

Situations like league of legends, where the second match still retains over ninety percent of the Opening Match's viewership, are quite rare.

"Having this number, it's not just because the popularity of the Great Xia Opening Match is high; the popularity of the previous South Korea region Opening Match was also incredibly exaggerated, even going viral outside the circle, and it wasn't just league of legends players who knew about it."

"Only with the combination of the two could the second match of the Great Xia region have such high attention."

"However," an executive in the room quickly gave a reasonable explanation.

"Once the audience's enthusiasm fades, unless it's a match between strong teams, the viewership for normal team matches should still drop, but I'm afraid there will still be at least ten to twenty million viewers."

"This number is already very exaggerated."

After speaking, this person looked at Pony.

Not just him, everyone else in the conference room cast their gaze toward Pony.

Pony also took a deep breath.

"No need to wait. Contact Ji Pang immediately; our esports league can be pushed forward. I will talk to him personally."

"As for dota 2, have them start the preliminary esports planning immediately. You just said that in at most half a month, dota 2 can launch the Global Finals. I don't want this time to be any longer."

After Pony finished speaking, everyone in the conference room immediately took action.

Sun Qiang nodded and dialed the producer of dota 2 directly.

Only Pony slowly turned his gaze back to the big screen that was broadcasting live. The number forty million no longer needed to prove anything.

As long as this popularity can be maintained, then the esports industry will have succeeded.

It's just that, although he had already chosen to get a piece of the pie in this field and wanted to take a bite of the cake, Pony still couldn't help but sigh twice.

Back then, when Qin Mo announced the esports plan, almost the entire internet mocked it. No one believed that a game match could attract attention or be entertaining.

Even Tencent and other game companies at home and abroad just treated Qin Mo's words as a joke.

Game matches? A fantasy.

But now, just after the third stage of league of legends began, Qin Mo ignited the global player base with just one match, directly opening up an unprecedented, brand-new industrial chain!

If esports can really form a systematic structure, with stage matches in various regions, various world tournaments, plus broadcast sponsorships and offline investment, and so on and so forth, the market scale of this brand-new blue ocean is likely quite exaggerated!

At the very least, it starts at a scale of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars.

Thinking of this, Pony suddenly regretted demoting the head of the game department, Vice President Chen Yongnian, back then. When the other party failed successively in dota 2 and alliance of valiant arms, he thought it was the other party's lack of ability.

But looking back now, not to mention him, Old Ma and Ma Kun from Anli Group also fell into Qin Mo's hands, and in the end, they had to burn their bridges and use Alipay to block Pinduoduo's rising channel.

And now, Qin Mo has even directly unearthed an unprecedented, brand-new industrial chain. This person is indeed too exaggerated.

I'm afraid Vice President Chen Yongnian wouldn't be able to beat Qin Mo even if he came back ten more times; it's not his fault.

Meanwhile, while Pony was pondering, Sun Qiang hung up the phone and walked over, whispering, "dota 2 has already started acting. Because we completed the preliminary planning yesterday, their actions will be very fast. But if it's half a month, we need to start contacting other capital to enter now."

Listening to Sun Qiang's words, Pony also nodded, but then he remembered something and looked up to ask, "By the way, how is that matter you were handling going?"

"It is still under discussion. The price the other party is asking for is very high. If we want to poach him, it will still take some time."

After hearing this, Pony did not continue to ask, just raised his hand to indicate he knew.

On the other side, as the live broadcast screen on the big screen in the distance paused and turned into a video call style, the figure of a fat man wearing glasses appeared in the live broadcast room.

The other party looked in Pony's direction, using broken Great Xia language, "President Ma, I heard you want to talk to me about esports?"

In the following few days, after several one-sided, and indeed meaningless, matches in various regions, the popularity of league of legends esports events cooled down reasonably.

The high popularity of the Opening Matches in various regions at the beginning was indeed because the events received extra attention, and matches of some weaker teams also received a lot of exposure.

As the matches continued, the audience's temperature also dropped quite a bit.

Now, except for matches between some strong teams, most team match live broadcasts basically only have a viewership of ten to twenty million, or even lower.

But matches between strong teams and teams with star players still have high viewership, with about thirty to forty million viewers in the live broadcast room.

For example, in the Great Xia region, the three teams with the most attention are A-Shui, Left Hand, and Uzi Team, which had two consecutive eye-catching performances in the loser's bracket.

On a global scale, the attention received by the Demon King Team in the South Korea region is in a league of its own.

Logically speaking, the subsequent matches of league of legends have already proven its popularity and potential. Logically, the next step should be a large influx of capital to completely build up the sponsor system.

But strangely, a week after the Opening Match, league of legends still hasn't received any sponsorship from major brands. The few signing announcements occasionally released by the official Weibo are all from some second-tier brands at home and abroad.

You have to understand, if a traditional sports event has at least ten million viewers for every match in every region, then the event organizers wouldn't need to do anything; all major first-tier brands would contact them proactively.

Not to mention that for many of the strong team matches in league of legends, the number of viewers exceeds forty million.

But at this moment, in a situation where league of legends has such high popularity and attention, it hasn't even found a brand sponsor for the players' uniforms!

This situation is quite rare.

Even many league of legends players who don't pay attention to this aspect have noticed that something is wrong.

Just as similar discussions began to appear in major gaming communities around the world, at the time point one week after the league of legends Great Xia Opening Match, a keyword entry, translated into various languages, quickly rushed to the top of the hot searches on major global social platforms.

It even rushed to the number one position on Weibo.

And this keyword entry had only one sentence: "Why are league of legends events not valued by capital?"