Recently, the China Audio and Digital Cooperative Electric Competition Commission (ESC) released the report on China's e-sports industry from January to June 2022. Gamma data as a strategic partner, through data research and enterprise research, has achieved phased results.

The report shows that:

• E-sports 's industrial income from January to June was 76.497 billion yuan, down 10.12% from the same period last year.

• Of e-sports 's industrial income, e-sports 's game income was 63.712 billion yuan, down 11.59% from the same period last year.

• E-sports 's live broadcast, events, clubs and other income totaled 12.785 billion yuan, down 2.00% from the same period last year.

• The number of domestic e-sports users in the first half of the year was about 487 million.

• Affected by the epidemic, the proportion of online events reached 49% in the first half of 2022.

• Guangdong, Shanghai and Beijing are the areas with the largest number of e-sports enterprises.

  
  

The following is a summary of the semi-annual report of China's e-sports industry in 2022.

In the first half of this year, the COVID-19 epidemic had a profound impact on e-sports 's industrial development pattern. Offline events are difficult to carry out, and e-sports 's content supply, public opinion influence and business income have all been impacted to varying degrees. Under such circumstances, all parties concerned have made concerted efforts and taken a variety of measures to overcome the difficulties: local governments have issued e-sports support policies one after another; trade associations have strengthened self-discipline management and actively carried out standard-setting work. Enterprise organizations give full play to their subjective initiative and strive to ensure the normal operation of all links of e-sports 's industrial chain by promoting the continuous holding of core events, selling around e-sports, developing digital collections, and creating virtual people of the events. to make a strong contribution to the steady development of e-sports industry.

The following is a summary of some of the data in this report

This report comprehensively expounds the overall situation of China's e-sports industry in the first half of the year from eight aspects: industry income, game revenue, user scale, game type, number of events, event distribution, enterprise distribution, and e-sports going to sea. First of all, the income part.

Income and income share of e-sports industry

From January to June 2022, the income of China's e-sports industry was 76.497 billion yuan, down 10.12% from the same period last year. The epidemic is the main reason for the decline in e-sports industry income. From the perspective of income composition, e-sports games bring the highest income, accounting for about 83.29%; e-sports content live broadcast income accounts for about 13.96%, ranking second. The proportion of competition income, club income and other income is about 1.24%, 1.01% and 0.52%, respectively.

Source: China Audio and Digital Co-Competition Commission (ESC) China Game Industry Research Institute Gamma data (CNG)

Source: China Audio and Digital Co-Competition Commission (ESC) China Game Industry Research Institute Gamma data (CNG)

E-sports 's Game income in China

Revenue from e-sports games in China was 63.712 billion yuan, down 11.59% from a year earlier. E-sports 's popularity decreased in the first half of the year, and changes in user income and willingness to pay led to a sharp drop in e-sports game revenue.

Source: China Audio and Digital Co-Competition Commission (ESC) China Game Industry Research Institute Gamma data (CNG)

In addition to game revenue, live broadcast, events, clubs and other income totaled 12.785 billion yuan, down 2.00% from the same period last year. The main reasons for the decline are the decline in revenue of live broadcast enterprises, the reduction of ticketing and surrounding income of e-sports events, and the inability to carry out business cooperation between enterprises.

Source: China Audio and Digital Co-Competition Commission (ESC) China Game Industry Research Institute Gamma data (CNG)
User scale of e-sports

From January to June in 2022, the number of e-sports users in China was about 487 million, a slight drop from the same period last year. This trend is consistent with the change in the size of users in the game industry.

Source: China Audio and Digital Co-Competition Commission (ESC) China Game Industry Research Institute Gamma data (CNG)

Types of e-sports games

According to statistics, of all e-sports games on the market in the first half of 2022, 24 are PC games, 34 are mobile games, 7 products are multi-end games, and 3 e-sports game products are web games. Among them, the number of shooting is the largest, accounting for 26.09%; the number of multiplayer online tactical games (MOBA) is second only to shooting, accounting for 17.39%; and the number of competitive sports games accounts for 10.14%.

Source: China Audio and Digital Co-Competition Commission (ESC) China Game Industry Research Institute Gamma data (CNG)

Source: China Audio and Digital Co-Competition Commission (ESC) China Game Industry Research Institute Gamma data (CNG)

The number of e-sports events held

Due to the growing maturity of the online competition model, the number of e-sports events in China increased from January to June in 2022, with a total of 62 events held. Due to the epidemic restrictions on offline activities, nearly half of the events are held online. Another 19% of the events are held online and offline.

Source: China Audio and Digital Co-Competition Commission (ESC) China Game Industry Research Institute Gamma data (CNG)

Note: each series of events is counted as one.

Source: China Audio and Digital Co-Competition Commission (ESC) China Game Industry Research Institute Gamma data (CNG)

Distribution of cities hosting offline e-sports events in China from January to June

The host cities of e-sports events are mainly first-tier cities and new first-tier cities. Shanghai is the city with the largest number of sports events in China over the years. 39.39% of e-sports events were held in Shanghai in the first half of this year, mainly from January to March. Hangzhou and Suzhou, which are located in the Yangtze River Delta, also rank relatively high.

Source: China Audio and Digital Co-Competition Commission (ESC) China Game Industry Research Institute Gamma data (CNG)

Note: only the events held offline are counted, excluding the whole online events. The events held in many places are calculated according to the location of the finals.

Distribution of main regions and business types of e-sports enterprises in China

There are two regions where the number of e-sports enterprises accounts for more than 10%, namely Guangdong and Shanghai. Beijing, Hainan, Jiangsu, Hunan, Zhejiang and Sichuan account for more than 5%. Due to the obvious aggregation effect of e-sports in Shenzhen and Guangzhou in Guangdong province, the proportion of e-sports enterprises in the province reached 18.20%, ranking first.

Source: China Audio and Digital Co-Competition Commission (ESC) China Game Industry Research Institute Gamma data (CNG)

Among the business types of e-sports enterprises, e-sports game manufacturers, e-sports venues and e-sports event services appear more frequently, accounting for more than 20%.

Source: China Audio and Digital Co-Competition Commission (ESC) China Game Industry Research Institute Gamma data (CNG)

The situation of e-sports industry going out to sea

From January to June 2022, China's e-sports industry continued to promote the process of going out to sea, achieved certain results in e-sports events in Southeast Asia and other regions, and achieved the purpose of using e-sports as a presentation to spread Chinese culture.

The following is a summary of some of the views of the report

Creating e-sports Ecology to promote the Development of e-sports Enterprises

For e-sports enterprises, creating e-sports ecology will bring many benefits for the rapid development of e-sports enterprises, and e-sports ecology will continue to empower the development of e-sports enterprises as a positive feedback cycle.

Take NetEase, Inc and e-sports as an example, the comprehensive event NetEase, Inc e-sports NeXT currently covers more than 35 popular game products. According to the data released in 2021, the cumulative number of NeXT participants has exceeded 5 million, and the average PV for a single session has reached 700-800 million. So far, we have also observed that # NetEase, Inc, e-sports, NeXT#, Weibo Corp topic reading has also broken through the 2.06 billion mark, and has been reported on CCTV many times. There is no doubt that, no matter from the level of users, or the event influence level, NeXT is already one of the largest comprehensive event brands in China. In the process of constructing e-sports 's ecological development, the overall situation of NetEase, Inc and e-sports 's NeXT can be summarized as two major directions: "aggregation" and "opening". From the perspective of aggregation, on the one hand, the huge product matrix of NetEase, Inc games provides NeXT with a rich content base and a huge user base covering different layers of interest. On the other hand, as a comprehensive e-sports brand of NetEase, Inc and e-sports, NeXT gives full play to the above advantages, providing game users with rich e-sports content scenes, and aggregating brand potential energy through many popular games, magnifying the influence of the event. Then through the user's participation, watching and other behaviors to feed the activity, payment and retention of the data of the game products. From an open point of view, NetEase, Inc and e-sports 's open attitude to other cooperative game companies (such as Microsoft Corp, Blizzard, KONAMI, etc.) allows the content boundaries of NeXT events to be further expanded, and is expected to include more popular games in the future. At the same time, thanks to the rich content and wide coverage of users, NeXT has a much broader potential for business transformation of foreign cooperation than single product competitions, and provides different customized event content for different people according to the areas covered by the cooperative brand, so as to achieve better marketing results. In addition to further expanding the scope of events for external game manufacturers, NetEase, Inc and e-sports 's opening up is also open to clubs, live streaming platforms, users, etc., empowering the industry through their own ecological construction and open links, and gathering a large amount of traffic for NetEase, Inc games.

Tencent also has experience in the ecological construction of e-sports. From the perspective of cooperation, many well-known e-sports ecological partners of Tencent jointly carry out the ecological construction of e-sports in many fields; from the perspective of products and events, while Tencent promotes the head event and the whole people e-sports, Xinyou products also successfully hold the e-sports event, which further expands the coverage of the event and enriches the type of e-sports event. In addition, in the ecological construction of film games, Tencent also realizes the ecological integration of film and television and e-sports games by producing original high-quality content and animated dramas.

Internet cutting-edge technology promotes the integrated development of e-sports industry

With the vigorous development of Internet cutting-edge technology, technological progress has been achieved in VR, 5G, artificial intelligence, virtual human and other fields, which has injected new vitality into the development of e-sports industry. For e-sports enterprises, the combination of Internet cutting-edge technology and e-sports event hosting, event content production and other business has become an important embodiment of the competitiveness of e-sports enterprises. The deep integration of e-sports business and Internet cutting-edge technology not only has the advantages of promoting enterprises to further enhance their technology research and development strength, finding a commercial way for cutting-edge technology, and reducing the impact of the epidemic on e-sports events, but also will continue to enhance e-sports 's user experience, and play a role in expanding the scale of enterprise users and enhancing the attractiveness of the event.

Tencent incorporated the cutting-edge technology of the Internet into the e-sports events, which further enhanced the experience of the audience. For example, the fourth Arena of Valor National Competition adopted the AR special effects production and virtual shooting process virtual technology, through the real camera and virtual camera real-time interaction for real-time rendering of special effects, bringing a new audio-visual experience; the characters in the game also through the virtual human technology, as a virtual commentary to join the Game for Peace event, improving the interest and viewing of the event.

In 2022, NetEase, Inc and e-sports continued to promote technological upgrading in the NeXT event, not only exploring more possibilities of innovation and iteration within the scope of existing production technologies, but also introducing XR (extended reality) technology, known as the key to opening meta-universe, to serve the event. XR technology is different from the production scheme of traditional live studio or green screen studio, which not only retains the understanding, the real interaction between contestants and hosts, but also brings the traditional game scene with boundaries to the infinitely extended virtual world. With the support of NetEase, Inc e-sports NeXT's own non-delay camera tracking technology, ultra-high speed signal transmission technology, seamless switching of multiple scenes and screen anti-moire technology, the application potential of XR technology in e-sports events has been deeply tapped, and head events have been successfully held, including the finals of "Onmyoji" Xia Chi military Conference, the 11th World Finals of "Yi Meng Jianghu", and the "ace speed race". The follow-up will also gradually cover the whole production process of NetEase, Inc e-sports NeXT, creating a new e-sports event production system.

Business cooperation among enterprises promotes the value transformation of e-sports industry

How to transform the commercial value of e-sports with high attention and large flow into economic interests is an issue that e-sports enterprises pay more attention to. If e-sports products and e-sports events together constitute the internal cycle of e-sports enterprises, then foreign business cooperation and e-sports events constitute an external cycle. Exploring the new business cooperation model of e-sports value transformation has become an important link for e-sports enterprises to achieve profit growth.

Tencent explored the mode of business cooperation between enterprises from many dimensions, and achieved results in promoting the transformation of value and expanding the influence of IP. For example, Arena of Valor cooperates with Burger King, vivo, Seagull Watch, CROCS, smell Library and other companies to cover catering, wristwatch, makeup and other industries, expanding the commercial territory and influence of the game IP.

NetEase, Inc and e-sports have rich experience in cooperation in the field of e-commerce, with more than 50 cooperative brands in previous years, and more than 10 brands per session on average, including automobiles, food and beverage, 3C electronics, financial services, e-commerce platform, tourism real estate and so on. Commercial value has been fully certified by the market. NetEase, Inc e-sports 's business cooperation model covers a wide range, and existing cooperation cases have included IP matrix linkage communication, brand customization track, brand marketing events, game activity implantation and joint cooperation, which plays a positive role in promoting the value transformation of the e-sports industry. With regard to the cooperation mode of IP matrix linkage communication, the integrated marketing of "NetEase, Inc e-sports NeXT x Gome" has been selected as a classic case of the 10th ADMEN International Awards, and the cross-border marketing model oriented to e-sports IP and e-sports users has been successful. From the perspective of brand marketing events, NetEase, Inc e-sports NeXT also joined hands with the new car-building power "XPeng Inc." to create Guangzhou's first large-scale pain car parade, expanding the cross-border influence of e-sports IP and automobile brands. In terms of the implantation of game activities, the "ace racing" car god cup event has also reached a deep cooperation with Lecker 03 to launch the upgrading activities of Lock TCR in the game, players can upgrade their own Lock TCR models through play activities, at the same time, the players at the top of the list can also participate in subsequent professional competitions, the champion will also win the real car Lecker 03 (1.5TD Pro), and the final event participants will exceed 22.35 million. It not only improves the operation data of game products, but also achieves a win-win situation for more users to understand the corresponding car brands. From the perspective of joint cooperation, NetEase, Inc's "Operation in the wilderness" pinnacle tournament and Move Free Yijie created a joint supply box gift package, which cleverly linked the various problems encountered by players in the game with the problems encountered by their parents in their lives, and jointly created "Let Mom and Dad become the communication topic of Action MVP", so that young e-sports users can also put themselves in the shoes of their parents and become a bomb on the e-commerce platform.

Multiple business cooperation models have jointly promoted the value transformation of NetEase, Inc e-sports NeXT. NetEase, Inc e-sports NeXT's advantages in e-sports products, e-sports content and e-sports users will continue to radiate to marketing, promotion and other fields, and the value of NeXT brand will be further reflected and continuously enhanced.