21st Century Business Herald Reporter Zhu Weijing reports from Shanghai
Douyu, involved in the gambling controversy, released its third quarter financial report.
According to the financial report, in the third quarter of 2023, Douyu's total net revenue was 1.359 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 24.4%; The net profit was 71.9 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 180%.
From the perspective of revenue structure, Douyu's revenue mainly comes from live streaming services, game sales, and other businesses. Among them, live streaming services remain the main source of Douyu's revenue, accounting for 86.8% of the total revenue. The revenue from game sales and other businesses accounted for 11.3% and 1.9% respectively.
Live streaming revenue decreased by 32.5% from RMB 1.705 billion in the same period of 2022 to RMB 1.151 billion (equivalent to USD 157.8 million). The financial report pointed out that this decline is mainly due to the weak macroeconomic environment, which has led to a decrease in live streaming revenue.
At the same time, the monthly active users and paying users of Douyu Mobile are both decreasing. In the third quarter, its monthly active users were 51.7 million, compared to 57.1 million in the same period of 2022. Douyu's paying users in the third quarter were 3.9 million, a decrease of 1.7 million compared to 5.6 million in 2022.
It is worth noting that the butterfly effect became apparent after Douyu CEO Chen Shaojie was arrested in late November. Recently, several big Douyu anchors such as "Doinb", "I am Dakunkun Ah", "Big Dragon Cat", "National Uncle Brother", and "Xuxu Baby" have been gradually discontinued.
On November 29, Jinzhou Public Security Bureau announced that recently, Taihe Branch of Jinzhou Public Security Bureau successfully cracked a case of opening a casino using the live broadcast platform, captured two suspect, seized more than 90 mobile phones, 24 bank cards, and involved more than 17 million yuan in capital flow.
According to the announcement, on November 12th, the Taihe Public Security Bureau received clues about gambling, and a certain platform anchor organized gambling activities in the live broadcast room.
After investigation, suspect Zhou is the anchor of the "Eat Chicken" game on a platform. From February 2019 to January 2022, in order to increase the popularity and revenue of the live broadcast room, Zhou extensively introduced to the audience the use of the lottery module in the live broadcast room to implement gambling gameplay, and incited viewers to participate in the live broadcast. After the game ends, rebates will be given to the winners based on the betting situation. His lover Chen is responsible for verifying and publishing the information of the winners, and distributing the winning amount.
After interrogation, suspect Zhou and Chen confessed to the illegal and criminal act of organizing more than 5000 gambling activities on a live broadcast platform from February 1, 2019 to January 12, 2022, with the accumulated gambling funds of more than 17 million yuan and illegal profits of more than 2.66 million yuan. At present, the two individuals have been criminally detained by the Taihe Public Security Bureau on suspicion of opening a casino, and the case is being further processed in accordance with the law.
Sources close to Douyu confirmed to 21 reporters that the person involved, Zhou, is Douyu anchor "Qingyu 619", who previously had over 2 million fans on the platform. The live broadcast replay shows that the anchor has been suspended since November 3rd.
"There is no need to view light language as a new event," a senior compliance lawyer close to Douyu analyzed to 21 reporters. Currently, one trend can be observed, "which is how regulatory authorities will handle similar platforms' models."
At the performance conference on December 7th, Douyu's management mentioned, "In the past three years, from a macro perspective, the environment of the domestic game live streaming industry has been in a state of change, and policies, markets, and the overall economic environment are important factors that need to be considered. The live streaming industry has entered a normalized regulatory stage, with more in-depth and stronger requirements for content, review, regulatory compliance, operation, and other aspects."
In response to the issue of internal regulatory measures, the management responded that they are continuously strengthening compliance and standardizing operations. In this quarter, various measures have been implemented for some platform managers to solve issues such as transactions and game props.