Even the commentary has to take care of LeTV Sports' comprehensive penetration into the e-sports circle

LeTV Sports is about to break into the e-sports circle! This was the shocking news released at the LeTV Sports e-sports industry planning conference on May 21.

LeTV Sports has made extensive and in-depth efforts in the traditional sports industry. LeTV Sports is the only network company that has the broadcasting rights for all the five major European leagues; it has assisted in hosting and promoting various large-scale events in China; and it has built a youth football base with the Haikou Municipal Government.

Perhaps because it has accumulated enough experience, or perhaps because it has seen the current industrial gap in China's e-sports industry, LeTV Sports took the opportunity of sponsoring WCA to announce to the outside world its itinerary for entering the e-sports industry.

The whole industry has large-scale high investment and reconstruction of the industrial chain.

Adhering to LeTV's consistent theme of creating an ecosystem, LeTV Sports' future plans also cover the upstream and downstream of the e-sports industry.

LeTV Sports divides the e-sports industry into two aspects: entertainment and industry.

From an entertainment perspective, LeTV Sports will provide a huge content platform, and e-sports competitions will be spread to all LeTV users through the LeTV ecosystem; cultivating professional anchors and commentators can also stabilize and expand the group watching e-sports in the long term; taking the lead in organizing events in schools, Internet cafes and other places where the e-sports circle gathers, etc.

From an industry perspective, LeTV Sports will host large-scale events with influence; cultivate professional talents for e-sports, such as professional agents, professional referees, etc.; and at the same time create a scientific and complete professional training system to enable professional players and other related practitioners to have good professional and cultural qualities.

As for the original e-sports industry, LeTV Sports has also taken over to a certain extent, such as recruiting a group of veteran professional players to become its first batch of e-sports experts. Of course, it also provides assistance for existing large-scale events like this WCA.

The goal of LeTV Sports is to fully explore the commercial value of the e-sports circle and establish scientific industry norms to enable the industry to develop stably and sustainably. Ultimately, e-sports will become a mature industry that can develop and evolve independently without external assistance, just like traditional sports.

It can be seen that LeTV Sports is deeply involved in the e-sports industry. Not only does it provide promotion channels and platforms, it also plans to become a content provider, and some of the content, including players, games, commentators, anchors, etc., will be provided by LeTV Sports itself.

Simply put, if LeTV Sports reshapes the e-sports industry chain as planned, then one day in the future the audience may see a scene like this: a competition sponsored by LeTV Sports, with professional commentators and anchors from LeTV Sports' training program, and some of the contestants being students from the God Program, and finally this project will be presented to the audience through LeTV.com.

Although it is unknown whether LeTV Sports's new e-sports business system of "talents + products + events + content" can really make a profit, it seems that it will require a considerable investment to fully establish this system. Can LeTV Sports persist and create a new benchmark for the e-sports industry?

Industry gaps are both opportunities and challenges

It has to be said that the current e-sports industry is indeed popular with a short-lived business model. Only the top professional players or commentators can survive in the circle, while the vast majority of people in the industry usually do not have the dual professional qualities of the industry + games. This semi-professional, amateur working state can be easily destroyed.

The e-sports industry has had several spontaneous innovations, such as NetEase's "Bread Plan", NeoTV's event hosting, Tencent's event + platform, etc. Although the results are acceptable, the e-sports industry in China and even the world is developing too rapidly, and the existing business model is completely unable to match the growing demand.

It is not difficult to understand why e-sports has become a "one in a million" industry in the public consciousness. However, this extreme supply and demand relationship may be an opportunity for LeTV Sports.

Unlike home electronics, even if LeEco uses LeEco's ecosystem to counter LeEco TV, there are still many industry giants in the TV industry that have their own core competitiveness, and users have considerable room to choose brands. In the current e-sports industry, consumers are eager for a decent product.

If LeTV Sports can establish a complete business model and develop products that meet the needs, both the e-sports industry and LeTV Sports will reap rich rewards.

However, it is worth noting that e-sports is different from traditional sports. E-sports is a combination of sports and games. In essence, competition is based on a certain game. The life cycle of a game will determine the life of an e-sports project and the length of commercialization.

In South Korea, which already has a complete professional system, KeSpa and KeSpa system have only barely solved the problems of recruiting new players, professional training, and further study plans for first-line players. How to keep the e-sports industry as a whole up to date while the games are being updated will be the most direct problem that LeTV Sports will face after entering the e-sports industry.

In fact, in sports competitions, a well-known competition has a very prominent suppression effect on other competitions. Just like the World Cup in football, the e-sports industry also had such a competition in the past, WCG.

Before WCG stopped operating, almost all players in the world believed that only by winning the WCG championship could they be considered to be at the pinnacle of e-sports. After WCG was closed, each game also had its own top events, such as Dota 2's TI, StarCraft 2's WCS, etc.

For LeTV Sports, how to break the monopoly of top events on the "peak" will be a major issue that tests its operational capabilities, and is also a challenge that LeTV's e-sports ecosystem faces from the industry.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.