When you mention Shenzhen, what do you think of?
A small fishing village more than 40 years ago, a pioneer in reform and opening up, or a special economic zone driven by technology?
These titles are already commonplace, and Shenzhen is expected to have a new title - International E-sports Capital, which is a title that will make countless young people excited when they hear it.
From July 14th to 15th, the Global E-sports Leaders Summit and Tencent E-sports Annual Conference was held in Shenzhen, and became the largest number of overseas guests in recent years. At the press conference, Chen Shaohua, deputy director of the Shenzhen Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism and Sports, said that Shenzhen will vigorously support the development of the e-sports industry and strive to become an international e-sports capital in about three years.
In the past few years, many cities announced that they would become the "capital of XX", but often "there is a lot of thunder and little rain", and ambiguous policies and overly ambitious goals appear to be "indifferent".
And this time Shenzhen's "letting go" is obviously not just talking.
In the notice of "Several Measures of Shenzhen City on Building an International E-sports Capital" released not long ago, it is clearly mentioned that Shenzhen will use funds to support the e-sports industry, with a maximum reward of 10 million.
It can be said that it is full of sincerity to really take out real money. According to incomplete statistics, this should be one of the biggest actions of cities to support industries after the epidemic.
Behind such a big policy move, it is obviously more than just "fighting for fame". What is the practical value behind it? What impact will it have in the future?
A series of questions from the market are yet to be answered.
New forces in the competition circle: "Shenzhen model" once again
Looking around the world, cities such as Los Angeles, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Paris, and Beijing are actually using various methods to secure the title of "e-sports capital".
In this list of contenders, the appearance of Shenzhen is surprising but expected. In the eyes of many people, Shenzhen is synonymous with "young, practical and cutting-edge". In the matter of e-sports, Shenzhen showed the same temperament.
What is the most rare quality in a city in competition? It is to realize your own strengths and weaknesses in a realistic way, and then make use of your strengths to make up for your weaknesses.
The biggest advantage of Shenzhen in e-sports is actually the content.
According to public information, Shenzhen is the location of the world's largest game content provider and the country's largest e-sports content platform provider. As of 2020, Shenzhen has more than 4,000 game companies, including 27 listed game companies (45 in Guangdong Province).
This is not surprising, after all, Shenzhen has such an Internet giant as Tencent. In terms of game content, the mobile game "Honor of Kings" released by Tencent in 2015 became popular all over the Internet as soon as it was launched. Its daily activities exceeded 100 million as early as 2020, and its popularity remains high today.
Looking back at the policy release this time, it seems logical for Shenzhen to put content incentives in the first place.
It is mentioned that Shenzhen will reward e-sports game products with a maximum of 2 million yuan based on downloads and other conditions for e-sports game products that have been developed and released in Shenzhen and have been online for one year. A reward of up to 5 million yuan will be given to game products selected by major e-sports events.
To put it simply, it is the "merit-based admission and billing by piece" for e-sports content. It further means that technology, aesthetics, and market research must be taken into account, so as to force the accelerated upgrading of the entire e-sports industry.
E-sports is an emerging sports industry. Although "content advantages" play a significant role in attracting traffic and gathering people, the "event infrastructure" such as high-level clubs, professional e-sports venues, and international events should not be underestimated.
Restricted by its late development, Shenzhen, which has "content advantages" in the e-sports industry, does have shortcomings in "competition infrastructure". Therefore, it can be seen that Shenzhen will provide up to 8 million yuan and 5 million yuan in subsidies for international and domestic high-level e-sports events held locally.
Under the "strengthening strengths and making up for weaknesses", Shenzhen's "international e-sports capital" is really exciting, but if you turn your attention to the world, you will find that the competition has already heated up.
The battle for the "e-sports capital" has already heated up
The most powerful "competitor" is undoubtedly the "big brother of e-sports" Shanghai.
As early as 2017, Shanghai's "50 Articles of Cultural Creativity" put forward the goal of "building a global e-sports capital" for the first time.
As the national economic center, Shanghai also performed very well in the "e-sports economy". By 2022, the total output value of Shanghai's e-sports industry will reach 26.9 billion yuan, of which revenue from competitions will exceed 6 billion yuan, accounting for half of the domestic market.
In addition to the dazzling "e-sports banknote ability", Shanghai's "Shanghai-style competition" case is well-known all over the world. After the 2019 League of Legends Global Finals, the deputy mayor of Shanghai and the deputy mayor of Paris completed the handover ceremony, and the line was full. In 2020, the League of Legends Global Finals will land in Shanghai. Shanghai Deputy Mayor Zong Ming will personally shoot a promotional video on the platform to welcome global e-sports fans on behalf of the Shanghai Municipal Government. From the perspective of the distribution of cities where offline events are held, Shanghai is the city that hosts the most e-sports events, accounting for 22.39% of the total nationwide.
With many competitions, large revenues, and strong internationalization, Shanghai seems to have already taken the lead in the competition of the "international e-sports capital". However, with the success of this benchmark case in Shanghai, many cities in China have made efforts one after another:
In 2019, Hainan promulgated six special support policies to support the development of the e-sports industry in terms of funds, talents, taxation, entry and exit, event approval and dissemination; in 2021, Beijing directly adopted "E-sports Beijing 2021" as the capital city brand, and held more than 50 e-sports events in half a year. Also in this year, the Glory of Kings World Champions Cup Finals with a prize pool of 50 million was held in Beijing, with 570 million viewers, setting a record for the event. In this year, Beijing also became known as the e-sports city.
It can be said that under the leadership of Shanghai's "leadership" effect, the temperature of the "international e-sports capital" has already exploded. However, what is unexpected is that a mysterious force in the Middle East is breaking the balance of competition, showing a trend of latecomer first comer.
At this Tencent e-sports summit, in addition to the traditional domestic political and business leaders, the Saudi prince also flew over thousands of miles away. It can be said that Saudi Arabia is a typical example of foreign countries vigorously developing the e-sports industry.
In the past, whenever Saudi Arabia was mentioned, the image of local tyrants appeared in the minds of Chinese people. With abundant oil, rich people in Saudi Arabia can be said to be shopping around the world, full of pride.
However, now Saudi Arabia seems to have an additional identity with a sense of technology-"e-sports".
Mushammad Saud Tamimi, Chairman of the Saudi Communications and Information Technology Committee, once said that 89% of the Saudi population are e-sports users, which can be called the grand occasion of "e-sports for all".
Under this upsurge, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman released a national gaming and e-sports strategic plan:
The development of e-sports has been promoted to a national strategic position, and the goal is to create 39,000 job opportunities and increase GDP by 13.3 billion US dollars by 2030.
Not only is there a plan, Saudi Arabia is still acting. According to foreign media reports, in the past year and a half, Saudi Arabia has spent nearly 8 billion US dollars to acquire and invest in game companies.
Mohammed even plans to make Saudi Arabia the center of the global gaming and e-sports industry by 2030. The Saudi prince's participation in the Tencent e-sports summit this time must have come under the guidance of this big goal.
In fact, apart from Saudi Arabia, foreign veteran players such as South Korea and the United States are maintaining their top positions; Vietnam, Japan and other countries are also making strong efforts.
All of a sudden, there was a tendency of all major sects attacking Guangmingding together.
By no means in vain, the "e-sports capital" has become a cheat book for urban development
Behind the fierce competition in the "international e-sports capital", we might as well take a closer look. Where are the core interests of urban development?
On the one hand, the value of the e-sports industry cannot be underestimated.
The e-sports industry has developed to the present, and has formed an industrial chain of upstream (game product production and distribution manufacturers), midstream (event organizers, clubs, etc.), and downstream (communication platforms). As far as the Chinese market is concerned, the revenue of the e-sports industry in 2022 will be 144.503 billion yuan, of which the revenue of e-sports games will be as high as 117.802 billion yuan.
Esports starts with games, but it goes beyond games.
E-sports live broadcasts, events, club operations, etc. around the game are also generating huge income. In China last year, the revenue of these sectors totaled 26.701 billion yuan.
Looking at the world, the value of e-sports events is also growing rapidly. At the Tencent E-sports Leaders Summit, Ren Yuxin, Chief Operating Officer of Tencent, said that in the past five years, the global e-sports audience has rapidly increased from 335 million to 532 million, an increase of about 60%; top events, such as the "League of Legends" S11 finals, the peak number of simultaneous viewers exceeded 73 million, and the popularity is comparable to the world's top sports events.
With such a huge audience, e-sports has surpassed most sports activities.
Moreover, under the huge industrial chain, e-sports has a very large demand for talents, which can drive employment. According to the data of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the demand for e-sports talents in my country will be nearly 3.5 million in the next five years, but currently less than 15% of e-sports jobs are in a state of manpower saturation.
On the other hand, outside of the e-sports industry itself, its hidden value lies in traffic.
In the Internet age, traffic can give birth to a large number of innovative business forms. Around traffic, e-sports can derive multiple industries such as e-sports hotels and e-sports education.
The main group of e-sports users is Generation Z, and their consumption scenarios mainly include hotels, coffee, movie theaters, pedestrian streets, e-commerce, etc. This allows the e-sports industry to continuously expand to other scenarios, guide traffic into a large number of consumption scenarios, and create greater value.
The 2020 League of Legends S10 Global Finals was held in Yangpu District, Shanghai. At that time, many shops in the surrounding area placed player posters in the store to attract e-sports players. A Japanese food store owner said that during the game, a large number of e-sports fans came to the store to spend, and the store's customer flow increased by 20%.
The influx of traffic improves business performance. In turn, the marketing activities of merchants have increased the audience coverage of e-sports and increased traffic, which is undoubtedly a win-win result.
In particular, at the upcoming Asian Games in Hangzhou, e-sports will become an official competitive event for the first time, and the traffic of e-sports is expected to reach a new height, thereby creating greater value.
In addition to the economic value, another value of e-sports that is ignored by many people is the city name card.
This time e-sports entered Asia, Hangzhou became the focus of Asia and even the world; after League of Legends LPL All-Stars and other events landed in Haikou, they appeared in Weibo hot searches one after another; after WE e-sports club returned to Xi'an, this ancient capital gained more exposure in the world. By studying the phenomenon of “explosion” after the introduction of the e-sports industry in these cities, we were surprised to find that e-sports has become a “customs clearance secret” for cities to enhance their “soft power”—attracting crowds and promoting the integration of e-sports industry and urban culture and tourism.
Internally, it can improve the economy and stimulate employment, and externally, it can establish the image of the city and "build good relationships". Many cities have built "e-sports capitals" precisely for these two values.
The "new competitive world" leading to the future
In the future, the battle for the "e-sports capital" between cities will undoubtedly continue to heat up.
Under this trend, how will e-sports companies and participants be affected?
From the perspective of the entire industry, the general environment of e-sports companies and participants will definitely continue to improve.
Along the way, e-sports has gone through a process from being discriminated against to being taken seriously. At present, 70.3% of netizens in China believe that e-sports should participate in major traditional sports events, while 66.8% of netizens believe that e-sports belongs to the same sports as football and basketball.
The public’s continuous attention and cognitive correction will bring more capital, resources, and traffic to the e-sports industry. In addition, with the support of favorable urban policies, the entire industrial environment will become more high-quality.
When the environment is good, the foundation of enterprise growth will be stable, and it will be able to explore more business models upwards.
The management guru Drucker once pointed out that the competition among enterprises today is not the competition between products, but the competition between business models. The formation of the model is realized through continuous exploration.
Enterprise development is inseparable from the cycle of competition, exploration and innovation, and so is urban development. We can expect that the competition in the "global e-sports capital" will be more intense, which is a good thing for cities, enterprises, practitioners, and e-sports enthusiasts.
The final result is that China will become the sports power with the strongest e-sports industry and influence.
Looking forward to this day.