Pei Qian was speechless.
The 2 million yuan sponsorship wasn’t much, considering that Mr. Pei was giving foreign clubs sponsorships of 1 million dollars each.
But the key point was that the DGE Club wasn’t like those long-established clubs. They couldn’t compete in tournaments and didn’t have much exposure. Who would be bored enough to sponsor them?
Could they even recover this money?
Pei Qian calmed down a bit and opened the picture Zhang Yuan had sent to look at it again, finding the keywords: YiYi Live Streaming.
“Why would a streaming platform sponsor DGE Club?”
“Could it be…”
Pei Qian suddenly realized the situation was not good.
DGE Club indeed couldn’t participate in official tournaments, but nothing said they couldn’t stream on platforms!
Streaming platforms came with built-in exposure!
This was a very dangerous signal that needed intervention!
Pei Qian understood clearly that in a few months to a year, various domestic investors would enter the market, and streaming platforms would pop up like bamboo shoots after rain, starting a crazy money-burning war.
Many streamers’ status would rise during this period, even resulting in many sky-high contracts!
What if DGE Club had such a streaming genius?
Pei Qian felt somewhat relieved. Fortunately, Zhang Yuan had exposed this early, so there seemed to be room to salvage the situation.
He quickly took a car to the DGE Club.
…
After arriving at the DGE Club, Pei Qian carefully examined the contract.
Zhang Yuan stood nearby, seeing that Mr. Pei was reading very seriously, and couldn’t help letting his imagination run wild.
“It seems Mr. Pei cares about DGE Club’s profitability. He rushed over as soon as he heard the news!”
“And he’s reading the contract so carefully. Is he worried there might be some trap in the contract and wants to double-check?”
“I didn’t take a cut from Huang Wang’s streaming contract. I wonder if Mr. Pei supports my approach.”
After a while, Pei Qian put down the contract.
Zhang Yuan quickly tested the waters: “Mr. Pei, I didn’t take a cut from Huang Wang’s streaming contract, mainly because…”
Pei Qian raised his hand: “Hmm, you did the right thing on this matter!”
“Are there any other team members who want to sign streaming contracts?”
Zhang Yuan shook his head: “No more. YiYi Live Streaming signed with Huang Wang mainly because they saw his potential as a streamer: skilled, talkative, with a good physique and image. Most of our other team members don’t have the second quality, and they’re not very entertaining in games, so in the streaming platforms’ view, they don’t have as much commercial value. Even if they could sign, they wouldn’t get as much as 2 million.”
Pei Qian relaxed a bit.
Good!
Zhang Yuan’s understanding of Tenda’s spirit was somewhat useful.
Since the club didn’t take a cut from Huang Wang’s 2 million contract, it had nothing to do with him.
With this precedent, even if other team members signed with streaming platforms, it wouldn’t affect the club. Moreover, other team members definitely couldn’t sign such big contracts.
However, there was still a hidden threat. What if Huang Wang had a great effect while streaming and accumulated a large number of fans, indirectly obtaining a lot of attention for DGE Club?
So, this person was a hidden danger!
Pei Qian silently made a note. This kind of excellent employee and major hidden trouble would need to be properly addressed at some point.
Not now though—there was no opportunity, and the situation wasn’t that urgent yet. It could be dealt with in the long term.
Currently, more urgent was the issue of the DGE Club’s sponsorship fees!
If YiYi Live Streaming had sponsored them, they must have thought sponsoring DGE Club was profitable, most likely due to DGE Club’s status as “Tenda’s favored child.”
With sponsors, once there’s a first, there will be a second. One of humanity’s essences is to repeat.
Two million wasn’t much, but what if there were several two million?
That would be very awkward.
Pei Qian created the DGE Club to burn money. If they could offset all expenses with sponsorships, wouldn’t that be a waste of effort?
Of course, Pei Qian could choose to frantically shower the DGE Club with bottomless pit-style money. After all, there were plenty of places to spend it. But it must be recognized that bottomless pit-style spending would also greatly increase outside attention, possibly sending the wrong signals.
Then others might also frantically raise prices and blindly sponsor. What then?
This possibility existed.
So, the sponsorship issue had to be nipped in the bud.
It wasn’t reasonable not to accept sponsorships, but controlling the number would be fine, right?
Pei Qian considered for a moment and said, “DGE Club can accept at most three sponsors at the same time.”
“Only three places on the uniform can print sponsors’ logos: the right chest and the upper arms.”
“All sponsor logos must be small, with length and width not exceeding 15cm.”
Pei Qian thought again and added, “And, only one sponsorship can be accepted from the same broad industry category.”
The last condition was mainly aimed at the streaming industry.
Pei Qian was worried that now that YiYi Live Streaming had sponsored DGE Club, would ZZ Live Streaming also want to get involved later? After all, the contract wasn’t exclusive.
Once the streaming platforms started their money-burning war, what if they all wanted to advertise with the DGE Club? Wouldn’t that be annoying?
So, Pei Qian mandated that only one sponsorship could be accepted from the same broad industry category, directly ruling out all future streaming platforms. Even if other streaming platforms wanted to compete on price, that would have to be a year later.
As for other sponsorships, there were currently some, like keyboards, mice, other peripherals, motherboards, etc., but they generally wouldn’t be as generous as streaming platforms.
Moreover, accepting at most three sponsorships would mean that as long as the number didn’t increase, they shouldn’t earn too much.
Furthermore, with such small logos, it would also annoy the sponsors a bit, potentially dampening some sponsors’ enthusiasm.
Zhang Yuan thought briefly, then nodded: “Yes, Mr. Pei.”
“I understand. You’re worried that DGE Club might be contaminated with too much commercial atmosphere, affecting the team members’ mindset and training.”
“For future sponsorships, I will think very carefully and strive for excellence!”
Pei Qian: “?”
I’m not asking you to strive for excellence, but to accept less!
But there was nothing to be done. Explanations were futile.
Pei Qian’s original intention was for Zhang Yuan to accept sponsorships worth just a few hundred thousand yuan and stop after filling the three sponsorship positions.
But Zhang Yuan clearly didn’t understand it this way. Since there were three sponsorship positions in total, with only two remaining, he thought these two should be carefully considered and sold for a high price.
Pei Qian couldn’t speak plainly and could only hope that no more clueless sponsors would come to cause trouble.
It would be best if Zhang Yuan demanded sky-high prices and sponsors were unwilling to be taken advantage of. That would be ideal.
…
…
August 9th, Tuesday.
In the morning, Ye Zhizhou arrived at Tenda Games to meet with Li Yada, Bao Xu, and Min Jingchao.
He had come to seek advice.
Yesterday, Mr. Pei had splashed out and directly arranged over 400 million dollars of budget for the Shangyang Games team, but there was still over 200 million dollars left, with a small puzzle for everyone.
Mr. Pei said that the current promotion strategy still had a big loophole, and asked everyone to find it and fill it.
The Shangyang Games team had thought for an entire day without any clues.
Most mainstream promotion methods had already been arranged by Mr. Pei.
They had thought of some other promotional methods, such as celebrity endorsements, but after consideration, these weren’t fundamentally different from paying foreign streamers or sponsoring clubs.
These other promotional methods weren’t unique enough. Spending over 200 million dollars this way would be very poor value for money and definitely wouldn’t meet Mr. Pei’s requirements.
So today, Shangyang Games sent Ye Zhizhou to consult with the Tenda Games team.
After all, Tenda’s team was the original developers of GOG and had rich experience in promoting GOG’s domestic server. Perhaps they could think of something.
If time allowed, the Shangyang Games team would prefer to complete the assignment independently, but time was no longer permitting.
The promotional plan was definitely a unified whole. No matter where the 200+ million dollars were spent, it would definitely impact other promotional plans.
For example, if the 200 million dollars were used to find several celebrities, those celebrities’ endorsements would need to be placed in Times Square, online ads, and subway and bus ads.
If the destination of these 200 million dollars wasn’t determined, the materials for other promotional plans definitely couldn’t be finalized either. They had to be completed simultaneously.
So, Ye Zhizhou could only hope that many minds would be better than one.
In the reception room, the four people brainstormed together.
After learning about Mr. Pei’s specific promotion strategy, Min Jingchao and others also fell into deep thought.
They proposed several plans that somewhat overlapped with the current promotion strategy, which were quickly rejected.
Min Jingchao carefully considered again and said, “I think this should be considered from two main directions.”
“First, this destination must be able to spend most of the money and cannot overlap with existing promotion strategies.”
“Second, it should be different from the promotional methods GOG has already adopted.”
“Otherwise, Mr. Pei wouldn’t have deliberately left this puzzle.”
Ye Zhizhou frowned: “From this perspective, inviting big-name foreign celebrities seems to fit, though the value for money might be very poor.”
Li Yada shook her head: “I think that’s not quite right.”
“The overlap between big-name celebrities and our target audience isn’t high enough. We’re not selling luxury goods or daily necessities. How many players would be attracted to join by celebrity endorsements? The conversion rate definitely wouldn’t look good.”
Bao Xu thought for a moment and said, “I think it doesn’t matter if it overlaps with the domestic server’s promotion strategy.”
“The qualities of GOG at its inception represented Mr. Pei’s original ideas, and this approach seems to match the current situation of GOG’s international server very well.”
“I mean… IP characters.”
The other three brightened up: “IP characters?”
Bao Xu nodded: “Yes. When GOG was first established, Mr. Pei set the policy: we need to purchase a large number of IP characters as GOG’s hero reserve pool.”