March 10th, Saturday.
The ICL League was about to officially begin today.
At Longyu Group, Eric and Zhao Xuming once again arrived at the ICL League venue, waiting for the official opening of the ICL League and the two key opening matches today.
At the same time, they were also monitoring public opinion online, extremely optimistic about today’s ICL League opening ceremony.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the ICL League had already held two exhibition matches, with steadily increasing popularity.
Especially on Thursday when they brought out the world champion team FV, the number of viewers surpassed 60,000.
Although sixty thousand didn’t seem like much, Zhao Xuming had capitalized on the fact that other livestreaming platforms were fabricating data, successfully establishing the impression in netizens’ minds that “Bunny Tail Livestream’s data is real, while other platforms’ data is fake.”
This way, viewers no longer focused on the specific number of people on the livestreaming platform, but instead turned their attention to other data such as the number of danmu (bullet comments) in the livestream room, successfully eliminating the disadvantage of “few viewers in the livestream room” and instead successfully labeling the ICL League as “authentic.”
In short, the situation looked promising!
The preliminary preparations had been completed, and today, Saturday, the ICL League was officially opening—success or failure would be determined in one go.
Although Bunny Tail Livestream’s data was all real and couldn’t be falsified, Zhao Xuming wasn’t worried about a decrease in popularity today.
After all, today was Saturday, and there would naturally be more viewers on holidays. Moreover, it was the opening ceremony of the ICL League, and officials had arranged a series of viewing and lottery activities, including team appearances, official documentaries, star player interviews, and other segments. The popularity would definitely be higher than Thursday’s.
As for the schedule, the second key match—a BO3—was still assigned to FV team and SUG, ensuring that today’s matches were all major attractions.
Zhao Xuming was in a good mood.
During the preparation period for the ICL League, he had been exhausted, especially with the broadcasting rights issue giving him a headache. Fortunately, everything had settled now, and all he needed to do was wait for the ICL League’s popularity to naturally grow.
Soon, the ICL League officially began!
The venue was still packed with no empty seats. Amid thunderous applause and cheers, the captains of each team took the stage. The host enthusiastically introduced the ICL League’s preparation process, participating teams, and bright prospects. The various segments of the opening ceremony proceeded in an orderly manner.
Zhao Xuming sat in the front row of the audience, watching each player’s face up close, thoroughly enjoying this moment.
Then, he took out his phone, intending to check the popularity on Bunny Tail Livestream today.
Opening the ICL League’s livestream room, Zhao Xuming immediately saw the number of viewers: 78,525!
Nearly eighty thousand!
Zhao Xuming couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows, feeling elated.
Although eighty thousand didn’t seem like a large number, all viewers knew that Bunny Tail Livestream’s numbers were real.
People wouldn’t feel that eighty thousand viewers was lower than eight million in popularity; instead, they would subconsciously equate them in their minds.
Compared to Thursday’s sixty thousand, the number of viewers for the ICL League had increased again, which was undoubtedly a good sign!
The screen was filled with rapidly scrolling danmu, further demonstrating the ICL League’s popularity.
After all, these danmu were all real, with no fake ones. Each danmu represented a real person watching the ICL League.
However, seeing the content of the danmu, Zhao Xuming was taken aback.
“Wow, the popularity of ICL today is not bad, it’s actually a quarter of the GPL League!”
“It’s the opening ceremony of ICL, okay? It’s normal to have more viewers.”
“Who gave you the impression that the number of people watching ICL is similar to those watching GPL? Obviously, having eighty thousand viewers today is already a breakthrough for the ICL League.”
“Here to watch the GPL League, just stopping by briefly.”
“Previously thought that seventy or eighty thousand people was quite a lot, but now it seems just average, still can’t compare with GPL!”
“Now it seems that as long as there are more than thirty thousand people, the danmu volume is basically the same, they all need to be redirected. But the number of people in the livestream room doesn’t lie!”
“Bunny Tail Livestream’s first day broadcasting GPL has this many people, so how many people are watching across all platforms broadcasting GPL combined?”
Seeing these danmu, Zhao Xuming was stunned.
What’s going on?
Why were people in the livestream room talking about GPL?
Suddenly, Zhao Xuming vividly recalled that when signing the contract, there had been a requirement that Bunny Tail Livestream must simultaneously broadcast the GPL League!
Could it be…
Zhao Xuming quickly exited the ICL livestream room and successfully found the GPL livestream room in the room list.
Sure enough, GPL had started broadcasting as well!
Taking a look at the number of viewers in the GPL livestream room: 335,879 people!
Zhao Xuming almost thought he had seen wrong. He looked carefully again to finally confirm—this was a six-digit number, 330,000 people!
Four times the number of the ICL League!
And this should only be the first day that the GPL League was officially broadcast on Bunny Tail Livestream.
“Three hundred thousand viewers on the first day? This is too ridiculous!”
“Could it be that Tengda has arranged other promotional activities?”
Zhao Xuming hurriedly returned to Bunny Tail Livestream’s homepage to check, and also searched online for related promotional content.
On Bunny Tail Livestream’s homepage, the most prominent position still featured promotional materials for the ICL League, while promotional content for the GPL League was nowhere to be seen.
And online, there didn’t seem to be any related promotions either.
Zhao Xuming refused to believe it and continued searching. Finally, he found a clue in forum discussion threads.
It seemed that Tengda Group had promoted it within the GOG game!
GOG was a dual-platform game, with PC and mobile data being interconnected. There wasn’t any special promotion—they had simply hung a promotional image for Bunny Tail Livestream on the homepage after entering the game program. Clicking it would redirect to the webpage, and they additionally noted that watching on Bunny Tail Livestream would allow viewers to see more professional backend data!
Zhao Xuming opened the GPL livestream room again and indeed found that there was an additional small floating bubble in the upper right corner of the original livestream screen. Clicking on it would pop up a small window.
This small window had two tabs, “In-Game Data” and “Historical Data.”
In-game data was mainly real-time data for the current match, while historical data was the data situation for a certain hero or team throughout the entire season.
All this data was presented in very visual icon form. Viewers could scroll up and down to browse different aspects of the data, and this data was also changing in real-time.
After each teamfight in the match, viewers could see the teamfight output data and economic changes for heroes in each position.
The danmu in the livestream room scrolled quickly. Among discussions about the match content, there were also many discussions about this new feature.
“What defines a professional livestreaming platform? Brothers, type ‘professional’ in the public screen!”
“Let me say this—everyone watching matches on Bunny Tail Livestream is a professional viewer. Any objections, brothers?”
“With this data, who’s carrying and who’s slacking off is clear at a glance, making it impossible for slackers to hide.”
In addition to these discussions, after each teamfight, various numbers could be seen floating across the danmu, clearly showing that with the support of this feature, playing with number memes had become more convenient than before.
Zhao Xuming tried this feature briefly and found it really useful!
This data normally floated in the upper right corner as a small bubble, not affecting the viewing experience. After a teamfight was over and both sides calmed down to farm, viewers could click on the floating bubble to take a look at the in-game data and search for some interesting statistical information.
Moreover, this data changed in real-time with the progress of the match, giving people a feeling of god-like control over all the data—clearly different from the dry viewing experience on other livestreaming platforms.
It was precisely because of the promotional page on the GOG game client and Bunny Tail Livestream’s exclusive real-time data feature that a large number of viewers were attracted!
Zhao Xuming was completely bewildered!
Hadn’t they signed a contract to fully promote the ICL League?
The reason for letting Bunny Tail Livestream also broadcast the GPL League was mainly out of caution, as a safeguard!
But now the number of viewers for the GPL League was four times that of the ICL League, with the difference in popularity between the two clearly visible!
What was going on?
Zhao Xuming realized that all the groundwork they had done previously seemed to have been cashed in by the GPL League!
Previously, they had hired internet trolls to manipulate trends online, striving to educate netizens about the inside story of livestreaming platforms “fabricating data.” This was to establish the impression that “Bunny Tail Livestream’s data is all real,” thereby arguing that “the ICL League’s eighty thousand viewers is a lot.”
Originally, all these steps had been going very smoothly, and they were on the verge of boosting the popularity of the ICL League. However, unexpectedly, the GPL League had jumped out to reap the rewards!
If the ICL League’s 80,000 viewers was considered very popular, then what about the GPL League’s 330,000 viewers?
Wouldn’t that completely overshadow the ICL League?
Moreover, this was just the data from the Bunny Tail Livestream platform alone. There were still so many platforms simultaneously broadcasting the GPL League, such as ZZ Livestream, YY Livestream, Wolf Fang Livestream, and more!
The difference in viewership might be as much as tenfold!
Of course, these people on Bunny Tail Livestream were definitely redirected from other platforms, but the popularity data on other platforms was originally fake anyway, so no one could really tell if there was a decrease in popularity on other platforms.
So it seemed that all the preparatory work done earlier had benefited the GPL League…
But as angry as Zhao Xuming was, there wasn’t much he could do.
Because Mr. Pei had indeed followed the contract specifications and given almost all of Bunny Tail Livestream’s resources to the ICL League, including various recommendation resources. Even the homepage had been featuring the ICL League’s promotional banner for a long time.
Having Bunny Tail Livestream broadcast the GPL League was actually something Zhao Xuming and Eric had actively requested.
And Mr. Pei hadn’t really promoted the GPL League much—he had only hung a promotional page in the game to redirect traffic and specially developed a small program for in-game data.
But the final result was indeed completely unexpected. The ICL League had been built up for so long, yet all its popularity had been stolen by the GPL League!
The most ironic part was that this behavior completely complied with the contract between the two parties.
And strictly speaking, the ICL League hadn’t suffered any significant loss—overall, it was still profitable. It’s just that most of the popularity had been taken advantage of by GPL and Bunny Tail Livestream.
In other words, Eric and Zhao Xuming had originally thought they would make a killing, only to realize they had made a small profit, while the one who really made a killing was Mr. Pei.
As for who lost out, it was obviously the other livestreaming platforms!
Zhao Xuming slumped back in his seat: “It’s over. No matter how much we calculate, Mr. Pei is still one step ahead! We’ve been outmaneuvered by Mr. Pei again!”