The new iG makes its debut in the Legend Cup, and Huya's esports layout goes beyond this.

Written by Feng Min

Edited by Liu Shiwu

On December 8th, the finals of the HuYa League of Legends Legends Cup S2 concluded at the Chengdu High-tech Zone Sports Center. Inheriting the successful experience of the first event, the Legends Cup S2 has also achieved a comprehensive upgrade in terms of link setup, schedule arrangement, and gameplay, further enhancing the entertainment and interactivity of the competition.

In the finals of this Legends Cup S2, the two teams, BL and SG, were evenly matched, with a final score of 3:2 in a full five games. The players' ingenious kills and teamfight handling pushed the tension and viewability of the event to the extreme, and the cheers from the scene were continuous.

Source: Live pictures of the League of Legends Legends Cup

As an emerging cultural and sports industry, the development of esports towards professionalism, marketization, and popularization has become an inevitable trend. The development of emerging technologies such as 5G and short videos, as well as the update and iteration of electronic devices, have provided more opportunities for the innovative development of the esports industry. More and more platforms are involved in the esports event field, striving to build their own esports brands and take advantage of the rising trend of the esports industry to expand the influence of the platform.

Through the event itself, it is not difficult to see HuYa, which started with game live streaming, has the ambition to enter the esports event field.

The Debut of the New iG: A Luxurious Lineup with High Traffic

In addition to the defending battle of the BL team, under the deep strategic cooperation with HuYa Live and YangWang Sports, the iG League of Legends division made its debut with a new look for the first time.

Source: Live pictures of the League of Legends Legends Cup

The new iG can be said to have "the whole team being world champions", with a considerable potential to win the championship. It also has its own traffic code due to the high popularity of several players. Since the initial announcement of the lineup, it has already caused a heated discussion - "Doubt first and then doubt again, but I can't help but want to see these few people play together", "Although I don't know how far this iG can go, I definitely won't miss a single game of theirs", and even some enthusiastic netizens have begun to worry in advance "In the case of the high popularity of the entire team, if the game is lost, who should we criticize".

Leaving aside the traffic, the iG team reorganized by The shy, jiejie, Rookie, MeikoGALA really makes fans see the hope of winning the championship in 2025. After leaving the old iG for several years and returning, the reunion of The shy and Rookie is expected to reproduce the style of their tacit cooperation back then, bringing more possibilities to the team. Rookie's self-introduction at the scene, "Hello everyone, I'm iG Rookie", also made countless players sigh.

With a lineup that is full of strength and traffic, whether iG can repeat its golden path and add another star to the team uniform is worth our anticipation.

Centered on the Legends Cup, HuYa is Continuously Enriching Its Own Esports System

In addition to providing a high-quality "comeback" opportunity for many veteran esports players and enhancing its influence by leveraging the fan base and topic popularity accumulated by the players over several years of competitions, compared to the greenness of the initial attempt in the S1 season, the Legends Cup S2 has become more mature from planning to execution.

The Legends Cup S2 accurately grasps the balance between competitiveness and entertainment, injecting more fun elements on the basis of adhering to the principles of fairness, justice, and openness. Whether it is the innovation of the player selection ceremony or the presentation of the fun interactions between the players in the training matches, it has enhanced the realism and fun of the event.

Source: Live pictures of the League of Legends Legends Cup

Esports competitions are usually divided into three levels of a "pyramid shape", and HuYa hopes to carry out corresponding esports businesses based on these three levels respectively.

The first level is professional competitions, such as LPL, KPL, etc., which have the strongest competitiveness and authority and are deeply concerned and valued by hardcore game players. In HuYa's future planning, this type of competition will be mainly introduced in the form of copyright.

The second level is comprehensive competitions, which have certain competitive elements and also lean towards entertainment to a certain extent. This is also the core level of HuYa's esports system centered on the Legends Cup. Different from the user group of professional competitions, comprehensive competitions will achieve a balance between economy and entertainment on the basis of competition, complementing and reinforcing professional competitions. This type of competition will become the key direction for HuYa to focus on in the future. HuYa will continue to organize this type of competition in different game projects through organizing the Legends Cup, the Thunder Cup, and the King Anchor League, forming a complement to professional leagues.

The third level is the competitions that sink to cover the third- and fourth-tier cities, fifth-tier cities, and even towns, also known as "National Esports". This year, HuYa has carried out many village sports meeting projects at the county and town level in Yunnan, Zhejiang and other places, including projects such as Honor of Kings, League of Legends, and CF. This level of competition is rooted in a more sinking area in China, providing opportunities and platforms for more users at the county and town level who love esports and desire a competitive stage. HuYa plans to continue to promote the village sports meeting model, combine the county and town scenes, and cover more sinking markets.

The esports pyramid actually has many things in common with traditional sports. In the past, some sports projects have also landed excellent event projects according to the three levels of the pyramid, and this may also be a more mature form of esports in the future.

From Live Streaming to Professional Esports, HuYa Wants It All

The debut of the iG team is not only a highlight of the event but also an important layout for HuYa Live to improve the esports ecosystem.

The past year has been a year of continuous attempts at transformation for HuYa, and commercial transformation is an extremely important part. The commercial transformation of games needs to be well combined with the live streaming ecosystem and the hardware ecosystem, which is not HuYa's strength. However, in the current situation where the trend of "National Esports" is becoming more and more intense, the iG team, which has a strong traffic base, may be more suitable for realizing traffic monetization through commercial operation methods and reusing it by creating a richer esports ecosystem.

Chen Peng, Senior Executive Vice President of HuYa Company and the producer of the Legends Cup, said: "Esports teams, as the core of the esports ecosystem, are closely connected to the live streaming platform and have a huge fan base. HuYa will be committed to building a bridge to transform the deep emotions of fans into a substantive driving force for the growth of iG's traffic, achieving close interaction between the brand and fans and bringing direct commercial value enhancement to iG".

Source: Live pictures of the League of Legends Legends Cup

Chen Peng said that HuYa will focus on investing in the iG club in terms of commercialization in the future, forming a close binding relationship with iG through the investment in resources such as advertising and games, especially attaching importance to the improvement of commercial value brought by user-side operations, strengthening the interaction between the brand and fans, and transforming fan emotions into a substantive driving force for the growth of iG's traffic. The cooperation with iG is a bold attempt and exploration made by HuYa in the field of esports ecology. HuYa is looking for the combination point between the team's competition attributes, economic attributes, and commercial attributes to ensure the formation of a sustainable and healthy business development model.

In fact, on the one hand, HuYa's transformation is due to the new development opportunities brought by the esports ecosystem. On the other hand, it is also due to the impact of multiple factors such as the increase in compliance requirements in the live streaming industry and the intensification of competition from external live streaming platforms. In the context of an increasing number of platforms entering the game live streaming field, HuYa is exploring a new development path.

Two Key Points of HuYa's Esports Commercialization Layout

The traditional live streaming industry is mainly based on tip income, but in esports competitions, this model is obviously not applicable. Esports users are not tip-type users in the traditional sense and will pay more attention to technical operations and the game itself. Based on the game itself and the expression needs of users, HuYa will mainly carry out the esports commercialization layout around two key points.

First, return to the game itself and use the game's own business model for transformation. During the Legends Cup S1 event, the skin of Faker sold nearly 100 million in skin sales. The excellent figures made the relevant team of HuYa realize that esports users, as real game users, have a stronger willingness to pay for the game itself. Therefore, in the process of esports commercialization, HuYa always focuses on the transformation of the game's own business model, pays attention to the fit between advertising and game users, and continues to launch game-related props and products in this Legends Cup S2 event to stimulate players' consumption enthusiasm to a greater extent.

Second, pay attention to users' expression demands and stimulate the enthusiasm of "interactive consumption". Chen Peng said in an interview: "We have noticed that League of Legends users have a very strong desire to express. They hope to stand out among many users and make their voices heard by more people." Based on observing user preferences, HuYa has designed many business models at the expression level, such as the more eye-catching "big bullet screen" and the interactive form that can make the online interaction have a more direct response offline, striving for business opportunities in the aspect of users' expression needs.

Source: Live pictures of the League of Legends Legends Cup

Conclusion

Chen Peng is full of confidence about the future: "The prospects of the esports industry are broad. HuYa Live will continue to deeply cultivate the esports field and bring more exciting events and surprises to esports enthusiasts. At the same time, we will also continue to explore the sustainable development path of esports clubs and contribute to the future development of the esports industry."

Of course, whether the goal can be achieved depends not only on HuYa's determination but also on how other competitors in the esports industry "respond".

This article was first published on "36Kr Games".