Chinese Gaming Site Douyu Racked Up Losses of USD97.7 Mln Last Year on Less Ads, Higher IP Fees
Dou Shicong
DATE:  Mar 17 2022
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
Chinese Gaming Site Douyu Racked Up Losses of USD97.7 Mln Last Year on Less Ads, Higher IP Fees Chinese Gaming Site Douyu Racked Up Losses of USD97.7 Mln Last Year on Less Ads, Higher IP Fees

(Yicai Global) March 17 -- Douyu International Holdings slid from profit to loss in 2021 due to a big drop in advertising revenues and higher e-sports copyright fees, the Chinese game-centric livestreaming firm said yesterday.

Douyu logged net losses of CNY620.2 million (USD97.7 million) last year compared with CNY404.7 million of profit in 2020, according to its latest financial report. Revenue was down 4.5 percent to CNY9.2 billion (USD1.4 billion).

Advertising and other revenues slumped 40 percent to CNY118.5 million (USD18.6 million) in the fourth quarter 2021 from the year before, mainly due to the continued exploration of new commercialization models by using a portion of advertising traffic that could have been directly monetized, as well as a more challenging macro environment, it said.

The licensing fees of e-sports events are surging and have become a major burden on the firm, the company’s management team said at the earnings conference call. Douyu will scale back on intellectual property costs, increase cooperation with game publishers and invest more in self-produced content, it said.

For large-scale events, users are immersed in watching the games rather than interacting with livestreamers, and this affects their willingness to pay, the Wuhan, central Hubei province-based firm said.

“More differentiated content and refined operations are the key for the firm to grow steadily as users are given more and more choice,” Douyin said. The average number of paying users dropped to 7.3 million in the fourth quarter from 7.6 million in the same period of 2020. No performance expectations were given in the report.

The news had little impact on Douyu’s share price [NASDAQ:DOYU] which surged 60.56 percent to USD2.28 yesterday, as US-listed Chinese stocks bounced back following a previous rout due to concerns about tighter scrutiny by US regulators. But the share price slid 10.09 percent in pre-market trading to USD2.05.

Editor: Kim Taylor

Follow Yicai Global on
Keywords:   Douyu,Losses,Livestreaming