Text | Dian Yu Dian, author | Diancai
In 2023, despite the controversy, e-commerce live broadcast is still a track that attracts the envy of countless people.
On the evening of January 5, the main stadium of Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center was filled with people. This stadium, which just hosted the Asian Games not long ago, is being surrounded by the enthusiasm of 50,000 spectators. "World Piano Godfather" Giovanni Marati, Wilber Pan, Tengger, Xin, Dai Penni, Yang Zongwei, Shan Yichun and more than a dozen stars all appeared on the stage, and the audience cheered louder and louder.
However, the biggest focus of the concert was not the celebrities, but Simba who was setting up the stage and the Xinxuan team behind him. This Xinxuan 5th Anniversary Carnival Stars Concert, titled "One Heart, One Frequency", is reported to have cost 75 million to 100 million yuan, and the tickets are only given away but not sold, which fully demonstrates the heroic spirit of the Simba team.
Simba did not hide this, directly claiming at the concert that Xinxuan’s GMV will exceed 50 billion yuan in 2023, and reviewed the team’s “glorious history” in the five years since its establishment.
In the past five years, the Simba team has created a total of 3,000 videos, with more than 300 billion views, and the team's anchors have accumulated more than 600 million fans. Xinxuan has cooperated with a total of 13,000 domestic and foreign brands, sold 2.4 billion items, and total sales in five years exceeded 200 billion yuan. Simba himself has broadcast a total of 148 live broadcasts, with the highest GMV in a single game exceeding 3.7 billion yuan.
This massive star concert not only proved that Simba is a "favorite fan", but also became a scene for the head anchor and his team to "flex their muscles".
Spending a lot of money to hold a concert, are people stupid and have too much money?
In fact, this is not the first time Simba has held a concert. Since 2018, holding concerts has become an annual event for Simba. In 2019, Simba's annual concert cost 30 million yuan, and invited famous film and television stars such as Jackie Chan and Cecilia Cheung. Just because of the three-year epidemic, Simba's annual concert has been temporarily put on hold.
The domestic e-commerce industry has held concerts for a long time, and the one most well-known to consumers is the “Double Eleven” shopping festival. Alibaba has also held a party to invite celebrities to perform on stage to build momentum for the shopping festival. Later, JD.com and Pinduoduo followed suit in their respective shopping festivals.
It is not surprising that leading e-commerce anchors hold concerts nowadays. With the concert market recovering rapidly, this is not only a welfare move to give back to fans and win their favor, but also a large-scale public relations campaign. Data shows that the number of viewers of this concert on Kuaishou’s online live broadcast has always been 100,000+, and the live broadcast has nearly 50 million likes. Through various impressive data released at the event, Simba and his team worked hard to demonstrate their hard power in the field of live streaming.
Coincidentally, just one month before Simba’s annual concert, Douyin’s top anchor, Crazy Little Yang, also held a concert, which was also attended by stars. It is said that Little Yang and his team spent 30 million Yuan, giving away 30,000 tickets. In an environment where online traffic is becoming increasingly tight, Kuaishou and Douyin are incompatible with each other in competing for traffic. Simba's concert, which cost 75 million to 100 million yuan and gave away 50,000 tickets, was also accused of implying a secret PK comparison.
However, there is no free lunch in the world, and all gifts do have a secret price tag. Judging from the official method of obtaining tickets for this free concert, this is also a huge online traffic draw. To get free tickets, consumers can either snap up designated products for 500 yuan in the live broadcast room of Simba and his anchors, contact customer service to redeem the tickets after success, and then refund the money; or they can go to Kuaishou or Xinxuan's "Xinxi" The WeChat applet performs tasks to draw tickets.
An Internet researcher told Dianhedian: "It is an indisputable fact that the growth of Internet traffic is slowing down. As a top anchor with more than 90 million fans, Simba also has the anxiety of traffic peaking. This time it is free The activity of obtaining concert tickets, in a sense, can also be regarded as an event marketing to attract traffic. Not only for himself, but also for his other anchors."
In addition, this concert , Simba and his team also attracted a lot of sponsorship.Nearly ten brands including Xizhilang, Bestore, Sulwhasoo, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever all appeared at the concert. Simba even arranged a "Brand Gratitude Award" to thank the "financier dads" for their strong support.
From all angles, Simba and his team's generous free concerts are not really a loss-making business.
Simba’s Difficulties
In the three years since concerts were put on hold due to the epidemic, e-commerce live broadcasts have not stopped rushing forward. According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, in the first 10 months of 2023, my country’s live broadcast sales exceeded 2.2 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 58.9%, accounting for 18.1% of online retail sales. At the same time, problems caused by the rapid growth of the industry have gradually begun to surface.
As the traffic of top anchors becomes more and more concentrated and their bargaining power becomes higher and higher, the conflicts between the top anchors and the platforms and brands are becoming increasingly acute.
As the "first brother of Kuaishou", Simba and Kuaishou have been entangled in love and death for several years. In December 2020, Simba’s personal account was banned by Kuaishou for 60 days due to suspected false promotion of “sugar water bird’s nest”. In August 2021, Simba's account was banned again by Kuaishou because he openly criticized the platform for restricting his flow in the live broadcast room. On the day of the "3.8 Festival" promotion in 2023, the live broadcast function of Simba's account was banned for 48 hours due to violation of community regulations. While
is banning Simba, Kuaishou also supports small and medium-sized anchors and brand self-broadcasts to reduce over-reliance on top star anchors like Simba. The conflicts between
and brands, distributors, etc. are also highlighted. On Double 11 in 2023, Simba brought goods for Mousse Mattress. The original price of the Dahei Niu soft leather bed was 13,800 yuan. In the live broadcast room, the price was reduced to 5,800 yuan. After the platform subsidized 820 yuan, the final price was 4,980 yuan, which triggered Many dealers are dissatisfied, and many consumers also believe that significant price cuts affect brand value.
"In live broadcast rooms, low price is the biggest advantage." The above-mentioned e-commerce researchers told Dianhe.com, "The pit fees for top anchors are rising, and various live broadcast rooms are competing for the lowest price in the entire network. It is very important for brands or distributors. For business owners, profit margins have been greatly compressed, and many brands will also choose to build self-broadcast live broadcast teams." The
platform suppresses current restrictions to support small and medium-sized anchors. Brands are unwilling to give up profits and choose self-broadcasting to grab traffic. It seems that they have a huge number of fans. Simba actually has a lot of traffic anxiety. In order to grab traffic, Simba had to spend a lot of money on promotion. Simba himself claimed that he had spent tens of millions on promotion.
In fact, the top anchors may not understand the principle that when water overflows, the moon will wax and wane. Wei Ya disappeared from the live broadcast industry due to tax evasion, Li Jiaqi offended countless consumers by saying "How expensive is it?", Luo Yonghao quickly retired and started a new business after paying off his debts, and Simba also had his own plan - to expand his business from front-end sales to Behind the scenes supply chain.
In August 2022, Xinxuan Group announced the establishment of holax, a technological life creator platform, to create its own products. However, compared to its vigorous concerts, Simba's supply chain business seems tepid.
In the past few years, the live streaming industry has developed at a rocket speed, making a number of top traffic anchors popular. Simba, who was born in the grassroots, is naturally compatible with the "old iron" culture in Kuaishou's short videos, and has accumulated a lot of support and support from lower-tier market groups.
However, the excessively rapid and brutal growth of the live streaming industry has exposed many contradictions and problems. Traffic has shifted from actively searching shelf e-commerce to passively acquiring live streaming e-commerce. While leading anchors control a large amount of traffic as a media portal, they are no longer able to balance the relationship with platforms and brands. At the same time, issues such as false propaganda and anchor gaffes have also triggered a series of social dissatisfaction.
and the slowdown in Internet traffic growth have intensified the traffic competition among anchors. In order to compete for traffic, top anchors have to increase their publicity and promotion efforts, which has brought large marketing costs. The top anchors represented by Simba are facing the embarrassing situation of having a wolf in front and a tiger behind.
The measures taken by the Simba team, such as developing other anchors and attracting traffic for them, expanding supply chain business, etc., are also more popular than less.Supply chain or other industrial-type businesses are not the strengths of mcn companies, and the transformation of Xinxuan's team is actually very difficult.
Times make heroes, which is the eternal truth in the live streaming industry. But it is clear that the industry situation has entered the next stage. Even former Kuaishou CEO Su Hua has gradually delegated power in recent years. After resigning as CEO in October 2021, he officially resigned as chairman in October 2023 to devote himself to investing in the field of AI technology.
Turning around and brushing off merit and fame is easier said than done. Now Simba may also have an anxious voice in his heart, running all the way to the crossroads, where should he go next?
