Panda TV’s demise makes way for gaming giant Tencent to dominate live streaming too
- China is home to the world’s biggest live streaming user base, with industry revenue expected to grow to US$16.5 billion by 2022 from 2017’s US$5.5 billion
Last August, Wang Sicong showed up on his live streaming network Panda TV to play a game of League of Legends for his e-sports team. The flamboyant son of Wang Jianlin, one of China's richest men, did not do great, but his team won. The professional match ended up getting a peak of 50 million concurrent viewers, according to Panda, setting a record for the platform.
To give some context, the record for an individual’s live stream on US-based Twitch was 628,000 concurrent viewers, when Fortnite pro Ninja played alongside rap star Drake in March last year.
It took less than a year for Panda to go from peak to bottom. Last month, the company officially shut down its server after failing to raise fresh funds to keep operations going in a cash-burning industry. The decision, first announced on March 8, came amid reports that Wang’s company would file for bankruptcy and dismiss its 500-strong workforce, mostly based in Beijing’s Wangjing tech hub.
By the end of last year, Panda TV still ranked as China’s No 3 game streaming network in terms of daily active users, trailing Tencent Holdings-backed Huya and Douyu, according to data firm Jiguang. Back in October, Panda TV chief operating officer Zhang Juyuan floated the idea of an initial public offering, after the company raised about US$150 million in its last funding round in 2017.
After Panda TV’s fall, game streaming in China is now dominated by Tencent, which also controls many other aspects of the country’s video games industry. In addition to backing Douyu and Huya, the Shenzhen-based internet giant made another bet in 2016 with its own streaming platform eGame, which ranked just behind Panda TV in terms of daily active users in December, according to research firm Jiguang.