America's Road to Fame

Chapter 374 S1 Season
Not long after celebrating his birthday, William Chen took his assistant team and went to Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province together with the staff of Meta Media and Entertainment Company.

This time, William Chen went directly to the headquarters of the Penguin Company to meet with the owner of the pony, mainly for the agency issue of the "League of Legends" game.

As early as 2007, Penguin’s cooperative game — CF entered a period of steady growth, and Penguin urgently needed new games to continue expanding in the game field.

At that time, they had two project teams to investigate DNF (Dungeon and Dragon) and LOL.

At that time, David Wallerstein, the chief headhunter of Penguin, happened to meet the two founders of Riot Games, Brandon and Mark, at the summit in Las Vegas, and passed the news back to Nanshan, Shenzhen. Penguin headquarters.

Chen Yu, the acting head of Penguin, flew to Los Angeles immediately after receiving the news from David.

For almost a whole day, the inspection team played this game called "League of Legends". Although the prototype of the game is very rough, the scene only has a white backboard, and there are only 5 heroes, this game is still very impressive.

In the end, Penguin decided to invest in Riot. At that time, Riot raised a total of 800 million US dollars, and Penguin became one of the three investors, holding about 22% of Riot.

After that, the fist company used the funds raised this time to start improving the LOL game.

If normal development is followed, then with the improvement of LOL, Penguin will continue to invest in Riot Games in the next three years, and eventually increase its shareholding to 90%, thus completely controlling the company.

But William Chen appeared, and he made a decisive move, convincing the founding team of Riot Games to integrate this company into Meta Entertainment and Media Company. In the end, Meta Entertainment Media Company won 1.75% of the shares at a valuation of US$90 million at the time. shares of Riot Games.

The remaining 10% of the company's shares are still in the hands of Penguin. At the same time, Penguin has also won the agency right of LOL in China early.

William Chen came to the headquarters of Penguin this time to solve this problem. After all, unlike his previous life, Penguin does not hold 90% of the shares of Riot Games, they only hold 10%, and LOL is different from those who need Games that you pay to play can only make money by selling skins.

Therefore, to sum up, Penguin has the agency rights of LOL in Huaguo, so it may not try its best to promote LOL like in the previous life, but it may take this opportunity to "imitate" and launch its own such games.

And there is another situation that needs to be considered, that is, the foundation of Penguin Company lies in their social software, and in terms of mobile social APP, HOLA Huaguo Company, a joint venture between William Chen and Ali Company, is in direct competition with Penguin Company's WeChat opponent.

Among the mobile social APPs in Huaguo, Penguin’s WeChat, relying on the huge user base they have accumulated in the social field over the years, especially QQ, has come from behind and occupied the top spot in the mobile social field in Huaguo. According to statistics, among the current smartphone users, their WeChat share is as high as 60%.

The user share of HOLA Huaguo version is only second to WeChat, reaching more than 55% (some users overlap).

And the two top social apps, WeChat and HOLA, have formed a situation of confrontation between two heroes in the Huaguo market. The boss and the second are competing. The survival situation of other similar apps is not optimistic, and there is no user share. More than 20% of social apps.

The current situation of domestic social apps in Huaguo is like this. The market shares of WeChat and HOLA have basically been fixed and will not change much. Their users have also formed their own usage habits and social network.

It is difficult for WeChat to completely defeat HOLA, and it is also very difficult for HOLA to catch up with WeChat.At the end of the competition, with the differentiation of the two, it is very likely that Huaguo users choose to install WeChat and HOLA in their mobile phones at the same time, and will not give any development opportunities to the third similar APP.

If this is the case, the best partner for LOL would be Ali, which jointly operates the Huaguo version of HOLA, but Ali is not involved in the game business at all, and Penguin Games is currently the largest game company in Huaguo. That is, the mainstream games are still mainly on the PC side, and on the PC side, no one can challenge the status of QQ.

Therefore, under balance, William Chen and Boss Pony finally reached a further cooperation agreement, allowing Penguin to increase its stake in Riot Games to 5% at a valuation of US$30 million to jointly promote LOL and subsequent LOL mobile games The promotion of the edition in the world, especially in the Huaguo region.

At the same time, there is an additional clause in the agreement: Penguin is not allowed to invest in or develop and launch games of the same type as LOL, including PC and mobile games, otherwise their shareholding in Riot Games will be automatically taken back by Meta Entertainment Media.

In this way, Penguin Games can not only promote the development of LOL in China more actively because of its interests, but also force them to give up the possibility of "imitating" similar games.

After the agreement was reached, Riot Games announced that the global "League of Legends" S1 season will start on July 7, and the first LOL Global Finals will be held at the end of the year.

According to the promotion of the game LOL, Riot Games has divided the world into 12 divisions, and each division has its own league.

Including: LCS in North America, LES in Europe, LPL in mainland China, LMS in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, LCK in South Korea, LCL in CIS, CBLOL in Brazil, LST in Southeast Asia, LLA in Latin America, TCL in Turkey, OPL in Oceania, and LJL in Japan.

Through the league mechanism, 12 teams were finally selected from 24 divisions to enter the global finals.

These 24 teams will go to Atlanta in December to participate in the global finals of the S12 season. The finals will be held at the TC Liberty Building, which will be renovated and delivered soon.

The LOL S1 season finals is sponsored by Meta Group, and other sponsors include Microsoft, HOLA, Penguin, Tesla, Samsung, HC Fashion Group, Youku and Netflix.

The total prize pool of the finals is 2500 million US dollars, of which the champion team can get 40% of the prize pool, up to 1000 million US dollars.

All the games of this S1 season will be played by Youku and Netflix.

At the same time, Atlanta Island announced that it will start construction of the world's largest and most advanced e-sports competition venue locally. It is expected to be completed in the second half of next year. Starting from the S2 season, the global finals will be held in the new venue. .

The news of the S1 season of "League of Legends" has been released, which has aroused strong reactions from e-sports fans around the world. After all, during this period, there are only a handful of e-sports champions whose prize money can reach 1000 million US dollars.

And the most important thing is that other projects, such as Warcraft and other projects, are very mature, there are many top teams with strong technology, and the competition is fierce.

And LOL was officially tested this year. It is a new project, and everyone’s starting line is basically the same. Therefore, not only many new LOL teams appeared in the world, but also many old e-sports clubs were formed. The team of the LOL project is preparing for the S1 season.

(End of this chapter)