Last year, fighting fish made money.

On March 26th, Betta released the unaudited financial report for the fourth quarter and the whole year of 2023.

The financial report shows that Betta’s total revenue in the fourth quarter was 1.296 billion yuan, its gross profit was 126 million yuan, its gross profit was 9.7%, and its adjusted net loss was 5 million yuan. Among them, the live broadcast income was 1.021 billion yuan, and the advertising and other income reached 275 million yuan, a substantial increase of 226.5% year-on-year.

More notably, in 2023, the total revenue of Betta reached 5.53 billion yuan, the gross profit was 684 million yuan, and the adjusted net profit was 154 million yuan, turning losses into profits and breaking through the profit barrier again.

This is undoubtedly a remarkable answer sheet. After a year of optimizing the cost structure, Betta’s consistent "long-term" development strategy has gradually achieved results, and the bright net profit data has become the most powerful evidence. What makes people feel curious is that under the background of constant macro-environmental challenges, why can Betta still make steady progress and turn losses into profits?

Open up a new space for commercialization around the main axis of the game

Judging from the financial report data,In 2023, the income structure of Betta showed a clear optimization trend, and the increase in the proportion of non-live broadcast income was particularly noticeable.

Looking at the fourth quarter alone, Betta’s advertising and other income increased by 226.5% year-on-year, and its business transformation was obviously accelerated. Looking at the whole year, the proportion of advertising and other income has also increased to 13.2%, and the growth of non-live broadcast business has injected considerable profit potential into Betta.

So, where paper data can’t be summarized, what has contributed to this situation?

Looking back, we will find that the improvement of Betta’s income structure is actually mainly due to its close cooperation with game manufacturers.

In 2023, relying on the game attributes of the platform itself, Betta consolidated good business cooperation with many head manufacturers in the industry such as Tencent, Netease and Mihayou, and on this basis, worked together to explore more effective game marketing methods.

On the one hand, Betta and game makers have made many fresh attempts hand in hand and boldly opened up a series of new commercialization paths.

For example, for the traditional game props, skin, and peripheral sales fields, Betta gives a new solution that is rare in the industry. Last year, Betta Joint Game Maker and Taobao launched the "Game Shopping Festival" and invited eight head anchors, including YYF, former Shenlong Grandpa Four and Luo Xin, to bring goods live for the hot game products such as The Original God, League of Legends, CFM and DOTA 2.

According to official data, during the event, the number of viewers in the live broadcast room exceeded 12 million, and the cumulative sales reached nearly 10 million. The official live broadcast room of Betta Fish successfully topped the Taobao live broadcast real-time list, and the new model of "game+e-commerce" was a success in the first battle.

In such an exploration process, Betta is both a game organizer and a game breaker.It refreshes the platform virtual resource replacement, game props sales and other commercial activities, and uses innovative models to enhance users’ willingness and stickiness to pay for game content.

On the other hand, fighting fish has never lacked the profound skill to declare operations in a positive way.

In the past period of time, Betta has intensified the promotion of game effects, and gradually adjusted the previous promotion of anchor business orders to a promotion effect-oriented model. At the same time, Betta also combines the distribution rules of game products to launch a wealth of marketing activities for key nodes to help manufacturers concentrate on fixed-point breakthroughs.

Take the heavy new tour "Yuan Meng Xing" launched in the fourth quarter of 2023 as an example, Betta has specially launched a million-dollar bonus broadcast incentive and the "Yuan Meng Xing Ji" anchor demo activity for it. According to the results, the number and duration of betta fish in the public beta period of "Star of Dreams" ranked among the top in the industry, which effectively promoted the popularity of the product and the community.

In fact, in the popular game "BIG DAY", fighting fish can be seen everywhere.

For example, when "Mobile Games Against the Water" was launched last year, the Betta Head Anchor Group launched the game promotion activity of "Divide Millions of Red Packets", forming a promotion matrix covering live broadcast rooms, fish bars, off-site social media and other channels, helping the martial arts rivers and lakes to grow rapidly.

Another example is the continuation of the "Egg Party" anniversary fever, Betta integrated platform anchor resources and PGC production capabilities, and launched a fun and interesting national competitive art live variety "Egg Rushing Forward", which sent laughter to many players. The number of viewers in the official live broadcast room was as high as 9.14 million.

It can be said that from the new online tour to the subsequent operation, Betta has used its brains and repeatedly polished its marketing methodology on the premise of mobilizing platform resources.It is also in the process of continuously empowering good games that Betta has opened up a wide commercial space for itself.

Insist that content is king and occupy the mind of core users.

From another point of view, the premise of betta fish empowering game manufacturers is its strong appeal to core game users.

Yes, although the external environment is complex and changeable, accompanied by challenges, Betta still stabilized the user market in 2023.According to the financial report data, in the fourth quarter of 2023, the average MAU of Betta mobile terminal was 51.7 million, which remained stable from the previous quarter, and the number of quarterly paying users was 3.7 million.

So a new question surfaced: at the moment when attention competition tends to be fierce, why can Betta keep the hearts of users?

You know, in the early years, the live broadcast track once grew wildly, and "traffic is king" was once a recognized rule in the early stage of industry competition. At that time, people believed that whoever could sign a well-known anchor would get a full house of applause from users.

However, with the development of the industry entering a new stage, the importance of content has gradually become prominent, "content is king" has become the consensus of the industry, and platform competition has ushered in the second half..Therefore, the fighting fish that broke through all the way from the era of "digging the anchor" also took advantage of the trend, re-examining the current user needs and solving the eternal proposition.

Nowadays, the answer given by Betta is a highly differentiated content ecology.

To this end, Betta has made a top-down structural adjustment to provide team support for the operation idea of "content is king".

At the beginning of 2024, Betta announced that it would simplify the organizational structure of the company, reorganize the company’s important content ecology business division into three business divisions: anchor, competition and manufacturer, actively shrink some inefficient businesses, centrally integrate the core resources of the platform, and finally sort out the context of content ecology.

Specific to the practical level, Betta takes active actions to respond to an increasingly diverse audience with a complete content ecology.

Focusing on the fourth quarter of 2023, we will notice that Betta actually built a "pyramid"-like competition layout. Looking upward, Betta has broadcast more than 30 official large-scale events, including League of Legends S13 Global Finals, Dota2》Ti12 International Invitational Tournament, the glory of the king Challenger Cup and Champion & HELIP; …

Looking down, Betta has brought more than 60 self-made competitions, including the KPL Youth Training Competition based on the official KPL competition, the S10 Goddess Invitational Tournament around the female anchor, and the continuous Fish Cup Abyss BP Competition of the Original God, etc.

Behind this high-level and orderly content system is a rich reserve of official event resources and a strong ability to make homemade events.Together, the two meet the needs of users at all levels, and also show the advantages of betta’s e-sports resources.

At the same time, fighting fish, which has been cultivated in the industry for many years, has mastered many scarce industry resources, not only knowing the way of live star-making and subdivided operation, but also knowing how to output characteristic content based on anchor IP.

Therefore, around the professional anchor resources, Betta continued to export a number of anchor IP events and PGC variety shows in 2023, including the Gemini Lucky Cup, the first anchor IP professional event of the glory of the king, the Betta Knife Dream Invitational Tournament led by YYF, and variety shows with anchors, stars and teams such as Grandpa Ge’s Baby Bus and There is a Farm.

It is worth mentioning that Betta’s development of anchor IP content is actually two-way — — Not only rely on the influence of the anchor to attract users, but also invest resources to help the anchor enhance its influence. With the blessing of customized variety shows and multi-channel exposure, popular anchors and related high-quality content further improve the stickiness of platform users and build a virtuous circle of fighting fish.

In addition, Betta is actively exploring ways of cooperation with other platforms, and relying on high-quality platform resources for joint promotion and commercial cooperation.

For example, at the beginning of this year, Betta cooperated with platforms such as Tiger Tooth and Video Number to hold the first e-sports All-Star Spring Festival Competition, which covered many popular game products such as League of Legends, the glory of the king and Peace Elite, and gathered e-sports players, game anchors and even famous artists. Once the event was launched, it quickly triggered a hot discussion on the whole network, and related hot searches emerged one after another.

In this way, the fighting fish with an open spirit not only brings the users the surprise of dream linkage, but also greatly extends the boundary of the content ecosystem.

In a word, no matter in the past or now, Betta has never stopped devoting itself to the content ecology.

This is also why it can keep the user scale stable after the hot summer file in the third quarter, and truly drive the user growth with high-quality content.

Adhere to long-term doctrine and take the road of sustainable development

In the annual report, the Interim Management Committee of Betta pointed out: "In 2023, Betta insisted on ‘ A diversified content ecological platform with games as the core ’ The development strategy, continuous investment in high-quality content and efficient operation of the platform, and timely adoption of flexible operational strategies to deal with the challenging macro environment, including improving income structure, adjusting customer acquisition strategy, strengthening compliance construction, etc., is committed to achieving long-term growth and sustainable development of the platform. "

In fact, after reading the financial reports of Betta in recent years, we will always see similar words in the macro vision expressed by high-level officials:Deep tillage, precipitation, long-term sustainability … …

Every keyword that echoes from afar finally points to long-termism, which is the main theme of betta’s development.

When the long-term doctrine is implemented at the product level, it is reflected in Betta’s continuous attention to the ecology of interactive communities.

In the fourth quarter of 2023, Betta APP was revised and optimized again, further enhancing the interactive function between the anchor and users. Specifically, the Betta APP has added a "dynamic" first-level column, focusing on the broadcast status of the anchor and the entrance of the live broadcast room. In this way, the live scene of the anchor and the non-live content are opened. Even if it is not in the broadcast time, users can easily understand the anchor dynamics and easily comment and interact.

This insight into the functional improvement of users’ psychology is another attempt to strengthen the social attributes of Betta, and it is also the epitome of the continuous iterative evolution of the product layer. Facts have proved that Betta did not blur the focus in the competition, but chose to persist in polishing the ontology ecology of the community, providing a solid framework for long-term innovation and exploration.

On the other hand, Betta’s long-term doctrine is also reflected in the construction of compliance system.

Since the fourth quarter of 2023, on the basis of the original compliance system, the Provisional Management Committee of the Platform has made every effort to build a new "four-in-one" compliance system (business compliance, content compliance, process compliance and data compliance), aiming at comprehensively implementing the project risk prevention and control system, establishing a product retrospective mechanism, improving the interactive anti-addiction system, paying attention to the handling of disputes and complaints, regularly checking the platform’s illegal risks and rectifying illegal behaviors, and strengthening the risk awareness education of relevant personnel of the company.

Taking the goal of "content compliance" as an example, Betta specially established a set of professional content review mechanism and introduced the Sunshine Credit Scoring System. In addition to the huge audit team, Betta also actively embraced cutting-edge technology trends and used self-developed AI technology as an aid to significantly improve the platform’s ecological governance capabilities.

It is not difficult to imagine that the strong investment in the compliance system will effectively help Betta cope with and resolve potential risks and lay a solid foundation for the long-term development of the enterprise.

Generally speaking, 2023 is a period of business adjustment for Betta.

In this year, Betta adhered to the concept of long-term, vigorously consolidated its business foundation, pursued opportunities with a sensitive strategic layout, and avoided risks with practical rectification actions.In the end, it found the right rhythm, gained a good income structure and a stable user scale at the end of the stage, and turned losses into profits as expected..

With the benign signal released by the financial report, we have reason to believe that Betta will usher in more surprises in the future long-distance running.

Article source: Hedgehog Commune