Quarterly MAUs of Huya Live Q3 2018-Q4 2020

While streaming sites like Twitch and Youtube are blocked in China, however, domestic players Huya Live and Doyu Live are vying to be the Chinese equivalents. In the last quarter of 2020, the monthly active user number of Huya Live reached 178.5 million for the first time, indicating 18.8 percent increase from the corresponding quarter in the previous year.

Huya Live - China’s Twitch

In 2014, the Chinese online video company YY Inc. established Huya as a game live streaming business unit. The platform soon operated independently and went public in New York in 2018, raising 327 million U.S. dollars in a follow-on share offering. With exclusive broadcast rights of major eSports tournaments, Huya registered about six million paying users in the last quarter of 2020. In 2020, its net revenue totaled around 10.9 billion yuan, a major chunk was generated by the live stream segment. In October 2020, Huya announced a plan to acquire its local rival Douyu, which will make Tencent the big gaming winner as it owns shares in both companies.

The lucrative eSports sector

In 2019, China had as many as 440 million eSports users and 620 million mobile gamers. Overall, Chinese eSports fans constituted 40 percent of the global online audience of eSports tournaments as of July 2019. As opposed to the West, monetization of Chinese streaming platforms relies primarily on audience rewards instead of advertising which contributed only five percent of the total revenue. However, eSports ad spending has been rising as most Chinese eSports fans are positive about brand sponsorships.