Chapter 606: Sponsorship Fees

Eric was amused. “Why wouldn’t I be sure? IOI is formidable in the rest of the world. It only failed in China because it was subject to unfair gaming regulations!

“You produced the athletes, you produced the judges, and you took IOI as GOG’s stepping stone. IOI didn’t fail because there’s anything wrong with it. Of course, I would have complete confidence in it!”

Lin Wan nodded and smiled. “Alright, I wish you all the best, then.”

Obviously, Eric had not realized the difference between IOI and GOG’s quality. He was merely blaming IOI’s failure on Tengda’s alleged underhanded tricks.

Lin Wan also clearly wanted Eric to hold on to that view.

Eric took a sip of his coffee. “I wish you all the best as well, Miss Lin. I wonder if everyone in your department lost their jobs after losing IOI’s management rights. I guess not. After all, this was all a part of Tengda Corporation’s plan. You were probably given a brand-new project to work on.

“It’s a pity that Tengda Corporation didn’t treasure the opportunity to work on a rare S-Grade game like IOI, which would probably only come across once every ten years. You won’t get another chance.”

Lin Wan smirked and stood up.

“Mr. Eric, you don’t have to worry about that. We already have a new job to do. GOG’s international servers are going to be opened soon. Guess how much we have in our marketing funds.

“Seventy million US dollars! What a coincidence!” Lin Wan purposely exclaimed sarcastically.

The hand Eric was using to hold his coffee cup paused in midair.

What was the meaning of this? Are they going global without any warning?

What’s more, they’re… using our money to do that?

…

…

August 6th, Saturday…

At DGE Esports Club…

Huang Wang just finished setting up his camera, which had only just arrived.

Old Zhou dissed him. “I wonder who it was who said he would not reveal his face back then.”

Huang Wang sounded helpless as he responded, “I don’t have a choice. I don’t know why people keep asking me to switch on my webcam every single day. What’s there to see?

“I’m a man. There’s no cleavage to reveal, unlike female live-streamers… er, okay, I do have cleavage, but no one would really want to see that!

“Yet, the requests for me to switch on my webcam are incessant, and there have been more and more of them recently. Someone even insists every day that I’m only refusing to switch my webcam on because I’m ugly. How can I tolerate that?!”

Old Zhou laughed, amused that netizens had so many tricks up their sleeves these days. Live-streamers were practically being controlled by them.

Huang Wang adjusted his camera and started live-streaming as usual. The moment Huang Wang started live-streaming, a huge number of viewers entered the room.

Huang Wang won a lot of fans over from his game with Pang Ling. After he set up his own account, many fans started following him in waves.

The competition had attracted many gamers over to GOG, who then became fans of Pang Ling… and then became fans of Huang Wang.

What’s more, Huang Wang was good at live-streaming. Each time he played with Pang Ling, they joked and laughed as they slaughtered everyone else in the game. Huang Wang’s sharp tongue also worked nonstop, perfectly suiting his viewers’ taste.

After all, many viewers thought that speaking more equated to having the gift of the gab. No matter what the live-streamer said, they would be happy as long as they could hear something.

As Huang Wang’s live-streams became increasingly popular, the platform started offering various recommendations of it, which caused the number of fans to keep increasing in return.

When viewers first entered his live-stream, they had talked about anything and everything under the sun. Yet, a few days later, all the bullet screen comments revolved around something else.

“???”

“Host, who are you?”

“Why is there a strong and handsome man seated there? Where did the host go?”

“Holy sh*t. This is what the host looks like? Are you sure you weren’t a boxer before you started playing esports? My mind is blown!”

“The host is so good at battling, in every sense of the word!”

“Quickly, strike a pose!”

“Is this the live-streamer that chatters incessantly? He looks so different from what I imagined! I thought that the live-streamer would be a scrawny monkey!”

Huang Wang felt upset reading all the comments.

Why do you think I used to be a boxer before I started playing esports? You’re even asking me to strike a pose?

What are you taking me for?

All of a sudden, a huge flaming arrow shot across the live-stream room.

Huang Wang’s eyes lit up, and he quickly said, “Thank you for the flaming arrow—’Please stream naked, Host’!”

He felt awkward.

Having no choice, Huang Wang said, “I can’t stream naked, but how about this? I’ll wear a singlet…”

He could ignore all his viewers’ requests, but he had to satisfy those of his sponsors. Huang Wang was a principled man. One of his principles was never to fight against money.

Zhang Yuan quietly walked past and could not help but smile.

The players could not take part in professional competitions, and so they spent all their time either training or enduring extra training. Their lives were difficult enough as it is, and so he thought that it was a good thing for them to livestream and entertain themselves once in a while.

In any case, as long as they could continue training intensely each day and not get distracted by live-streaming, it would all be fine.

Zhang Yuan returned to his room and checked the mock competition schedule with other clubs.

After the previous competition, GOG became extremely popular in the country. Various clubs started investing resources into a GOG team. As a result, all of those teams had requested mock competitions with DGE!

After all, everyone knew that both of DGE’s teams represented the peak of GOG playing in the country and even the whole world. GOG didn’t have international servers yet.

Mock competitions would be most effective if one played against the best of the best, so that they could see just how far off they were from the top-tier team.

Still, DGE only had two teams. It would be too much to ask for them to play in mock competitions against more than ten other clubs.

What’s more, other clubs’ standards were all kinds of awful now. Some gamers from newly-established or newly-modified clubs were so bad that they would probably be defeated in the in-game ‘professional rounds’. DGE’s teams would just be torturing them during the mock competitions that it would be meaningless to take part.

For the DGE Club’s two teams to improve, they had to keep playing against each other. Yet, they could not turn down all requests for mock competitions from external teams. Otherwise, working behind closed doors might cause them to become too complacent, to the point that they would be oblivious when others overtake them.

Thus, after a lot of consideration, Zhang Yuan decided to take the lead and come up with a training schedule for all the clubs. Everyone would train together, and they would not have to fight.

That way, DGE would have time for both of its teams to play against each other and not risk deteriorating by spending too much time messing around with teams that had just formed a while ago.

After thinking about the various clubs’ skills and timings for two hours or so, Zhang Yuan finally came up with a mock competition training schedule that incorporated all the teams.

Zhang Yuan sent the training schedule to the people in charge of the other clubs so that they could plan their own training around it.

Of course, the people in charge of those other clubs did not have any opinions. They could not ask for anything better than for DGE, the strongest and most formidable club, to take the lead and come up with an organized mock competition schedule for all the teams in the country.

Just as Zhang Yuan closed his laptop, his cell phone rang. He picked it up and saw an unknown number.

“Hello?”

A male voice sounded at the other end of the line. “Hello, is this DGE Club? I am the Vice President of Waiwai Live-Streaming Platform, Peng Bin. I want to sign an athlete from your club, Huang Wang. I wonder if we can negotiate his terms.”

Zhang Yuan was stunned.

Huang Wang had only started live-streaming a few days ago, but Waiwai had already set their sights on him? Yet, on further thought, it seemed to make sense. All the live-streaming platforms were fighting as hard as they could now.

Live-streamers of GOG, in particular, were being snatched up with increasingly high sign-on fees.

Huang Wang was well-skilled and was pushed onto the limelight by Pang Ling. In addition, his appearance and figure were potential hot topics for discussion. Clearly, he was an excellent pick for live-streaming platforms.

Zhang Yuan pondered for a moment and said, “You have to guarantee one thing. Huang Wang’s original training schedule cannot be affected. He can only livestream for less than 36 hours every month.

“If you can’t accept that, any amount of sign-on fees you offer would not suffice.”

At the other end of the line, Peng Bin paused. “We can accept that. However, we have a tiny request. We hope you would allow us to give him the title of ‘DGE Club’s Athlete’.

“Of course, we will also give your club a token of appreciation.

“We’re going to pay Huang Wang two million yuan a year, and the agreement can be a tripartite one. The club would take a standard portion as a gift. On top of that, Waiwai Live-Streaming Platform hopes to pay two million yuan a year to become a sponsor of DGE Club.”

Zhang Yuan thought about it for a moment. “We won’t take any portion of the money meant for Huang Wang. Give it all to him. As for the sponsorship… Boss Peng, do you know that two teams cannot take part in any official competitions?”

Peng Bin smiled naturally. “I know. We heard that from the H4 Club.

“However, as long as your club is more well-known than any other, why does it matter whether you can take part in official competitions or not?”