The Chinese government has provided a rare look inside the habits of its broadband users, publishing a report that outlines the extent of the country’s livestreaming practices. Some 62% of its 904 million internet users, around 560.5 million people, apparently participate in livestreaming video – accounting for 40% of China’s total population.
The report says this is an increase of 163 million since the end of 2018, meaning that in the past 15 months, the percentage of livestreaming viewers has leapt from 44% to that 62% – according to the China Internet Network Information Center.
Live game streaming viewers grew by 22 million to 260 million, up 9% in the year, and accounted for 28.8% of internet users. Live host show viewers grew 43.7 million to 207 million, up a more impressive 27%, and accounting for 22.9% of internet users.
The other data points provided were that live sports streaming viewers reached 213 million, or 23.6% of internet users, and live concert streaming reached 150 million, some 16.6% of internet users. The CINIC report does not provide the count for 2018, so we cannot make the same comparisons, unfortunately, with regard to annual growth.
Tallying up all the streaming counts brings us to 830 million, suggesting that there is considerable overlap between the type of stream, between the 560.5 million livestreaming viewers. On this basis, live game streaming accounts for 31.3% of the total, while live host shows snares 25%, live sports gets 25.7%, and live concerts holds 18.1%.
The other tidbit is that there are 265 million viewers of streams with eCommerce integrations, meaning that around 47.3% of live streaming viewers are watching content that has a method of monetization integrated. This would suggest that the Chinese livestreaming market is set up very well for a business ecosystem, to benefit viewers, hosts, and also the businesses that are providing the streaming service.
However, we do not currently have access to data that would prove this thesis. Alibaba-owned Taobao and JD.com are the two leading platforms for these integrations, allowing hosts to sell products and take a cut of the proceeds. JD.com leveraged its distribution networks to keep many agricultural companies afloat in the Covid-19 fallout, offering farmers access to its channels in exchange for them broadcasting live video and interacting with prospective buyers through the JD Live app, as recounted by MIT Technology Review. Alibaba later followed suit. Those initiatives seem to have dramatically changed that retail environment.
It is difficult to see how China compares to other markets, in livestreaming. A Nielsen study in 2018 pegged the US rate of livestreaming at 42% of the population, up from 25% in 2017. But given our mistrust of Nielsen numbers, and the fact that streaming audiences will have significantly grown since then, we do not think that’s going to be a strong datapoint for comparative use.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau says that 47% of livestream viewers are watching more livestream content than a year ago, which is not exactly surprising. It finds that 67% of global consumers have streamed live video at one point, and that 52% of them prefer free ad-supported streams to subscriptions or VoD. Some 64% of those that have streamed live video have ‘engaged’ with an advert, although it is not clear what exactly that term means. More notable, however, is that 70% of livestream viewers do so on a daily basis.
Separately, Conviva said that global viewing hours of live video content rose 65% between 2017 and 2018, while MoffettNathanson found 86 of the top 100 most-watched “live telecasts” (we believe this includes free-to-air broadcast TV, rather than OTT, however) in the US in 2018 were sports events.
But China seems to have taken a lead when it comes to monetizing the livestreams, largely thanks to the position of Alibaba and JD.com in the eCommerce scene, and the dominance of Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu in social media and web apps. It seems set to be a markedly different ecosystem than North America and Europe.