Updated: 2017-06-05
Optics Valley in Wuhan, Hubei province hosted the biggest cultural festival in Chinese history on May 28-30.
In a sign of the times, the 350,000 people who attended the 2017 Douyu Carnival were not there to celebrate music, sport, film, theater or even comedy, but online gaming.
The event’s organizer, Wuhan Douyu Network Technology, is the creator of Douyu.com, one of China’s most popular portals for online gamers to live-stream their matches.
Founded only three years ago, Douyu’s daily traffic has already reached 25 million, according to the company, making it the leading player in China’s rapidly growing live-streaming market. The company is reportedly valued at more than $1 billion, making it the most valuable company in its home city of Wuhan.
The huge crowds packed into the festival’s enormous 250,000-square-meter venue at Hankou River Beach were treated to a varied program. In addition to special live streams of popular games like League of Legends and guest appearances from celebrity gamers such as Feng Timo, whose streams regularly attract audiences of over 6 million people, there were also performances from pop stars and cosplayers.
The biggest live cultural event in Chinese history in terms of venue size and attendance, the festival was also broadcast to an enormous online audience, with videos of the event receiving a combined 170 million views, according to Douyu.
Douyu now plans to franchise the festival, with cultural and creative enterprise POP!LIFE and the China International Comic and Game Expo among the organizations to host versions of the event.
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