Interview with Zhang Yijia, chairman of the Glory of the Kings Professional League,


  as e-sports in the Asian Games, what else can you do besides cheering

　　On December 19th, the KPL Autumn Finals was held in Chongqing Huaxi Sports Center. DYG team and Chengdu AG Super Play Club staged a peak duel. The two sides fought for 4 games. In the end, DYG team won the championship, DYG.

Xiaoyi won the finals MVP.

　　Before the game, a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily interviewed Zhang Yijia, chairman of the KPL (King Glory Professional League) League. Regarding e-sports being selected as the official event of the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games, Zhang Yijia bluntly said: "In addition to cheering, we must also be very pragmatic. Only by facing and solving the pain points of the industry can we be able to live up to the high expectations of this era."

Industry integration officially entered the Asian Games to encourage the e-sports industry

　　Beijing Youth Daily (hereinafter referred to as "Beijing Youth Daily"): Recently, e-sports was selected as the official event of the 2022 Asian Games. What kind of emotion do you have as an e-sports player?

　　Zhang Yijia: We are very excited to see this news two days ago. It is a great incentive for the e-sports industry and e-sports people. It is a big breakthrough compared to the past.

At the same time, we will feel that we have a responsibility. We must also objectively see that e-sports, as a very young industry, still has a lot to improve compared with traditional sports.

An international stage like this is not only a kind of glory, but also encourages and spurs the entire e-sports industry to become more and more standardized and able to be in line with international standardization.

In addition to cheering, we must face and solve the pain points of the industry very pragmatically in order to be able to live up to the high hopes that this era has given us.

Innovating the competition system, optimizing the drafting mechanism, updating the profit distribution mechanism

　　Beijing Youth Daily: Recently, several KPL teams have bottomed out for several consecutive seasons. Many netizens said: “A team that is not motivated might as well be relegated.” In 2021, KGL (King Glory Professional League) or national competition After the team gets the temporary seat, if it fails to win the championship but has a good result, is it possible to replace the team with poor performance and get the fixed seat of KPL?

　　Zhang Yijia: Actually, fixed seats and relegation have their own advantages and disadvantages. Nowadays, individual tail teams are not performing well, not because of fixed seats. There are many factors.

From a certain perspective, we have always hoped to promote teams that did not perform well last season through an effective incentive and balanced mechanism. We want to continue to optimize through the draft mechanism.

At the same time, in terms of mechanism, the league’s revenue distribution mechanism will also be updated next year to encourage all members of these teams with better results to play wonderful games.

　　Regarding the relationship between our fixed seats and relegation, we have adopted a more innovative mechanism in the past. On the premise of retaining 16 fixed seats, we also adopted a relegation method to give KGL teams a chance to rise to the top league. , I also hope to bring uncertainty to the game and bring more exciting challenges.

As for whether these teams will get fixed seats, it seems that it will be more difficult in the short term.

The audience expands how the 69-year-old grandma fan formed

　　Beijing Youth Daily: During the pre-KPL playoffs, we discovered that a 69-year-old fan in Nanjing entered the live game. What do you think is the reason why KPL has such a distinctly age-differentiated fan?

How to look at the age structure of KPL fans in the future?

　　Zhang Yijia: I think the reason for this is that KPL itself has social attributes. Many times we play games and watch games together have surpassed playing games and watching games itself.

The specific case is this grandma fan, because her granddaughter is our fan, she accompanied her granddaughter to watch at first, and then watched that she became an audience and had her own home team.

She is from Nanjing. As Nanjing Hero is the representative team of Nanjing City, she naturally likes this team.

We believe that e-sports can exist beyond age, region, and gender, so that people of different ages and genders can feel the charm of e-sports as an emerging sport. This is the goal we hope to achieve in the end.

　　Beijing Youth Daily: There will be a female team in the KGL this year. Will there be female players in the KPL in the future?

What is the league's attitude towards female players entering KPL, and will there be specific support measures?

　　Zhang Yijia: We are especially looking forward to having female players finally able to board the KPL arena. In the entire "Glory of the King" female competition ecology, my earliest feelings and inspirations came from the setting of the "Glory" variety show and the process of the competition. , Can feel the momentum of these female players and their pursuit of e-sports dreams.

We may think from several dimensions to promote the development of the entire female e-sports ecology.

First of all, after this year’s variety show, we launched a women’s league in the true sense of pure women’s team participation. We added the women’s team competition to the TGA (Tencent E-sports Games) event, and won in this year’s event. It has a very good effect and has received very wide attention.

　　We are especially looking forward to introducing professional clubs, using professional standards and rigorous training methods, so that these female players can finally board the professional arena.

Government cooperation to leverage the advantages of the young content industry in e-sports

　　Beijing Youth Daily: E-sports events continue to fall during the epidemic, what role does the local government play?

What kind of support is given?

　　Zhang Yijia: Judging from this year’s "e-sports Beijing 2020" series of activities, everyone can feel very strongly that the government is playing an increasingly important role in the development of e-sports. Only under the support and guidance of the government can we be orderly Carry out a series of corresponding activities.

In a special period, the guidance given to us by relevant government departments and epidemic prevention departments is very important. Without such guidance and guarantees, we cannot carry out normal business. This is a very important prerequisite.

We hope that through this mechanism, we can give full play to the advantages of e-sports as a young content industry, make better use of the advantages of the Internet, better realize the ability to communicate in special times, and better meet online digital content and consumer needs .

As mentioned earlier, some activities can be implemented in a node mode under the premise of safety, so that some core audiences have a very good experience.

Under this mechanism, it is also possible to more effectively cooperate with cities in every region and every place, and cooperate with more industries and industries, so as to achieve the effect of amplifying influence.

　　Beijing Youth Daily: What plans does KPL have for cooperation with local governments?

　　Zhang Yijia: Our big strategy is to continue to promote the regionalization of the KPL league. Up to now, 9 clubs have announced their city naming. In the future, no less than 9 clubs will land in 9 cities. .

We will have a new home city announcement in the last two or three months. We hope to achieve a comprehensive regionalization of the KPL club in the next one or two years.

　　Text/Reporter Wang Lei

　　Coordinator/Man Yi