On Saturday (6 Nov 2021), Chinese esports club EDward Gaming (EDG) beat defending champion, Korea’s Damwon KIA (DK), in the 2021 League of Legends (LoL) World Championship in Reykjavik, Iceland.
A lot of young people in China (including Momentum Works colleagues in China) stayed over night to watch the finals, and social media was filled with celebratory messages.
Many of our friends in their mid-30s and above are surprised by the amount of attention that the LoL Championship has received. Although to respond to the trending topic, state media, which had all been denouncing computer gaming for its bad effects on the youth, has been reporting on EDG with a celebratory tone.
On the same day (6 Nov 2021), Beijing had its first heavy snow of this winter. It is interesting to see that the people who are posting about the snow are generally older compared to those posting about the EDG winning the LoL Championship.
After a year of turbulences, crackdowns and reforms in tech/society, and the repeated local lockdowns to deal with isolated outbreaks, it seems 2021 is about to end on a positive note.
And the differences in attention of generations would, as usual, open up new business opportunities, even in China’s giant-dominated tech landscape. Investors, who unlearn from their prejudices to truly understand the young, will probably be able to seize the opportunity.