Chapter 10 Saturday, March 10th

The iCL League was officially starting today.

From the Long Yu Group, Eric and Zhao Xuming had once again arrived at the iCL League's venue, awaiting its official opening and the two crucial opening matches today.

At the same time, they were also monitoring the online discussion, feeling immensely optimistic about the iCL League's opening ceremony today.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the iCL League had already held two exhibition matches, and its popularity was steadily increasing.

Especially on Thursday, when they brought out the world champion FV team, the number of viewers exceeded 60,000.

Although a mere 60,000 might not seem like much, Zhao Xuming seized on the fact that other streaming platforms faked their data, successfully establishing the impression in the minds of netizens that "Rabbit Tail Live's data is real, while other platforms' data is fake."

As a result, viewers no longer paid attention to the specific number of viewers on the streaming platform. Instead, they focused on other data such as the number of comments in the live stream, successfully eliminating the disadvantage of "low number of viewers" and successfully labeling the iCL League as "authentic."

In short, the situation was excellent!

The preliminary preparations had been laid, and today, Saturday, was the official opening of the iCL League. Success or failure hinged on this moment.

Although Rabbit Tail Live's data was real and couldn't be faked, Zhao Xuming wasn't worried about a decline in popularity today.

After all, it was Saturday, and there would naturally be more viewers watching during the holidays. Moreover, it was the iCL League's opening ceremony, and the organizers had arranged a series of viewing and prize-drawing activities, including team appearances, official documentaries, star player interviews, and other segments. The popularity would definitely be higher than on Thursday.

And in terms of the schedule, the second key match, the best-of-three, was still being played by the FV team and SUG, ensuring that today's matches were all major events.

Zhao Xuming was in a good mood.

He had been exhausted during the period of preparing for the iCL League, especially the issue of broadcasting rights, which had caused him some headaches. Fortunately, everything had settled down, and he could just lie back and wait for the iCL League's popularity to grow naturally.

Soon, the iCL League officially opened!

The venue was still packed, and amid the enthusiastic applause and cheers, the captains of each team took to the stage. The host enthusiastically introduced the iCL League's preparation process, participating teams, and bright prospects. Each segment of the opening ceremony proceeded in an orderly manner.

Zhao Xuming sat in the front row of the audience, watching each player's face up close, enjoying this moment immensely.

Then, he took out his phone, intending to check the popularity on Rabbit Tail Live today.

Opening the iCL League's live stream, Zhao Xuming immediately saw the number of viewers: 78,525!

Nearly 80,000!

Zhao Xuming couldn't help but raise his eyebrows, feeling delighted.

Although 80,000 might not seem like a large number, everyone knew that Rabbit Tail Live's numbers were real.

People wouldn't think that 80,000 viewers was lower than 8 million, but would subconsciously equate the two.

Compared to Thursday's 60,000, the iCL League's viewership had increased again, which was undoubtedly a good sign!

The screen was filled with frantically scrolling comments, which was enough to show the iCL League's popularity.

After all, these comments were all real; there were no fake comments. Each comment represented a real person watching the iCL League.

However, when he saw the content of the comments, Zhao Xuming was stunned.

"Wow, the popularity on iCL's side is pretty good today; it's actually a quarter of the GPL League's!"

"iCL is having its opening ceremony, okay? It's normal for more people to watch."

"Who gave you the illusion that the number of people watching iCL is similar to the number of people watching GPL? It's obvious that 80,000 viewers today is already a breakthrough for the iCL League."

"Here to watch the GPL League, just dropping by."

"I thought seven or eight thousand people was a lot before, but now it seems just average; it can't compare with GPL!"

"It seems like the number of comments is basically the same once it exceeds 30,000, they all get diverted. But the number of viewers in the live stream doesn't lie!"

"Rabbit Tail Live had so many people watching GPL on its first day; how many people must be watching GPL on all the streaming platforms combined?"

Seeing these comments, Zhao Xuming couldn't help but freeze.

What was going on?

Why were the people in the live stream talking about GPL?

Suddenly, Zhao Xuming suddenly remembered that he seemed to have requested in the contract that Rabbit Tail Live must also stream the GPL League simultaneously!

Could it be that...

Zhao Xuming quickly exited the iCL's live stream and successfully found the GPL's live stream in the list of live streams.

Sure enough, GPL had also started streaming!

Looking at the number of viewers in the GPL live stream, 335,879 people!

Zhao Xuming almost thought he was seeing things, but after taking a closer look, he finally confirmed that it was six digits, 330,000 people!

Four times the number of people in the iCL League!

And this should only be the first day that the GPL League was officially streaming on Rabbit Tail Live.

"300,000 people watching on the first day? That's too outrageous!"

"Could it be that Tenda has arranged other promotional activities?"

Zhao Xuming quickly returned to Rabbit Tail Live's homepage to check, and also searched online for related promotional content.

On Rabbit Tail Live's homepage, the most prominent position was still occupied by the promotional materials for the iCL League. On the other hand, the promotional content for the GPL League was nowhere to be seen.

And online, he couldn't seem to find any related promotions either.

Zhao Xuming didn't believe it and continued searching, finally finding a clue in a forum discussion thread.

Tenda Group seemed to have done promotions in the *Games of Gods* (gog) game!

*Games of Gods* was a dual-platform game, and the PC and mobile data were interconnected. There wasn't any special promotion, just a Rabbit Tail Live promotional image on the homepage after entering the game program. Clicking on it would jump to a webpage, and it was additionally noted that you could see more professional backend data by watching the games on Rabbit Tail Live!

Zhao Xuming opened the GPL's live stream again and found that a small floating bubble had been added to the upper right corner of the original live stream screen. Clicking on it would pop up a small window.

This small window had two tabs, "In-Game Data" and "Historical Data."

In-game data was mainly real-time data for the current game, while historical data was the data for a certain hero or team throughout the entire season.

All of this data was presented in the form of very vivid icons. You could scroll up and down to browse different aspects of the data, and the data was constantly changing in real time.

After every team fight in the match, you could see the output data of the team fight and the economic changes of heroes in each position.

The comments in the live stream were scrolling quickly. In the discussion of the match content, there was also a lot of discussion about this new feature.

"What is a professional streaming platform? Brothers, type 'professional' on the public screen!"

"I say that the people who come to Rabbit Tail Live to watch the games are all professional viewers, brothers, is that okay?"

"With this data, it's clear who's carrying and who's freeloading, so freeloaders have nowhere to hide."

In addition to these discussions, you could see all kinds of numbers floating across the screen after each team fight. Obviously, with the addition of this feature, it was more convenient to play with number jokes than before.

Zhao Xuming used this feature a little and felt that it was really useful!

These data usually floated in the upper right corner in the form of a small floating bubble, which didn't affect viewing the games. After a team fight and when both sides calmed down to farm, viewers could click on the floating bubble to take a look at the in-game data and search for some more interesting data.

Moreover, this data changed in real time along with the game, giving people a feeling of controlling the overall data like a god, which was significantly different from the dry viewing experience of other streaming platforms.

It was precisely because of the promotional page on the *Games of Gods* game client and Rabbit Tail Live's unique real-time data function that it attracted a large number of viewers!

Zhao Xuming was completely dumbfounded!

Didn't we sign a contract to fully promote the iCL League?

The reason for letting Rabbit Tail Live broadcast the GPL League as well was mainly to prevent you from doing something bad, to have a backup plan!

But now the number of viewers of the GPL League was four times that of the iCL League. The difference in popularity between the two was clear at a glance!

What was going on?

Zhao Xuming realized that so much of the previous groundwork seemed to have been taken away by the GPL League!

Before, he hired internet trolls to stir up trouble online, trying to popularize the inside story of "data manipulation" on streaming platforms to establish the impression that "Rabbit Tail Live's data is all real" and thus prove the point that "the iCL League's 80,000 viewers is a lot."

Originally, these steps had gone very smoothly, and it looked like the iCL League's popularity was about to be boosted, but he didn't expect the GPL League to jump out and steal the fruits of their labor!

If the iCL League's 80,000 viewers was very popular, then what was the GPL League's 330,000 viewers?

Wouldn't that blow the iCL League to smithereens?

What's more, this was just the data from one platform, Rabbit Tail Live. There were so many other platforms such as ZZ Live, YY Live, and Wolf Fang Live that were watching the GPL League at the same time.

Wouldn't the difference in the number of people be tenfold?

Of course, the people on Rabbit Tail Live must have been diverted from other platforms, but the popularity data of other platforms was fake anyway, and everyone couldn't see the decline in popularity of other platforms at all.

So it seemed that so much of the previous preparation work had benefited the GPL League...

But Zhao Xuming was angry, but there was nothing he could do.

Because President Pei had indeed followed the provisions of the contract and given almost all of Rabbit Tail Live's resources to the iCL League, including various recommendation resources. Even the homepage had been hanging the iCL League's promotional banner for years.

Letting Rabbit Tail Live broadcast the GPL League was actually actively requested by Zhao Xuming and Eric.

Moreover, President Pei didn't really promote the GPL League much, but just hung a promotional page in the game to divert traffic and specially developed a small program for in-game data.

But the final result was completely unexpected. The popularity of the iCL League, which had been prepared for so long, was all stolen by the GPL League!

The worst part was that this behavior fully complied with the contract regulations between the two parties.

Moreover, strictly speaking, the iCL League didn't suffer any major losses. Overall, it still made a profit, but most of the popularity was taken away by GPL and Rabbit Tail Live.

In other words, Eric and Zhao Xuming originally thought they were making a huge profit, but in the end, they found that they were only making a small profit. The one who was really making a huge profit was President Pei.

As for who was losing, it was obviously the other streaming platforms!

Zhao Xuming slumped into his seat: "It's over. No matter how hard I try, President Pei is still better! I've been tricked by President Pei again!"