Douyu

Douyu(斗鱼) (Nasdaq: DOYU) is a Chinese website services which provides gaming, e-sports, and outdoor streaming contents. Reported in March 31, 2019, there are 6.5 million registered streamers, 280.9 million registered users, 159.2 million monthly active users. Douyu is the first Chinese streaming website which enters Series D funding. In July 17, 2019, it announced its initial public offering of 67,287,110 American Depositary Shares (ADS) at US$11.5 per ADS. The ADSs begun trading Nasdaq Global Select Market with Nasdaq symbol "DOYU". Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, BofA Securities, Inc, and CMB International Capital Limited were the book runners of this public offering.

Ethic Concerns And Disputes

Potential Gambling Concerns

In Jan 18, 2021, a report by fund manager and investment research firm Grizzly raised the warning that Douyu has benefitted by allowing and encouraging users to engage in online lottery operations, which is illegal under the regulation of mainland China. According to Grizzly, Douyu is involved with illegal online gambling on its platform, and it has been one of their sources of revenues. One typical lottery activity is called "lucky treasure", in which users are encouraged to top up money in exchange for awards. The highest award can be over 50,000 "Shark fins"(鱼翅)(a kind of token in Douyu). The tokens are mutually interchangeable to fiat currency. In addition to the platform-hosted lottery activities, some registered streamers are also reported to involve in illegal gambling activities. In Jan 22, 2021, a streamer (Chinese: 长沙乡村敢死队) is reported to encourage users to donate money to him. If participants donates over a certain number of "Shark fins" over a given period of time, they are eligible to participate in a virtual token lottery worth one thousand to tens of thousands of Chinese RMB. After the lottery, the streamer will then purchase virtual tokens in equal amount to cash in the winners' prizes through third-party apps such as Alipay. It is reported that in 2020, the annual donation profit of the streamer was over US$25,165,423..

Vulgar Contents

In June, 2020, the State Internet Information Office of China in conjunction with the relevant departments of 31 domestic major online streaming service providers, including Douyu, carried out a comprehensive inspection in order to standardize of management of online streaming content to depth. It is reported that some streamers are dressed in too exposed clothes and some are vulgar in word and deed.