17Live puts the spotlight on profit

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Hello readers,

I love watching livestreams, especially those from Twitch. As someone who plays video games a lot, watching these streams serves several purposes apart from personal entertainment.

In some cases, it’s to learn from better players by studying their gameplay and decision-making process. Other times, it’s to interact with a community that shares my interests, which usually comes through in the streamer’s chatroom.

That said, it’s tough to say whether livestreaming platforms can make enough money to pay their creators well. Sure, it’s been reported that Twitch pulls in billions in revenue, but how much it reaps in profit and how much of that goes to the streamers is unclear.

Today’s story focuses on the financials of another livestreaming platform: 17Live. The firm has been posting some pretty good revenue figures over the last few years. However, circumstances seem to have changed.

Today we look at:

• The situation behind 17Live’s numbers
• The US$15 million pre-seed round of a logistics startup
• Other newsy highlights such as the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s digital money blueprint and Alibaba’s latest financials

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With this treasure I summon more profits

Image credit: Timmy Loen

For the first half of 2023, 17Live recorded a big gain in adjusted EBITDA. However, there’s no such thing as a free lunch – the company also reported a year-on-year decline in revenue for the period. Let’s take a look at its plans going forward.

• Cleaved: While 17Live’s revenue is down by a fair bit compared to H1 2022 – a 25% decline to US$151 million – it’s not something that came out of nowhere. According to the firm’s CEO, it came off the back of a shift in strategy in Q3 last year to prioritize profitability.
• Into the void: One of the main goals of this shift in strategy is to focus on greater return on ad spend. Because of this, total monthly active users dropped by over half year on year to 550,000 in H1 2023.
• Expanding its domain: The company already has strategies in place to shore up revenue. One of these is bolstering V-Liver, a feature that allows streamers to create their own VTuber models for their live streams.

Read more: 17Live, Singapore’s first SPAC target, shrinks revenue as price of profit rises

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