I'm A Baller - Chapter 316
Chapter 316: One Day as a Teacher
Wang Yan frowned. He was very resistant to this idea. This wasn’t part of the original program either.
Firstly, he had already decided that he would never show his face in public right from the start.
The officials of Fish had expressed their understanding and confirmed that Wang Jianhao would be the one to end the event, then hand out the championship prize and trophy together with Wang Yunxi.
Secondly, Wang Fugui had nothing to do with Wangting Entertainment. This event was not personally funded by Wang Yan, so Wang Yan should not be the one to round up the event.
What was this Xiao Cang thinking?
As Wang Yan frowned, He Miaomiao grinned as she sighed. “Look at how endearingly that woman is staring at you. She’s beaming from ear to ear…gosh!”
But Wang Yan’s EQ wasn’t enough to understand what He Miaomiao was trying to say.
Was she jealous? Or not jealous? He wasn’t sure.
But it was true that the look in Xiao Cang’s eyes was strange. They seemed to be filled with mixed emotions and the most obvious emotion was one of admiration.
Oh dear. Wang Yan sighed sadly. He had attracted unwanted attention again today…
Wang Jianhao was supposed to be the one to get Wang Yan out of such situations. But he remained where he was and just asked Wang Yan with a smile, “Mr. Wang, the netizens in the livestream rooms are all cheering and are really excited. Won’t you say a few words?”
The netizens in the major live broadcast rooms were indeed very enthusiastic, but their excitement didn’t result in any dire consequences, so of course they could continue cheering without worrying.
“There’s no need to, right? You should be the one to close this event.”
Wang Yan still wanted to decline, but Wang Jianhao had made up his mind to let Wang Yan take the lead.
“Oh no no, your words are definitely going to be more impactful than mine. This event was so successful, so I really wouldn’t dare to claim any credit for it. Go ahead and say a few words!”
At the same time, Wang Yunxi also reminded him in a low voice, “Yan, the account [Wang Fugui] is almost useless now. Why don’t you ride on the last bit of your popularity? We still have to sign on new artistes, you know…”
Aha! So that’s what happened! Wang Yan immediately figured it out.
Too many unexpected things happened today, so the user behind [Wang Fugui] had to come out and show himself.
Wang Yan’s identity as the sponsor of the big eater competition had been confirmed. There was no need to hide it. He could indeed make use of his status as the godfather of mukbang to garner some attention.
The 50 showgirls and the 200 others waiting to be signed on were all waiting for Wangting Entertainment to take them in.
Most of them were probably watching this event. It was best to round up today’s event, then come up with a new and better event the next time.
After figuring this out, Wang Yan no longer resisted.
“Okay, please give me the microphone. Don’t turn the camera around.” Wang Yan nodded and reached out to Xiao Cang.
Xiao Cang was overjoyed. She quickly walked to the VIP seats and handed the microphone over, then stood by the side with her hands in front of her.
This posture of hers was really enchanting.
Before Wang Yan could speak, the people around him began to applaud.
Wang Yunxi and Wang Jianhao led the clapping, so Mr. Li from Beauty Ko, the VP of Haidilao and the others followed. Soon, the entire VIP area was applauding.
A group of business seniors were applauding and cheering a young man on with smiles and looks of anticipation on their faces. It seemed so strange.
But everyone thought of it as normal.
In the business world, anyone one step ahead of the others was considered a genius.
Wang Yan had used three mukbang livestream competitions to turn an unknown company into one worth tens of millions. He was not one to be looked down upon.
Wangting Entertainment was valued at several tens of millions. That was no joke.
Based on the signing fees that Fish, Tiger, Cat and other livestream platforms were paying his livestreamers this year, any of his four livestreamers had a contract worth at least $10 million.
If these livestreamers continued to be popular next year, their contract fees would definitely soar.
Wangting Entertainment now monopolized at least 80% of the mukbang livestream market and could be even worth $100 million in the future.
They had taken 30% of their shares out for investors, and these were worth $30 million. Even if there wasn’t a mad rush for the shares, plenty of investors would be interested.
News about today’s competition was going to continue on for another week, so the value would continue to go up.
How young Wang Yan was wasn’t important. This youngster had discovered a new way of making big bucks, so all his seniors in business had to admit that this young man was indeed impressive.
They were merely clapping now. Later, they had to make sure to exchange name cards with Wang Yan and get close to him!
Meanwhile, the fans at the venue were cheering enthusiastically.
Today’s event had been fun to watch, really rowdy and sufficiently exciting. It had gone way beyond anybody’s expectations.
The only thing in their minds was…they hadn’t made a wasted trip today!
“Master Wang, you’re amazing!”
“Brother Fugui, I love you!”
“Brother Fugui, say something! Say something!”
Everyone was all excited and emotional.
“Everyone, thank you for receiving me so warmly!” Wang Yan grabbed the microphone and stood up. He waved to the people behind him and looked around with a smile, using one hand to motion to everyone to calm down before returning to his own seat again.
“I’ll just briefly share how I stumbled my way through to this position and some thoughts I have.”
The words were quickly organized in his brain. With the help of Speaking with Discretion, he quickly formed a general outline of what he should say and how he should say it.
“I’ll leave the formal stuff to Mr. Wang Jianhao, he’s better at this.”
Everyone burst into laughter. Wang Jianhao was not annoyed either. He clapped his hands and nodded, saying, “That’s true.”
The camera cut to Wang Jianhao in time, causing a burst of happy laughter.
Emotions could be contagious. Everyone present was in a good mood, so the overall tone of the live broadcast room was naturally more pleasant.
It was in this relaxed atmosphere that Wang Yan began reminiscing.
“All of this started from this year’s summer holiday. I was in a good mood because I had earned a large amount of money from working…”
“How much?!”
“How did you earn it? !”
“Teach us, Master Wang!”
A few loud questions suddenly burst out from below.
“Teach you guys? Sure!”
Wang Yan nodded with a smile.
“I set up a stall in a luxury bungalow estate to sell special varieties of watermelons. I priced them really high, so I earned about $18,000 from there, and my family invested another $18 million – don’t learn from me, alright? I’m not going to be responsible if you lose so much money you don’t even get to run with the clothes on your back!”
“Shit!”
“HAHAHAHA!”
“We can’t learn this at all! We admit defeat!”
The fans at the venue were going crazy and the live comments exploded. They were all commending Wang Yan for being really good at this and the screen was covered with all sorts of opinions.
“Master Wang is a practical one!”
“I can’t stand it when I see advice about doing business from those people with rich parents. They wouldn’t have succeeded without their family’s help!”
“Exactly! They make it sound as if they succeeded by working harder than others when they clearly didn’t!”
“Master Wang is really in touch with the ground! He’s not pretentious at all!”
The sound of laughter was getting out of hand, so Wang Yan waved his hands about and said, “Back to the topic! Back to the topic!”
“At that time, I was in a good mood, but my appetite wasn’t that good. Every day, I would stand in the sun to man the stall. The high temperature and scorching heat was really tough sometimes.”
“Then, one day, I suddenly felt like eating crab, but I really wasn’t hungry enough to eat it all by myself. What should I do?”
“I saw a video of Neon Light’s Mukbang on the internet, and I decided to find a few people who could eat with me.”
“I worked so hard and got so much money from my own parents, so I wasn’t going overboard by splurging a little like that, right?”
Hahahaha!
The humorous self-deprecation caused another wave of laughter.
“No, you didn’t go overboard!”
“Exactly. I felt that it was worth it to spend on something I wanted to eat, so I decided to go for something more expensive.”
Wang Yan put his hands out. “So that’s how you guys ended up watching us eat those King Crab, and so the first properly organized mukbang competition with proper standards in this nation was born.”
“Why did I have to put in so many factors?”
“That’s because at the same time, Baidu Glutinous Rice was holding a similar competition in the western region. It was also a competition to see who could eat more, but they were eating buns or something like that…”
“Anybody have any impression? None, right? I guess their competition didn’t make a splash at all. Let’s have three seconds of silence for the person who organized that competition for Glutinous Rice. Once this broadcast is over, I’m pretty sure he’s gonna get fired.”
The atmosphere and Wang Yan’s snarky remarks while looking all serious made everyone laugh.
As everyone continued to laugh, they were also drawn towards his main point.
“But why did I manage to succeed while a larger corporation failed?” Wang Yan slowly began to drive his speech towards his main point.
“Master Wang, is it because you spent more money?”
“It’s because you were more handsome!”
“Brother Fugui has been blessed by the gods and you have all the luck! Please marry me!”
A female fan at the scene suddenly went crazy and confessed, making everyone laugh again.
However, no one was surprised or puzzled because Wang Yan’s charm was indeed amazing.
Especially at this moment, when his gaze was deep, his smile was solemn and harmonious, his words were sometimes serious and sometimes playful, but in fact, every sentence had a meaning that made people think deeply.
“Actually, I think it’s because I found the right person and the right way to broadcast.”
“At that time, there was a content creator on Bilibili called Beauty Customization who was collecting mukbang videos. He wanted videos that were about five minutes in length and opened it to everyone online.”
“I figured that the channel probably had a lot of information on big eaters in the country.”
“So I contacted them and told them that I’d pay for their trip, we’d have a competition to see who could eat more crabs and the winner would get prize money.”
“Since there was money to be made, people came forward.”
“Mr. Liu worked quickly, and in just two days, he got me a team of big eaters.”
“Some of them include these four here, Ling Ya, Mi Zi, Da Gang and Ah Dai.”
“When they sent in their videos, they used their real names, but that wasn’t fun or memorable, so we gave them nicknames.”
“We didn’t expect the nicknames to work out well, and it’s become part of their brand now.”
Mi Zi, Ling Ya and the rest sighed with a complicated look in their eyes as they remembered how they started.
Many of the new fans in the livestream rooms had no idea that this was how all this started, so they became very interested and kept asking questions.
Of course, the livestreamers had no time to answer the questions, so the older fans quickly helped to answer the questions, which made the fanclubs even more united than before. That was an unexpected reward in itself.
Wang Yan continued.
“Ling Ya, Mi Zi and the rest dared to enter an unknown competition firstly because they wanted the five digit prize money…”
“Don’t laugh! Isn’t $10,000 money?!”
“Everyone runs into financial difficulties from time to time. When I was at my lowest, I had to run to Ma Yun to borrow $200 from him…”
“You guys are laughing again! I’m telling the truth!”
The more serious Wang Yan looked, the harder everyone laughed. They couldn’t stop and their stomachs hurt from laughing too hard.
The live comments were none the better.
“Of course, of course, we believe you would have made use of those credits too!”
“Oh my, the almighty Master Wang who spends a few million with his eyes shut actually uses the same bank functions as we do! I suddenly feel less pathetic…”
“My goodness, how is this boy so innocent!”
“I believe it might actually be true that when Master Wang borrowed that $200, he really gave CEO Ma a call and said, “Hello, Uncle Yun? Do you think I could use my priority banking black card to buy stuff from your website? Send me some credits for me to use!””
“Anybody curious about Master Wang’s credit limit?”
“I’m super curious!”
“It’s got to be at least 200k, right?”
“Are you looking down on Master Wang? Add at least one more zero behind that!”
The live comments were exploding excitedly, but Wang Yan quietened them down again and went back to what he was talking about earlier.
“But besides the money, I believe that the people who entered that very first eating competition also noticed a very valuable aspect that is commonly seen in the new generation.”
“The adventurous spirit of daring to try new things.”
“Posting mukbang videos is a very new and trendy idea in the first place.”
“Furthermore, it takes a lot of courage to go to a strange city to participate in an offline competition. Moreover, the competition was going to be broadcast live, and so the contestants would be criticized and commented on throughout. Facing that takes a lot of courage.”
“And as you can see, I don’t have that sort of courage.”
“I don’t dare to show my face in a livestream. If someone criticized me for not being handsome enough, I wouldn’t be able to sleep well at night.”
“Every time Beauty Customizer edited a video and uploaded it, nasty comments would follow.”
“Comments like “How can a girl have such a good appetite” or “You’re already as fat as a pig, why are you still eating” or “So ugly, so disgusting” and more…”
“Some of them only sent in one video and never sent in anymore after that.”
“Some of them were selected to be in the competition, but they eventually turned down the invitation to be in the offline competition.”
“In the end, among the seven people who came, we have the four g names in mukbang livestreaming — Mi Zi, Ling Ya, Da Gang, and Ah Dai.”
“It’s not easy to advance in the midst of scolding and slander.”
“Really, I sincerely believe that it has not been easy for them.”
As soon as Wang Yan finished speaking, the scene fell silent for about a second. Then, a burst of enthusiastic applause erupted.
Mi Zi and the rest had tears in their eyes and they didn’t know what to do. They kept clasping their hands together and bowing gratefully at the fans.
Wang Yan’s intention wasn’t to stir up their emotions, so he quietened them down again when he felt it was enough and continued.
“On one hand, it’s the charm of these livestreamers. But on the other hand, my success lies in the broadcast method.”
“At that time, Mr. Liu of Beauty Customizer told me that I should contact Fish to do a livestream.”
“I told him to do whatever he wanted. I just wanted to make sure everyone had fun eating, and he could take the economic benefits.”
“Everyone ought to stick to their original motivation for doing anything and not veer off.”
“I had my own reasons for organizing the competition, so my partner would work hard only if I gave them the profits, right?”
“CEO Liu is a very capable person, with very avant-garde ideas.”
“I felt that doing a livestreamed competition was a good idea, so I didn’t fight for the profits with him and started getting everything ready.”
“The effect of doing this was really good, and I think we started trending the very next day. Since this was something new, we attracted a lot of new viewers who were interested in this.”
“So just to sum everything up…”
“As the internet becomes more and more advanced, the speeds we have become faster and faster, and the amount of content found online increases in volume. The demands that the new generation has on entertainment has also increased severely.”
“Livestreaming has three huge advantages: it’s current, it’s direct and there’s interaction.”
“Mukbang livestreams offered something different, and also helped the netizens to feel like they were part of it.”
“If you started watching mukbang livestreamers because you were looking for something new, you wouldn’t become their fans.”
“But there’s always a group who sincerely feels a sense of bliss when they watch these livestreamers enjoy their food.”
“I can’t eat so much, or I don’t dare to eat this stuff. The livestreamer is eating on my behalf.”
“Or my appetite is poor, but after watching the livestreamer, my appetite has improved.”
“We live in modern cities with a fast paced life and are subject to a high level of stress. The number of people who have mild eating disorders is astronomical.”
“We just need to capture a small number of them in order to stand at the top.”
“I believe that’s the secret behind how we can still break new records despite being the third time we’re holding such a competition.”
“And I sincerely believe we still haven’t reached the limits of what mukbang livestreams can do.”
“There are so many methods of eating and there are so many ways to enjoy anything, so this is content that will never run out.”
“Once people get tired of the novelty, we could focus on some details.”
“If we run out of details, we could turn it into a lifestyle sort of program.”
“In short, we’ll never run out of good content.”
“The six livestreamers here, as well as all the mukbang livestreamers out there, you guys don’t need to thank me. You should be thanking this generation.”
“I think my contribution to this sector has reached its maximum.”
“But I believe all of you can do much more than this, and will continue to go beyond this time, this place and these things.”
“I wish that all of you will be able to ride on this wave and sail victoriously into the sea!”
“Thanks everyone for listening to my long speech, thanks to the platform for working with me and thank you, sponsors…”
Before Wang Yan could finish his sentence, the audience burst into deafening applause. Cheers, screams, and whistles rang out incessantly.
Wang Yan wanted to pass the microphone to Wang Jianhao, but he shook his head and refused to accept it.
Xiao Cang hurriedly came up to stop him. “Mr. Wang, Mr. Wang, don’t be in a hurry to leave. The netizens have many questions waiting for you to answer!”
“What should I answer? I’m just an amateur…”
Wang Yan replied modestly, but everyone else in the room immediately sang his praises.
“You’re an amateur? You’re the godfather of mukbang livestreaming! Everyone in this genre has to pay homage to you!”
“Mr. Wang, Wangting Entertainment has made a name for itself after today, and you’d definitely be the most sought after young entrepreneur in this industry from tomorrow onwards! It’s a rare chance for you to share more!”
“Exactly! The event isn’t over yet. You have to answer the netizens’ questions!”
What on earth?! Wang Yan was more willing to return to his seat to coax He Miaomiao instead of bothering himself with all these attention seeking netizens.
Wang Yan was about to reject Xiao Cang again when he turned his head and realized that Miss He looked…smitten with him…
She cupped her chin with one hand and looked at Wang Yan foolishly. Her eyes were filled with unspeakable admiration and adoration..
So, she liked him as a big corporate boss, eh?
He sneered in his heart, but his thoughts took a sharp turn.
“Alright then, I’ll answer a few more questions.”
The netizens were so excited! He couldn’t let them down!
Was he showing off in order to pick girls up?
Oh no no, he was sharing his experience. That wasn’t showing off!
