Chapter 58. Live Channel (2)

CP Kim Woonho of LGN was an individual that Sanghyuk knew very well. In his previous life, this guy even made it to the president’s position.

The Sanghyuk of his previous life conversed with this person a lot, and they became quite close personally as well. However, that was in the previous life, it did not happen in this life.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Kim Woonho.”

Sanghyuk met up with Kim Woonho himself. Since the matter was of importance, Kim Woonho wished to meet him personally, and Sanghyuk wouldn’t refuse that either.

Kim Woonho looked much younger than in his memories. In his previous life, they only met 7 years from now.

“I’m Lee Sanghyuk. Oh, BJ Gale name is probably more familiar to you, I guess?”

Sanghyuk shook hands with him with a smile.

“Looks like you customize your avatar quite a lot in the game. Your real figure looks much better.”

Kim Woonho started off the conversation with light flattery. Sanghyuk also went along with that, so the mood between them wasn’t so bad.

“……And that being the case, we of LGN wish to work with Mr. Gale, no, to be exact, the guild ‘One’, that is behind you. We are planning to reveal 30 live channels in about a month. Right now, we have entered a contract with numerous great guilds all over the world. If you work with us, I guarantee that you will earn more than you could possibly expect.”

Kim Woonho started talking about the live channel. He considered Sanghyuk as someone completely clueless about this industry and explained it in quite a lot of detail.

Of course, Sanghyuk knew just as much about live channels as Kim Woonho did, but he couldn’t really interrupt his explanation.

Sanghyuk made an expression that he was pondering on his decision as he listened.

“……This is our condition. Do you wish to fix anything?”

Kim Woonho handed Sanghyuk the contract and even talked about all the conditions they wished to take.

However, there was a small problem. It was that those contract terms weren’t to Sanghyuk’s liking.

“Yes. There are a lot of things I wish to edit.”

Sanghyuk made a slight smile and opened up the first page.

“Shall we first talk about the join copyright holding of the videos?”

Kim Woonho did not know what kind of person Sanghyuk was at all, so he brought a standard contract, but unfortunately, the standard contract would definitely not work against Sanghyuk.

Sanghyuk started talking about the copyrights, profit ratios and even the numberings on the channels.

Since he was the manager of Team SKY’s live channel during his director career, he delved very deep into this so he knew about this very well.

In some fields, he was even more knowledgeable than Kim Woonho himself.

Now that things came to this, Kim Woonho became awkward instead.

He was being swung around mercilessly by what seemed like a kid in his early 20s, being remarked in places he never doubted at all about.

The climax was the sharing of profits. Sanghyuk talked about a lot of profit models from viewership, ads, and subscription video service and made Kim Woonho listen very carefully.

The LGN standard contract stated that LGN would take 7 parts out of 10. However, Sanghyuk talked about the unjustness of this ratio and talked about how this was unacceptable.

Sanghyuk was planning to change the distribution ratio at all costs. The reason for that was that LGN had already offered a 50:50 ratio for some of the large scale guilds.

Kim Woonho was no easy mark, so he didn’t back out easily either. However, no matter how logical he was in his argument, it didn’t work against Sanghyuk at all since he knew everything.

“In the end, as long as the term that I have to return the live channel if the viewing rates are low, exists, LGN will never make a loss. The pressure of drawing in viewers is solely burdened by us the creators. In that situation, I don’t think it’s good to set the distribution ratio so unfairly. Honestly, I know that live channels are just the start…… aren’t there bigger things? Let’s start off things well.”

Sanghyuk looked at Kim Woonho with a smirk. At that moment, Kim Woonho received a strange feeling.

‘This guy…… does he know something? Or is it that he has a good intuition?’

Kim Woonho had no choice but to continuously fix his evaluation of Sanghyuk.

When they first met, he was just a streamer that gamed well, but now he felt like he was facing a veteran in this field.

“Then what is it that you want?”

Kim Woonho admitted that dragging things out like this would not solve the problem. Honestly, the scale of this guild, One, was very small, but in terms of being a hot potato, it was the single hottest potato there was, so he could not let go of it.

This was also the reason why the conversation dragged out for so long.

“I also do not plan to ask you to change the distribution ratio purely to my favor. I just want to make it more justified. And so…… why don’t we try this? Aren’t shows all about viewership in the end? So, we’ll control the distribution ratio according to the viewer ratings. If the viewership is low, then I wouldn’t care even if the ratio is 90:10. However, I think it will be fine to drag it up all the way to 20:80 if the viewership is high…… what do you think?”

“What is the standard of ‘low’ and ‘high’ viewership?”

“That we’ll just use LGN’s current viewership as the standard. And for precise measurement, we’ll combine the paid subscription service’s records. Oh! Why don’t we just make a generalized formula after factoring in the paid video services as well?”

As soon as he finished those words, he started writing off a peculiar calculation formula.

Actually, this formula appeared much later in time in his previous life after the live channels became a big success and as problems started to appear as the industry became larger.

At the time, the one who made this formula was not a personnel from LGN but a well-known statistician, and this formula later became the single most used formula that decided the popularity of all livestreams.

This would only appear 10 years later in the future, so he did feel a little sorry for bringing up this formula right now, but in any case, Sanghyuk finished the formula professionally, and Kim Woonho couldn’t say anything due to surprise as he watched.

It was perfect.

That formula that Sanghyuk just ‘came up with’, was the perfect formula that could calculate the popularity of a live channel.

He couldn’t believe that this mere streamer who could game well could think up of such a formula.

“…… Well, then. If we put that here and that there, it looks a little more balanced, right? Let’s use this formula to calculate the popularity of the channel and decide on the distribution ratio based on it. A bit like a running guarantee, I guess. With that, LGN has nothing to lose too.”

Sanghyuk’s words ended, but Kim Woonho couldn’t reply for a long time. Sanghyuk’s method of doing this was too novel for him.

‘Is this guy a genius?’

Kim Woonho looked at Sanghyuk in exclamation once again. He did feel that this kid wasn’t simply just good at games, but at this point, he could be considered a genius.

“Ehem, for now, I understand. But this…… formula of yours…… can I use it?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

This was not a difficult formula either. It was created by a well-known statistician, but that very statistician was a fan of EL himself and had created the formula for very personal reasons. Moreover, that same guy revealed it to the public for all to see, so this formula was used by every related personnel in this industry. In the first place, Sanghyuk didn’t make this but just used the ‘results’, so he wouldn’t be able to answer if someone asked him how he made this.

At this point, it would be easier for him if it was used industry-wide just like his previous life.

“Oh, and that way of contract you just explained to me, I think it’s not something I can decide on my level. I will return to the company and tell you the results after I discuss it with the other people.”

“Sure.”

Sanghyuk also didn’t think that their meeting would conclude here. Even though Kim Woonho was in charge of the entire live channel project, he would have to receive permission from his superiors if he wished to accept Sanghyuk’s proposal.

Of course, Sanghyuk was also sure that Kim Woonho would tell him good news in a few days. The Kim Woonho he knew would never let go of such a justified method.

‘And even if he does, it’s not like I have no backup plan either…….’

Though unlikely, Sanghyuk had already thought up of what he had to do if Kim Woonho rejected his proposal.

Sanghyuk and Kim Woonho finished their conversation that continued for nearly 2 hours and stood up from their seats.

Live channel service was now really in front of their nose……. Sanghyuk was definitely going to take this live channel with the conditions he wanted.

***

Waiting for the message, Sanghyuk once again cleared the entire Inferno Pyramid again. This time, he used the appearance of BJ Gale with the 3rd and 4th monsters as service to the viewers.

Thanks to the ‘First Conqueror of Inferno Pyramid’ title that he got from defeating the Sphinx, he could kill his way all the way up to the 4th monster in BJ Gale’s appearance relatively easily.

He split those footages into 4 videos and streamed them over the course of 4 days.

These series of videos also acted as a pressure to Kim Woonho. If BJ Gale’s streams were very popular, Kim Woonho would definitely have to consider that as well.

Now that Sanghyuk was practically the most influential streamer of Pu TV, Kim Woonho could never abandon Sanghyuk easily.

[He ain’t human, that guy. He ain’t human.]

[What? BJ Gale used a team? It was all BS.]

[The guys that said it was a team play, go kys.]

[Looks like the large guilds will be having it good again. He shouldn’t have revealed it, why the hell did he do that? Dammit.]

[Why the hell are you pissed? It will be good if anyone kills it. Well, I guess there are all sorts of people in this world.]

[Perhaps it’s just me, but he looked much more stable than when he killed the 1st and 2nd monsters……. Did something happen between that time and now?]

[What is there to say? Just shout! Long live Gale!]

[Long live Gale!]

[Long live Gale!]

……

……

The chat today was yet again filled with praises for BJ Gale. At this point, BJ Gale was treated like the pope amongst viewers of Pu TV.

Since the majority of the viewers were solo players as well, they were more relatable to Sanghyuk’s play style.

Of course, sometimes there were users with malicious intents that got jealous of Gale and uttered nonsensical rumors about him, but they were pretty much negligible.

After that conversation with Kim Woonho, Sanghyuk was contacted again after 5 days. Sanghyuk connected the phone to the game, so he saw that he got a phone call during his hunting session.

First, Sanghyuk used the auto-reply function to send a message that he was currently in-game and quickly finished up his hunting session. Then, he logged out from the game and immediately contacted Kim Woonho.

Kim Woonho, who received the call, gave him a positive reply as he had expected.

[…… If we slightly tweak the numbers, I think we can go with that contract.]

Sanghyuk had already expected that they would try to tweak the numbers the moment he proposed that to LGN.

So, he intentionally raised the numbers slightly when he first wrote it. Since the numbers were slightly raised, reducing it was no problem.

In fact, the numbers that Kim Woonho told him were slightly higher than he had expected.

“Understood. Let’s go with those terms.”

[You have made a good choice. You will not regret it.]

“Let’s write up the contract at the place we met last time. The time…… how about tomorrow noon?”

[That is fine with me. I’ll message you as I depart.]

After ending the call, Sanghyuk gripped his fist with a big smile on his face.

He now acquired one of the greatest gold mines of EL, the live channel. And he had pretty good terms as well.

This was a much better news than acquiring several legendary-grade items in the game.

Of course, it was up to Sanghyuk himself if this goldmine was really a goldmine or landmine, but Sanghyuk had the confidence.

‘The number one channel…… I’ll definitely get that title!’

Sanghyuk’s eyes were burning with passion.

He wasn’t the type of guy who would let go of such an opportunity.