Chapter 549

Chapter 549: If there are winners, there are losers.

The first round with the Lakers facing the Blazers ended with the Lakers sweeping the Trail Blazers 4:0.

The Lakers were also the first team to advance into the next round and waited for the winner of the Spurs against the Mavericks.

Everyone who watched the Lakers four games were surprised by their power.

It wasn’t only Chen Huan’s top offense and defense but it was also from the two games Chen Huan didn’t play where Kobe and Iverson showed, which made many people fear them.

They understood that it wasn’t something they wanted to show.

If Chen Huan wasn’t sent off and didn’t end up missing two games, Kobe and Iverson would play the rest of the series as they did in the first game as if they were just training.

So everyone would then underestimate their physical condition and form.

When the real battle began, the two of them would show their fangs and very few would be able to fight against them.

Luckily, an incident happened and forced the two to play at their real strength for two games.

Without Chen Huan, they could play as much as possible and lead the Lakers to victory.

The Blazers actually struck back when Chen Huan was sent off in the second game.

But Kobe and Iverson scored 70 points together and directly extinguished the flame of hope from the Blazers.

Who would underestimate them after a game like that?

So the Lakers with Chen Huan, Kobe and Iverson as a proper Big Three made everyone fear them.

It was rumored that the Spurs head coach Popovich was racking his brain for the next round.

With the appearance of Chen Huan in the fourth game, the rating of TNT and ESPN increased greatly and it was higher than the previous three games, it was the highest rating that night.

Not to mention those from the China side, almost all viewers watched it through Pomelo or CCTV.

There was no need to look at CCTV ratings since themselves didn’t care about it but the rating for Pomelo steadily increased again.

The peak live viewers on Pomelo were 78 million and 53 million on average.

Amongst the 1.5 billion Chinese people, around 180 were basketball fans and there were around 500 million people who occasionally watched good basketball games.

With a big opponent such as CCTV, for Pomelo to grab 53 million on average was already a big achievement.

What dumbfounded the people at Pomelo was that the highest views were made after Chen Huan got off the court and was chatting with Miley Cyrus, Elizabeth Olsen, Kobe and Iverson.

The power gossip was really strong!

But Jiang Zhenkun didn’t care and was laughing happily.

Pomelo received a lot of attention in just ten days and became the most popular video streaming platforce.

That’s right.

First place!

Even Youyi and Shanhai Streaming, the two giants with a combined market value of 200 billion USD couldn’t suppress the popularity of Pomelo.

With the interviews before and after the game and the various tidbits surrounding the game,

Pomelo was giving their report on the NBA every day.

So they garnered a lot of attention since all the recent entertainment and sports news the last ten days had been on Pomelo so the top three trending list had been Chen Huan, NBA and Pomelo.

People discovered that sports could still affect people’s minds like that.

Pomelo spent 30 million USD for the exclusive rights for internet streaming and interview access but they already recovered half of that expense.

Nowadays, many brands are seeking them for advertisements.

Adidas offered 20 million USD to advertise their sports goods to all the games and they would pay the moment they agreed.

Nike didn’t back down as the NBA was their ground and they obviously wanted to join on the bandwagon after seeing so many Chinese fans.

So Nike offered 15 million for all the games up to the Western Conference Finals and must have exclusive footwear products.

For the games at the finals, they would give more than 5 million so Nike would end up giving more.

Nike won the bet in the end and during the live broadcast by Pomelo today, tens of millions of viewers saw ads from Nike shoes.

There were also advertisements for basketballs, clothes, daily necessities, food and so on.

Pomelo was racking in the cash and their earnings were immeasurable.

Otherwise, it would be impossible for them to send a large crew of their own to go film or interview.

The earnings were immeasurable not because of their hundreds of millions of dollars but because of their valuation.

Before all of that, Pomelo was a second rate video streaming platform and was barely worth 1 billion USD.

But it changed now as many huge companies gave offers between 1.3 and 1.8 billion USD for it.

This meant that their value basically increased by 500 million.

It wouldn’t be weird for Pomelo’s valuation to increase as the competition continued.

So Jiang Zhenkun ignored all of it and waited until the finals or Chen Huan to win the championship to talk about it.

According to some leaked news, Jiang Zhenkun placed an order with China Gold Corp and was already making the customizing basketball sized gold ball.

It meant whether Chen Huan won the championship or not, it was worth it for Jiang Zhenkun to give him the basketball with his performance alone.

The video streaming companies were in an uproar.

The other small video streaming platforms were regretting for not having enough guts to make the bet.

But the punctuation was on the two giants Youyi and Shanhai Streaming who never expected it to become so big, they were indeed regretting it.

Especially Shanhai Streaming.

They were hailed as Chen Huan’s biggest supporters in the past and people even wondered if the princess was some old cow who wanted to eat some tender grass.

However, in the aftermath of the Stingy Chu Liuxiang incident, Shanhai Streaming lost a lot of favor and displeased Teacher Chu Liuxiang heavily.

Chu Liuxiang was obviously good friends with Lu Xiaofeng so how could Chen Huan possibly be happy with Shanhai Streaming?

So a gap was formed between them in that perspective.

Even after Shanhai Streaming received a TV series from Chu Liuxiang and Lu Xiaofeng’s variety show right after, the rumors in the industries said it was with reluctance.

Many people didn’t believe that.

Now, everyone believed that the narrative after Shanhai Streaming for the first time didn’t follow after Chen Huan in his trip to the US for the NBA.

After all, many people still remember that Shanhai Streaming spent a lot of money to buy those preseason games half a year ago.

But they didn’t do so this time, what did this mean? Wouldn’t the people know?

Numerous Lu Xiaofeng and Chu Liuxiang fans started to scold Shanhai Streaming.

Shanhai Streaming really felt bitter at this.

They actually made an offer but it was too low and they debated before thinking that 30 million wasn’t worth it so didn’t match it.

After all, they felt that with a large platform like CCTV where the people could watch it for free and see all the Lakers games, it would be meaningless to spend such a huge amount of money to exclusively buy the internet streaming broadcast.

But then they didn’t expect Pomelo to teach them a lesson about what fancy and great reporting was.

So within Shanhai Streaming, it was perfectly normal for Qi Shangqin to be demoted from his position of vice president of operation and be transferred to become the general manager of the company’s content department.

It was solely because the princess knew he had been here since the beginning otherwise he would’ve been fired.

This wasn’t an exaggeration as the princess could get very overbearing when angry.