Good morning and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you and welcome to DouYu International Holdings Limited Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will be hosting a question and answer session after management's prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to the first speaker today, Lingling Kong, IR Director at DouYu. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter 2021 earnings call. Joining us today are Mr. Shaojie Chen, Chairman and Executive Officer, Mr. Mingming Su, Chief Strategy Officer, and Mr. Hao Cao, Vice President of Finance. You can refer to our financial results on our IR website at ir.douyu.com. You can also check a replay of this call when it becomes available in a few hours on our IR website. Before we start, please note that this call may contain forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provision for the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and observations that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors not under the company's control, which may cause actual results, performance, or achievements of the company to be materially different from the results, performance, or expectations implied by these forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by cautionary statements, risk factors, and details of the company's filings with the SEC. The company undertakes no duty to revise or update any forward-looking statements for subsequent events or circumstances after the date of this conference call. I will now speak on behalf of our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Shaojie Chen. In the third quarter, we made solid progress in exploring new growth drivers for user traffic and revenue generation while maintaining steady development of our core business.
Total net revenues were RMB 2.35 billion, and quarterly average paying user count reached 7.2 million. Notably, our average of mobile MAUs for the quarter sustained the growth momentum from the previous quarter, reaching 61.9 million, representing a 3.9% YoY growth. Two key factors drove our continued user growth. First, as mentioned in our last earnings call, we continued to benefit from the broadcast of several large-scale esports tournaments, such as the LPL Summer Grand Final 2021. These broadcasts not only attracting new esports users, but also galvanized inactive users to return. Second, we deepened our collaboration with top-tier game developers while also increasing our investments in new game content.
In the third quarter, we partnered with a wide range of developers to bring more mid-tier and long-tail games to our platform while strengthening our promotional and operational efforts on these new games. For example, in the quarter, we introduced two mobile games, including Battle of Golden Spatula and Harry Potter: Magic Awakened. Through a series of content and operation-related activities, we collaborated with game developers in the launch and marketing phases for these games to increase user awareness. By recruiting top streamers to create quality content for these games, we effectively highlighted each game's features, utilizing various game content formats, successfully attract many light and moderate gamers to our platform. Now turning to our content updates. The solid foundation of our comprehensive content ecosystem underlies our user base expansion.
In the quarter, we continued to enrich our highly comprehensive content library with expanded game genres, generate personalized content for each game to cater to a variety of user needs, refine our platform operations, and cultivate a vibrant game-centric content community for our users. To elaborate, in the domain of large-scale e-sports tournaments, we retained our close partnerships with developers, continued to provide high-quality e-sports content, and fostered growing interaction between our top streamers and our e-sports content. Focusing on live broadcasting as a core operation for large-scale e-sports tournaments, we provided multi-channel live sessions and in-house produced PGC content to meet the wide viewing needs of our users. In the quarter, we broadcasted over 60 large-scale e-sports tournaments and produced over 70 e-sports tournaments in-house.
Notably, we broadcasted the LPL Summer 2021 tournament, which is the highest level League of Legends professional tournament in China, with related content produced in-house. On the mobile front, we successfully attracted new mobile users through incentivized operational and marketing initiatives. Moreover, for the Peacekeeper Elite League 2021 season three tournament, officially the highest achieved professional Chinese league, we invited a number of influencers who are also our Peacekeeper Elite streamers to participate in the tournament coverage and analysis to boost the streamer user interaction and improve the overall viewing experience. Meanwhile, for the CFML Summer 2021 tournament, a professional league for CrossFire mobile, we worked with game developers to launch promotional programs featuring high-value in-game items to drive user growth, stimulate user engagement, and improve the viewing experience.
Furthermore, we attracted and retained new users and galvanized the return of all users through a number of marketing campaigns and related topic exposure on our self-produced esports event, such as League of Legends China versus South Korea duel. During this large-scale esports tournament, we also incorporated an on-demand playback function and produced a series of relevant video clips, graphics, and community discussions to further enhance user engagement in the non-live broadcasting timeframe. For non-esports games, we endeavored to cover more game genres, deepen cooperation with more game developers, and strengthen the operation of each game's full life cycle. Given that non-esports gaming content is better viewed in the graphic and video format, we upgraded our product features with content integration of live streaming, video, graphics, and community interaction to attract more high-quality gamers and content producers to our platform.
In addition, we continue to refine our operations, hold relevant events on hot topics, and guide interactive discussions among developers, streamers, content creators, and users. Through our high-quality content and optimized product features, we are able to meet various user needs for entertainment, learning, and interaction, thus attracting more users to our platform. More importantly, we have made good progress in tailoring our operating strategy for each segment, including live streaming, video, graphic, and community, especially for our recently launched non-esports games. For example, our flagship game launched in the last quarter, Naraka: Bladepoint, retained its growth trajectory in the third quarter, showcasing high user stickiness on our platform. For other new games launched during the quarter, Battle of Golden Spatula and Harry Potter: Magic Awakened also performed well as a result of growing user engagement and increasing live streaming volume.
These improvements are a result of our continued commitment to cultivating and supporting top-tier streamers, customizing content offerings, optimizing our segment operations, and upgrading our platform with more interactive product features. During the quarter, to augment our content production efficiency, we committed additional resources to our research and development capabilities. For example, in the third quarter, we launched a new content production tool and a one-click video production function in the live streaming room on our website. With this tool, users can easily edit the latest two minutes of a live streaming session and automatically upload the edited content to our video and community segment. We expect that this update will increase UGC content creators' enthusiasm and stimulate interactions within our community. Going forward, we will continue to execute our game-centric content ecosystem strategy.
We will continue to enrich our offerings of game content to meet the diversified needs of our users and attract more users through our refined operations of new and existing popular games. Now, turning to monetization. In the third quarter, our quarterly paying users totaled 7.2 million, with an ARPU of RMB 307 . We were able to sustain the size of quarterly paying users as we continue to execute our proactive offering strategies to improve user engagement and paying user consumption. We also keep exploring new monetization methods while maintaining stable revenue contribution from the traditional virtual gifting model. Let me also touch briefly on our development in overseas markets. Mildom remained one of the top-ranking mainstream video game live streaming apps in Japan for the last two quarters, according to App Annie.
Given that the user base is achieving scale, we enhanced Mildom commercialization during the quarter and made meaningful progress. In the future, we will further solidify our market position in Japan and strengthen the monetization capabilities of Mildom, while optimizing operational efficiency to maintain healthy growth. In summary, during the third quarter, we made firm headway in exploring new growth initiatives while maintaining the steady development of our core businesses. Building on our industry leadership in live streaming, we deepened our collaborations with game developers in multiple dimensions and provided gamers and users with comprehensive game content offerings, combining live streaming videos, graphics, and interactive communities. Leveraging our competitive strengths in paying user consumption and virtual gifting, we will continue to explore diversified monetization models and improve our financial performance through effective product development, streamer engagement, and content operations.
With that, I will now turn the call over to our Vice President of Finance, Mr. Hao Cao, to go through the details of our financial performance in the quarter.
Thank you, Lingling. Hello, everyone. Total net revenues in the third quarter of 2021 were RMB 2.35 billion. Live streaming revenues were RMB 2.21 billion, compared with RMB 2.35 billion in the same period of 2020. Our live streaming business remained relatively stable, in line with our long-term sustainable operating strategy. The YoY decrease in live streaming revenue was due to several notable fan engagement events we launched in the summer of last year, which led to increases in paying user conversion, resulting in a higher revenue base in comparison. This decline was partially offset by organic growth of average revenues per paying user, driven by our implementation of more effective operational strategies.
Advertising and other revenues were RMB 107.5 million, compared with RMB 197.8 million in the same period of 2020. The YoY decrease was primarily due to trial testing of our new commercialization model with a portion of our advertising traffic, instead of monetizing more traffic through traditional advertising channels. As a result, we forfeited some potential short-term revenue gains to improve sustainable long-term growth. Cost of revenues in the third quarter of 2021 decreased by 5% to RMB 2.07 billion from RMB 2.18 billion in the same period of 2020. More specifically, revenue share fees and content costs decreased by 5.6% to RMB 1.84 billion from RMB 1.95 billion in the same period of 2020.
The decrease is mainly in line with the decreased live streaming revenues. This decrease was partially offset by higher spending on esports tournament broadcasting rights and additional investments in our proprietary content production as we continue to invest in high-quality gaming content. Bandwidth costs in the third quarter of 2021 decreased by 3.4% to RMB 163.4 million from RMB 169.1 million in the same period of 2020. This decrease was mainly due to lower per unit bandwidth costs, which benefited from our improved procurement efficiency with major suppliers, and partially due to lower bandwidth usage costs as a result of the continued technology upgrades in-house.
Gross profit in the third quarter of 2021 was RMB 238.5 million, compared with RMB 369.4 million in the same period of 2020. Gross margin in the third quarter of 2021 was 11.9%, compared with 14.5% in the same period of 2020. This decrease was primarily due to the decline in revenues exceeding the decrement of revenue share fees and content costs. Sales and marketing expenses in the third quarter of 2021 were RMB 218.9 million, an increase of 36.6% from RMB 160.3 million in the same period of 2020. This increase was mainly attributable to the increased costs from utilizing additional promotional channels for user acquisition.
Research and development expenses in the third quarter of 2021 were RMB 123.2 million, which represented an increase of 12.4% from RMB 109.6 million in the same period of 2020. This increase was primarily due to increased investment in technical personnel to continue our overseas expansion and technology infrastructure upgrades for enhancing our user experience. General and administrative expenses in the third quarter of 2021 were RMB 86.5 million, decreased by 8.1% from RMB 94.2 million in the same period of 2020. Adjusted loss from operations in the third quarter of 2021, which adds back share-based compensation expenses was RMB 91 million, compared with an adjusted operating income of RMB 31.2 million in the same period of 2020.
Net loss in the third quarter of 2021 was RMB 143.5 million, compared with a net income of RMB 59.6 million in the same period of 2020. Adjusted net loss in the third quarter of 2021, which excludes share-based compensation expenses, share of income in equity method investment and impairment loss of investment, was RMB 72.7 million, compared with an adjusted net income of RMB 19.7 million in the same period of 2020. For third quarter of 2021, basic and diluted net loss per ADS were RMB 0.37 and RMB 0.37 respectively. While adjusted basic and diluted net loss per ADS were RMB 0.16 and RMB 2.16 respectively.
As of September 30th, 2021, the company had cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, short-term and long-term bank deposits of RMB 7,078 million, compared with RMB 7,622 million as of December 31st, 2020. We would also like to provide an update on execution of our share repurchase program announced on August 30th, 2021, in which the company may repurchase up to $100 million of its shares until August 2022. As of September 30th, 2021, the company had repurchased an aggregate of $4.3 million worth of its ADS under this program. Going forward, we will continue enhancing our monetization capabilities while further improving our monetization efficiency. Additionally, as we continue to grow, we will focus on further utilizing our operating leverage to support the sustainable development of our platform.
This concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star and then two. Our first question is from Lei Zhang of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
[Non-English content] Thanks management for taking my question.
Two questions here. First on regulation fronts, do you see an impact from the suspension of game approval process recently? How should we look at regulatory change going forward? Secondly, maybe on our cooperation with hosting agencies, do we see the increased competition in the live streaming host side and any impact from the increase of revenue share ratio across your major peers? How should we look at our revenue share ratio going forward? Thank you.
[ Non-English content]
First, for your first question regarding the suspension of new game, the launch of new game, the short answer to that is we have not seen any significant impact on our existing users. In terms of regulation, there are two. One is the suspension we've seen on the launch of new games currently, and the other one is actually content moderation. For the first, the suspension of new game launches is actually it can have a slower impact on the new user acquisition.
For us is that we are seeing the approval of new games is not on hold. Rather, the suspension is actually caused by stricter standards for approval of new games, which we believe there will be more kind of high quality games launched to the market, which will be beneficial for us and for the whole gaming industry in the long run. Recently, the quality of the new games launched on our platform actually is very high, such as Battle of Golden Spatula. We have seen quite encouraging operations over there. The other is the content moderation, content management, especially regarding the kind of games we don't have the approvals to distribute domestically.
For that, we will gradually adjust our content offered on the platform to ensure that, on one hand, to ensure the quality of the game. On the other hand, we will make sure that those content are fully compliant with current regulations. Regarding your second question on the competitive landscape on the streamer resources, actually, currently the streamers under contract with us will not be affected by, you know, other competitor in the industry raising their revenue sharing percentage. Of course, we have seen that the first is the number of quality streamers available in the industry is quite limited, so it is very hard for new entrants to establish a streamer kind of ecosystem that can be competitive with existing platforms.
The other thing is that, since the streamers are barred from moving between platforms under current contract, we are seeing that the current competitive landscape for streamer resources remain quite stable. It is in the light of all the factors above, all other platforms will not be able to attract high quality streamers merely by increasing their revenue sharing fees. Especially in terms of promoting new games, we actually collaborate with game talent agencies to recruit a large number of streamers to ensure we have the quality and quantity of new game content offerings for each game segment.
We have a lot of operational know-hows and big data analysis to devote resources to those new streamers and help them to become the top streamers for our new game segment. In terms of revenue sharing percentage, actually, we offer certain incentives to streamers during some promotional periods, so therefore the overall revenue sharing ratio may fluctuate from quarter to quarter. However, we believe that our current revenue sharing ratio is reasonable, and we will adjust it according to the industry dynamics going forward. Thank you.
Operator next please.
Thank you, very helpful. Great, thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Thomas Chong of Jefferies. Please go ahead.
[ Non-English content]
[ Non-English content]
Let me translate the question that we are seeing the online video platform, short form video are also investing in the live streaming business, so just want to see how we should think about the competitive landscape and also how we can lead the market going forward. My second question is with regard to the newly launched games in the market which one are we seeing are doing better and any data can be shared? Thank you.
[ Non-English content]
Thank you, Thomas. The fourth question is that we have the same day. Since the first quarter of this year, we do not see significant changes in terms of the competitive landscape in the game live streaming industry. All the streamers are prohibited, you know, from moving between platforms under contract period.
The competition in the industry has remained quite kind of stable, stabilized. We have seen that short video platforms have been constantly expanding into the game live streaming sector, which has generated more traffic for the sector. We believe this will attract a more diverse user group to e-sports, and it will enlarge the potential market size for the entire game live streaming industry. On top of this, we upgraded our content ecosystem, including video and community, and established a quite comprehensive content library covering a wide range of game genres.
You know, our advanced strategy is to establish a game-centric content ecosystem. Leveraging our in-depth understanding of the game industry and the rich experience accumulated over the past few years, we will continue to engage our game content offerings, cultivate a vibrant game-centric content community, and then attract more users to our platform. We will continue to deepen our cooperation with game developers to cover more game genres, expanding our content coverage beyond e-sports tournaments to cover non-e-sports games. We aim to build an integrated content channel for each game we operate. We believe that, you know, by enhancing the interactions between users and content creators on our platform, and by offering more high-quality professional content, we will reinforce our leadership position in the game-centric integrated content platform in China.
Let me answer your second question. We have observed a strong momentum for a number of games launched this year, including Naraka: Bladepoint launched in July, Battle of Golden Spatula launched in August, and Harry Potter: Magic Awakened launched in December. In the months following their launches, overall live streaming volume and user engagement increased by more than 100% month-over-month. These games continued to perform well and are steadily gaining popularity and improving in rank among all games on our platform. Especially, Naraka: Bladepoint became a top 10 platform game in terms of total user time spent in live streaming during the third quarter. In addition, we are at the forefront of our industry in terms of the number of top streamers, live streaming volume, and user engagement for these new games.
We enhanced the operations of each game segment and engaged our content offerings by integrating live streaming, video clips, and graphical strategy guides to meet various user needs. We leveraged our top streamers to foster anticipation and excitement among targeted consumers prior to the launch of these new games, and recruit new streamers to ensure the quantity and quality of content offerings. At the same time, we fully leverage each game's features to increase user engagement. For example, we promoted the Harry Potter IP-related merchandise in order to attract more IP fans. Regarding the broadcasting of self-produced tournaments, we continued to offer higher quality PGC game content to our users by cooperating with professional event operators.
Our premium PGC content offerings have not only enabled us to improve viewing experience, but also gained recognition and support from game developers. In general, our operations for the full lifecycle of a game have generated remarkable results and attracted many new users to our platform. These results fortify our commitment to our operational strategy of cultivating a diversified game-centric content community. Thank you.
Operator, next question, please.
Thank you. The next question is from Yiwen Zhang of China Renaissance. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question. I have two questions. Firstly, regarding the League of Legends launching on mobile, the title was launched in early October. How was this performance on our platform? Within this year, what other large titles do we expect that will be released? Secondly, on the LOL World Championship or S tournament, what do you see its performance this year in terms of the operation metrics or revenue contribution? Thank you.
Let me answer your question. For the first question about LOL Mobile. We have accumulated rich results and experience from our operations on LOL's PC version over the past three years. On top of this, we believe our integrated operation approach for LOL will be beneficial to our overall operations for LOL Mobile. Further users of LOL's PC version are the first batch of users for its mobile version. Throughout our operations of LOL over the past several years, we have maintained conversion rates from LOL PC players to our users at a high level. This is a clear reflection that LOL is highly suitable for live streaming. The launch of LOL Mobile will further galvanize the return of all the players to watch related game content on our platform.
Given the easier-to-play features of LOL Mobile, we expect more viewers of LOL-related game content on our platform as the number of its players continue to increase. Secondly, we have a large pool of high-quality LOL streamers. On one hand, our top streamers from LOL's PC segment live streaming LOL Mobile games will generate traffic for the mobile version. On the other hand, our deep streamers pool allows us to quickly cultivate streamers internally for LOL Mobile and generate premium gaming content more efficiently. In addition, our long-term collaboration with Tencent allows us to effectively integrate our promotional efforts with LOL official content and activities. That's enjoying an advantage in the promotion and operation of LOL Mobile.
Based on our advantages mentioned above, we started cooperating with game developers, streamers, and video creators during the testing stage of LOL Mobile in order to foster anticipation and excitement among targeted consumers. Additionally, we coordinated premium streamers and video creators to generate PGC content and game-related hot topics to sustain our leading position in the operations of new games. The popularity of LOL Mobile has continued to increase since its launch in October. Thanks to our cultivation and the support of top streamers, the integrated operations of our live streaming video and graphic content unparalleled promotion in association with the S11 LOL World Championship and a series of self-produced content such as LOL DouYu Master Tournament.
We achieved strong growth momentum for LOL Mobile since its launch in terms of overall live streaming volume and duration as well as user engagement. I have mentioned S11, and your next question is about S11. As you know, the LOL World Championship is the largest LOL official annual tournament and has always attracted a large number of viewers. LOL has always been a strong segment for us, and we have in-depth resources of well-known streamers and a multifaceted streamer and content ecosystem for this segment. For S11 this year, we fully leveraged our rich content resources to provide live streaming content in various formats and related programs.
Based on the core broadcasting of tournament and official promotional events, we incorporated an on-demand playback function and produced a series of relevant video clips, graphics, and community discussions. In addition, we provide more viewing formats, including horizontal viewing positions for the convenience of mobile users. Our promotional initiatives have improved user engagement for the tournament, optimized the viewing experience, and attract more premium users to our platform. We also achieved significant progress on creating a synergy between tournaments and LOL games through broadcasting and operations of S11. We leverage on DouYu's high-quality streamer resources, as well as the platform's gravity of larger user base and high level of user engagement. We successfully encouraged game platform users to play LOL again and galvanized inactive LOL gamers to return.
The total viewing time for S11 tournament reached 1 billion. The viewing time for our in-house produced programs was over 170 million. More importantly, total interactions on our S11 community surpassed 100 million times, demonstrating that our various content becomes more appealing to our users. Thank you. Next question.
Thank you. Next question is from Henry Ching of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Henry Ching , I'll translate myself. Thank you, management, for taking my questions. I'll ask you two questions on behalf of Daniel. First, you mentioned that the company is seeking additional ways to diversify monetization by leveraging some traditional advertising resources. Can you give us some more color on the current progress and your expectations on that? The second question, can you brief us on the progress of the $100 million share repurchase program? Thank you.
As to the first question, we generate advertising revenue by offering game and brand advertising to advertisers. Our brand advertising revenue has remained relatively stable, driven by stable user traffic on platform. We have explored implementing new monetization models on certain game advertisement resources. On the traffic side, we sacrificed a portion of our advertising revenue to reallocate some of our advertising banners and commercial live streaming resources for our new monetization model. On the advertiser side, we selected some premium advertisers and cooperated with them to explore new monetization opportunities. Regarding the new monetization model, we established a smart distribution system for new games by connecting game developers with live streamers. Game developers are able to release promotional campaigns on platform, while live streamers can choose their preferred promotional method. By implementing this smart distribution system, we hope to boost advertising effectiveness in game downloads and activations.
We have rolled out a number of initiatives to support this goal. First, we have developed a variety of handy plug-ins.
Extensions within the system to support our live streamers as they encourage users to download and activate games. Second, we have motivated our streamers by implementing incentive plans directly connected to promotion effectiveness. Third, we have attracted more live streamers to join us by promoting case studies and offering systematic training. Fourth, we have leveraged our algorithms capability to facilitate matching, pricing, and distribution between game resources and live streamers traffic. If this model develops well, we believe it will enable us to better leverage user traffic on platform and showcase streamer individuality, better capturing the traffic attached to them. Development of this model will enable us to generate more value for game developers and diversify income sources for live streamers. Eventually, the smart game distribution system will allow us to unlock higher monetization potential.
With respect to the repurchase, on August 30th, we announced a $100 million share repurchase program for a period of up to 12 months. As of September 30th, 2021, we had repurchased $4.3 million worth of ADS on the open market. We started the share repurchase immediately after the announcement, and have been actively executing the program. As required by regulation, we have also appointed professional institutions to execute our share repurchase schedule, subject to current market conditions. We will continue to provide updates on the progress, of course, in the coming quarters. Thank you.
Thank you. Operator, next question, please.
Thank you. The next question is from Alex Poon of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thank you. My first question is regarding our cloud gaming business. Can we get some update and our future expectation for the business? Second question is regarding our overseas business. How's the performance in third quarter and what do we expect going forward? Thank you.
Let me answer your first question about cloud gaming. After more than a year of exploration with our partners, our web-based product features of our cloud gaming are now largely complete. In the third quarter, we have also continued to update the product features of cloud games for the Android mobile platform. We believe that cloud gaming is a new development opportunity for the gaming industry. However, it's at a nascent stage and limited by a number of issues such as the copyright culture and game capability. As a game-centric container platform, DouYu is well-positioned to capture the opportunities of the development of the cloud gaming industry.
Mr. Chen will address the questions regarding the development of overseas market. For the overseas market, it's actually our strategy is to acquire the traffic before monetization. Over the past few quarters, our domestic business in China has been profitable, which means the majority of our investment has been made overseas, especially in Japan. According to App Annie, Mildom has remained the top video game live streaming app in Japan for the last two quarters. The user size has been developing and sustainable at a very healthy level. Since actually May this year, actually once we gained a very user size in Japan, we actually prioritized our strategy from user accumulation to traffic monetization.
Going forward, we will fully enhance monetization capabilities and gradually narrowing our losses. As such, in the third quarter, we have continued improving our operational efficiency and successfully reduced our losses in the overseas market. Thank you. Next question please, operator.
Thank you. The next question is from Ritchie Sun of HSBC. Please go ahead.
Let me translate the questions myself. First of all, can you update us on the video and community features? What's the update? Also, when does it contribute more in terms of MAU? Second question is, can you comment on the content cost trend in this quarter, and how will it trend going into the future? Thank you.
Uh, uh,
Mr. Su, just the first question. Regarding the video content development and community building are actually part of our content diversification strategy derived from our competitive strength in traditional live streaming businesses. The competitive nature of esports game makes the live streaming the ideal distribution channel to present the excitement of the content and ensure the continuous content offering in order to satisfy the viewing needs of esports users. However, for non-esports game, live streaming is not the best delivery channel for our users. Instead, video content and communities are more suitable forms of media to provide content such as game guides, tutorials, premium videos, and participation in game-related activities. Therefore, we have and will devote additional resources to video content and communities for non-esports games, while maintaining our advantages in the traditional esports segment.
As you know, live streaming, videographic content and community are all interconnected as part of our content ecosystem. We aim to create a separate segment for each game on our platform. We will also cooperate with game developers to develop more comprehensive content and quality content in all content formats. We're committed to offering more diversified content to satisfy the various needs of our users, and in turn, to attract and sustain more users to our platform.
About your second question. In Q3 2021, content costs increased on a YoY basis, mainly driven by additional spending on broadcasting rights for esports tournaments, especially LOL. Additionally, we made further investments in PGC content production as we continue to execute our game-centric content strategy. Looking ahead, given that pricing for the rights of major LPL tournaments have already been determined and that we have managed to control the cost of our self-produced programs, we expect costs associated with esports tournament broadcasting rights and our self-produced content to remain relatively stable for the foreseeable future. Thank you.
On behalf of the management, thank you for joining our call. We look forward to speaking with everyone next quarter. Thank you.
Thank you. That concludes the call today. Thank you everyone for attending. You may now disconnect.