Participants

Ben Li; Chief Financial Officer; NIP Group Inc

Mario Ho; Chairman & Co-Chief Executive Officer; NIP Group Inc

Hicham Chahine; Co-Chief Executive Officer, Director; NIP Group Inc

Marco Chang; Analyst; Gelong Hui Research

Zuyu Wu; Analyst; Huayuan Security

Bo Pie; Analyst; US Tiger Securities

Presentation

Operator

Good morning and good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for standing by and welcome to NIP Group's earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions). Please note that today's event is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to the first speaker today, Mr. Ben Li, CFO of the company. Please go ahead, sir.

Ben Li

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to NIP Group's second half and the full year 2024 earnings call. With us today are our Chairman and co-CEO Mr. Mario Ho, and our co-CEO Mr. Hicham Chahine
You can refer to our second half and a full year financial results on our IR website. You can also assess a replay of this call on our IR website when it becomes available a few hours after its conclusion.
Before we continue, I'd like to refer you to our safe harbor statement in our earnings press release, which also applies to this call, and we will be making forward-looking statements.
Please note that all numbers stated in the following management prepared remarks are in US dollar terms, and we will discuss non-GAAP measures today, which are more thoroughly explained and reconciled to the most comparable measures reported in our earnings releases and findings with the SEC.
I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and co-CEO Mario.

Mario Ho

Good day everyone.
Thank you for joining NIP Group's second half and full year 2024 earnings conference call. I'm Mario Ho, Chairman and co-CEO. Your participation today is greatly valued as we discuss our journey and strategic advancements. 2024 has presented its sets of challenges. Moderate shifts in sponsorship and sentiment have not been uncommon across the industry. Despite these external pressures, NIP Group has demonstrated remarkable adaptability, thanks in large part to the robustness of our diversified business model and the enduring strength of our brand.
During the second half of 2024, we focused on executing our strategic transformation that reflects our broader evolution from a pure e-sports organization to a comprehensive gaming-centric digital entertainment company by building an integrated ecosystem and spans across eSports teams, arenas, events, content, influencer networks, game publishing and hospitality. We are unlocking new revenue opportunities to fuel future top and bottom line growth, and with the consolidation of our global headquarters in Abu Dhabi, our priorities are squarely centered around integrating teams, aligning resources, and streamlining our business lines.
The steps we took in the second half of the year position. Us to meet our goal of building a leaner, more agile, and integrated organization. While it has involved needing internal restructuring and coincided with a challenging global economic environment, we still delivered modest year over year top line growth. Total net revenues increased by 1.8% year over year to USD 45.9 million, led by a 92.6% year over year increase in the event's production revenue.
This performance validates the strategic direction of our business shift and highlights the resilience of our diversified platform. Although macro factors continue to weigh on e-sports sponsorship and talent-driven revenues in the second half, our diversified business mix has helped offset these headwinds and positioned us for longer term growth.
On the cost side, We implemented structural optimizations, including more favorable revenue sharing terms of talent, targeted OPEC reductions across business lines, and greater use of shared infrastructure across business units. These measures have laid the groundwork for a more efficient operating model. That said, the benefits from these cost initiatives were partially offset in 2024 by topline softness in our e-sports and talent segments. As a result, the overall bottom line impact of these efforts has not yet been fully realized.
However, with our Western eSports operations showing early signs of recovery and our revenue diversification initiatives gaining traction across events production, eSports hospitality, and game publishing, we're confident that the structural foundation we've put in place will begin to translate into more improved profitability as these revenues engines scale. Moreover, we expect to be able to unlock efficiency gains from our global consolidated headquarters in Abu Dhabi.
In 2025, we also expect to benefit from new funding support and initiatives from ADIO, which is the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, as well as the Guangxi government and the eSports World Cup Foundation. All of these strategic sources of capital are positioned to improve our cash position and support our operational flexibility. They'll also play a meaningful role in sustaining momentum across several of our key verticals.
With that overview, let me walk you through some of our recent highlights and initiatives across our business lines, starting with eSports. We're beginning to see encouraging signs of recovery and renewed momentum. Despite near term pressures in 2024, we remain confident in the long-term resilience of this segment following a period of strategic restructuring across both our China and Western divisions, we Enter 2025 with a stronger foundation and a clear path forward.
In China, performance was slightly softer, while in the west, our operational overhaul and the revitalization of Ninjas in Pyjamas have laid the groundwork for a return to eSports profitability.
One of our most pivotal catalysts for this turnaround has been our renewed inclusion in the eSports World Cup Foundation's club partner program in March, which has solidified our ongoing participation in the program. The agreement provides us with added visibility and global branding for NIP.eStar, our unified banner of Ninjas in Pyjamas and EStar gaming, while also providing meaningful financial support. As part of this program, we're looking at the exposure to an overall USD 70 million commercial framework through the club championship, marketing programs, and price pool participation. Which has the potential to bolster our revenue streams.
Beyond revenue. This initiative enhances our brand equity and solidifies our position as a globalized e-sports organization, anchored by a more global fan base with teams competing across the Americas, Europe, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. It also allows us to showcase our competitive presence across the industry's broadest competitive footprints.
In parallel, we're seeing increasing momentum across our commercial pipeline. In the west, our revamp operations have attracted new sponsorships, including partnerships with Red Bull, as well as yet to be announced partners in industries such as blockchain, travel, and cryptocurrency.
On the Middle East front, our five year partnership with ADIO isn't just about regional opportunity. It has opened up many commercial conversations globally, laying the groundwork for new monetization opportunities. Our global headquarters in Abu Dhabi has also helped generate local jobs and fund our broader growth ambitions. As we scale up these initiatives, we've strengthened our emphasis on talent development and competitive excellence.
In 2025, our e-sports teams will be supported by expanded infrastructure with a focus on long-term talent stability and sustainable performance. We are taking decisive steps to reinforce our global position and deliver stronger results, both competitively and commercially.
Moving on to our events production business, this vertical has rapidly evolved into one of the strongest engines of growth across our portfolio. In the second half of 2024, revenue from this segment surged 92.6% year over year and 147.5% for the full year.
This momentum reflects both the strong demand for live digital entertainment and our growing ability to deliver large scale premium events across multiple formats, ranging from eSports tournaments to music festivals and cross media activations.
Looking ahead, we are expanding this momentum through a number of strategic initiatives. A centerpiece of this expansion is the new Shenzhen NIP Arena, which officially opened in March through a strategic partnership between our group and Shenzhen polyculture Development.
The new arena serves not only as the exclusive home venue for NIP's League of Legends pro team in South China, but also as a broader cultural landmark for digital entertainment in the Greater Bay Area. At the same time, we're scaling our music festival capabilities with a suite of upgraded projects in the pipeline for 2025 that aim to diversify audience engagement and deepen monetization across ticketing, IP licensing, and sponsorship.
As I mentioned, we are receiving substantial funding support from the Guangxi government, which marks a major milestone in our long-term commitment to developing a digitally integrated entertainment ecosystem in China's emerging regions. As part of this partnership, We are securing up to RMB50 million in strategic support to co-develop a China-ASEAN International Digital sports Industry Park in Nanning. This initiative will serve as a comprehensive digital entertainment hub, encompassing live event spaces, e-sport education, AR VR, R&D centers, and cross-border e-commerce marketing infrastructure.
The project reflects not only the government's confidence in NIP Group's platform, but also our shared ambition to accelerate growth of the digital economy and export Chinese cultural IP to the Southeast Asia. Together, these initiatives are reshaping our event production business into a scalable and multi-purpose revenue engine.
Beyond our core eSports and events production pillars, we continue to make strategic shifts and diversify our businesses, contributing to NIP Group's broader ecosystem and long-term growth and talent management. We've also begun anchoring this vertical more closely to the regional hubs, such as our ongoing collaboration with the Optics Valley Project in Wuhan, which aims to cultivate a new generation of digital influencers and e-sports content creators.
In game publishing, we formally entered this space with the launch of our first title in December 2024. We're now building a focused pipeline of high potential monettizable games. Our next major release will be Color Man, a fast-paced competitive doodle game. We're planning to begin close beta testing towards the end of the second quarter, with a full commercial launch planned for the second half of 2025. This title will mark our entry into the casual competitive game genre.
In eSports hospitality. We are preparing to open our first S tier integrated gaming entertainment complex in Chengdu by the end of third quarter. The nearly 4,000 square meter facility will combine eSports themed hotel rooms, a premium internet cafe, tournament, and community event space, as well as merchandise retail. In addition to hosting live tournaments and anime content crossover events, the complex will serve as a physical anchor for experiential engagement, live streaming activations, and even educational workshops, setting a new benchmark for offline gaming destinations in China.
Together, these initiatives are reshaping the scope and scalability of our business. They contribute incremental revenue and strengthen the broader ecosystem that supports our long-term digital entertainment strategy. With that, I'll hand it over to our co-CEO Hicham Chahine, who will walk you through our Middle East expansion and share more about our operational roadmap and future strategy.

Hicham Chahine

Thank you, Mario.
Let me take a few moments to walk you through our strategic progress in the Middle East and how this expansion ties directly into our vision for sustainable growth and long-term profitability.
As Mario mentioned, our journey towards becoming a global digital entertainment group is well underway, and the cornerstone of this transformation is the establishment of our consolidated global headquarters in Abu Dhabi.
This is not simply a regional play for us. It is a structural shift that allows us to bridge our businesses in China, Europe, and Americas, and operate as a truly integrated global platform.
Under our landmark 5-year partnership with ADIO, we're receiving up to USD 40 million over four years in financial incentives and additional non-financial support. These resources directly accelerate our regional scale up and allow us to expand in multiple verticals from eSports operations and talent management to game publishing, creative studios, and event production.
The agreement outlines clear KPIs for operational deployment, job creation, and regional contribution.
I'm pleased to share that the execution against these KPIs is already underway. We started hiring across core functions, relocating operational teams, and expanding our infrastructure and office footprint within the Abu Dhabi Global Market, also known as ADGM.
This puts us firmly on track to deliver against our commitments while positioning us to capture market leadership in a region that is rapidly growing and hungry for innovation.
In addition, we're receiving valuable support from AD Gaming and the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism separately. This includes a 30% subsidy on payroll for roles moved to the UAE, subsidized offices and production facilities, and visa sponsorship for relocating key international talents.
These benefits will enable us to drive future OPEX and CAPEX savings, giving us the operational flexibility to scale faster and more efficiently.
We see this as a unique structural advantage. Almost no other e-sports organization, and only a handful of gaming companies can match our depth of funding.
What makes the Middle East so compelling for us it's not just the financial incentive. It is the demographics and the opportunity to be at the forefront of an important cultural moment in gaming. Nearly 90% of the population in the region plays video games, and the majority of them are under 35 years old.
We're seeing a fundamental shift in aspiration, where younger generation look beyond traditional career paths and actively seek opportunities in gaming, content creation, and e-sports.
This is where NIP Group is uniquely positioned to lead. As Mario said, we're building a full stack entertainment ecosystem, and here in the UAE we're laying down the foundation for it, creating hundreds of new jobs, opening new verticals, and empowering the next generation of digital professionals. That also explains why NIP Group has been appointed as a cornerstone government partner to drive that growth.
We're also building bridges across regions. What works in Asia, we can adapt the scale in the Middle East. What is proven in the West, we can bring east for eastward.
This cross-market synergy is one of our biggest assets and will increasingly define our competitive edge in 2025 and beyond.
Zooming out, this expansion aligns with our broader transformation goals from a pure play eSports business into a multi-segment digital entertainment group. We're now generating revenue from eSports, event production, talent management, game publishing, and soon eSports themed hospitality. This is the future of an IP group, diversified, scalable and built to thrive in a global ecosystem.
To that end, we remain disciplined in our approach to profitability. We've made solid progress on reducing costs, including restructuring of revenue share agreements, consolidating infrastructure, and streamlining operations. Yeah, we also understand that sustainable profitability will come from scale. That's why we're so focused on enabling multi-region expansion and activating new revenue levers as well.
Committed to drive top line growth with more strategic initiatives and additional funding, we're laying a stronger foundation for revenue diversification and expansion across multiple dimensions that now also includes gain distribution and hospitality. We're also actively exploring broader opportunities such as leveraging AI and pursuing targeted M&A opportunities to accelerate growth and build long-term shareholder value.
In closing, I want to reiterate our confidence in the direction we're headed. NIP Group is not just responding to market trends. We're helping shape the next chapter of global gaming and digital entertainment. With the foundation we've laid this last year and the momentum we're carrying into 2025, we're more confident than ever in our ability to deliver long-term value for investors, partners, and fans around the world.
Thank you again for your continued support. I will now turn this call over to Ben Li, who will discuss our financial performance in more detail.

Ben Li

Thank you, Hicham, and hello everyone. I'm pleased to share our financial results for the second half and full year of 2024.
In short, 2024 was a challenging year, yet one of purposeful reshaping as detailed by Mario and Hicham.
Despite topline softness in the second half of 2024, NIP Group's diversified business model together with the company's more efficient cost structure will enable the company to effectively capture future revenue opportunities while enhancing profitability.
Total net revenue in the second half reached USD 45.9 million, up 1.8% compared with the same period back to 2023.
Growth continues to be driven by event production, where revenue almost doubled year over year to USD 14.6 million. E-sports team operations contributed revenue of USD 5.9 million, a decline of 49.7% year over year reflecting softer adviser spending and sponsorships resulted from our rebuild and our satisfactory tournament performance.
Revenue from talent management services was broadly stable at USD 25.4 million, down 1.3% year over year and mean our transition to higher performance platforms.
Gross profit for the second half came in at USD 0.6 million and the growth margin was 1.4% compared with 10% in the prior year period.
Gross margin compression was a direct result of a heavier mix of large-scale music and a sports event, which carry relatively lower margins and a drop in high margin sponsorship income.
GAAP net loss widened to USD 8 million compared with a net loss of USD 2 million in the prior year period, mainly due to the top line softness and a higher marketing spend tied to our game publishing vertical. Adjusted EBITDA was negative USD 7.3 million compared with USD 1 million a year ago.
Turning to the full year. Total revenue reached USD 85.3 million, an increase of 1.9% over 2023. Event production revenue surge 147.5% to USD 23.3 million. ESports team revenue fell 32% to USD 14.7 million. Talent management revenue declined 10% to USD 47.3 million as the result of our platform upgrade strategy.
Full year gross profit was USD 3 million, producing a gross margin of 3.5% compared with 8.6% a year over year. Cap net loss narrowed slightly to USD 12.7 million from a net loss of USD 13.3 million the previous year.
And Adjusted EBITDA was USD 9.9 million compared with negative USD 1.7 million back to 2023. We closed the year with USD 9.6 million in cash and equivalent, up from USD 7.6 million ,12 months earlier.
Turning to 2025. We expect to scale our business offerings with tighter cost control, drive sports team recovery as a new roster and the eSports World Cup partnership gain traction.
And unlock additional revenue growth opportunities from publishing events, and hospitality, all supported by UAE incentives and subsidies.
And we expect the cost optimization and unified back-office systems to help steer the company back towards better profitability.
This concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, we are now ready to take questions. Thank you.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. (Operator Instructions).
One moment for the first question. First question comes from Marco Chang of Gelong Hui Research. Please go ahead.

Marco Chang

Hi, this is Marco from Gelong Hui Research. Thanks for taking my question. I have two questions for the management. The first question is regarding, your event production unit and the margin. So, your event production revenues in the second half, 2024, nearly doubled year over year and now represent almost one third of your top line. Your margins compressed to 10%. And as you mentioned, because of new large scale music events hosted by the company. So what were the primary drivers of the 93% year over year growth in event production revenue in the second half? And is the lower margin profile of the event production segment in the second half a structural characteristic of large scale music events, or should they expect margins to move higher as volume ramp up and utilization improve?

Mario Ho

Okay, hi, this is Mario. So the doubling year over year growth was primarily driven because we hosted a much higher number of events in 2024 because of our improved integration of internal external resources during the period. Now, during the period we were able to secure finals of multiple very significant titles from Tencent and NetEase.
Now, essentially consolidating and solidifying our status as the top three events production company for eSports events in China. Now, the margin dip was deliberate as we did more front loaded staffing, marketing fees in order to secure the tier one festivals and arena events for 2025, which we've been able to, with an example of Kings of Honor, local finals that we're going to be hosting.
Now, we do expect the margins to show improvement for few reasons. The first one, Is that we're going to have our infrastructure investments in Shenzhen NIP Arena and Guangxi Digital Sports Park in place for 2025 and onwards. With these investments in place, for example, the NIP Arena will be upgraded from an 800 seater to a 2,500 seater. A lot of these major events will be able to host in our own facilities, using our own equipment rather than using third party and actually paying fees for that.
Now, the second reason that we expect the margin to improve is because of the difference of how we'll be running these festivals. Firstly, the number of festivals will be increasing as this is a very fast emerging market in mainland China, growing very rapidly after COVID. And at the same time, we see that there will be a lot of demographic overlaps with our existing ecosystem, and this presents great branding opportunities across our entire digital entertainment platform because a lot of the goers of music festivals coincide with gamers.
Now, a lot of these music festivals we've been looking from specific fundings from third party investors event per event, but as we really break through with this business model, we'll be self funding a lot of the events and therefore a lot of the economics will go to us rather than third party investors and therefore we expect the margins to increase. Thank you.

Marco Chang

Got it. Thanks. Yeah. So my second question is regarding the music festival. So, can you elaborate on your music festival pipeline and how do you see the growth of musical festivals in 2025 and how will they contribute to your overall profitability?

Mario Ho

Sure thing, this is Mario again. 2025, you will see a lot of growth in terms of the number of music festivals and types of events, for us in 2025 at NIP Group. In terms of music festivals, we expect to host another 10, for the remainder of the year across major cities and also regional cities, with festivals selling tickets to tens of thousands of people on multiple days each time. At the same time, apart from music festivals, we're also doing top talent concerts. So for example, we'll have two concerts at the end of the year by one of China's most famous artists, Yan Chen.
Now, in terms of margin improvement, I've already answered that in the in the earlier question. As we look to do more self-funding on these events, we'll see margins improve. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you for the question. One moment for the next question.
Next question comes from the line of Zuyu Wu from Huayuan Security. Please go ahead.

Zuyu Wu

Thank you for the invitation management team. I'm the analyst from Huayuan Security. I have two questions about our sports team. The first one is e-sports team revenue for, about, [1,500] in, second half of 2024. Can you give us a sense of, health of e-sports team revenue in 2025 year-to-date and whether you expect e-sports team revenue to show growth in 2025 over 2024?
This is my question, first question.

Hicham Chahine

All right, great. This is Hicham. I'll answer that question.
What you saw in 2024 and the primarily two reasons for dip in eSports revenue is, one deliberate, which is the primary reason for the revenue drop and then you have a secondary which is the market conditions. So I'll start by answering general outline for why the revenue dipped in 2024 and that was a very deliberate decision for us to restructure our largest revenue driving eSports team and primarily we did that in the West, but also we did that on the mobile side in the East as well.
So when you decide to restructure an e-sports team, what tends to happen is that you will take a hit on how well you are ranked, which is a temporarily thing as you're chasing higher performance in the future. So going into 2024, we decided to do a large amount of changes to our eSports teams and that led to us dropping in rankings. And when you drop in rankings, also a large proportion of the revenue goes away temporarily. And primarily that revenue is tied to digital itemization. It is tied to prize money, it's tied to the revenue shares and so on, but it was necessary for us to rebuild the teams and take that temporarily hit on revenue in order to put us in a good place competitively from 2025 and beyond.
And what is very nice to see is that finally after the 2024 restructuring, we have started very well when it comes to performance in 2025 and particularly if you look at the Counter-Strike side, which is a Western game that we participate in and a large revenue driver for NIP. We had a 2024 where we really didn't compete at tier one events because of the restructuring and rebuilding of the teams. Now that we go into 2025 and in 11 days from now, NIPCS is back at tier one events by playing an event called PGL Astana in Kazakhstan, which means that when you're back at tier one events, you will start revenue seeing coming back. So revenue from prize money, revenue from digital itemization, the revenue shares, club champion, club prize money pools, they are now back. So that means that that deliberate decision to rebuild is paying off and now starting in May '25, you will start seeing that revenue come back to the e-sports side of it.
So that is extremely good and extremely nice. Then we obviously have softness and the e-sports and gaming market, sponsorship has been a little bit tougher than in the past. But with the uptick in performance that we now are seeing in the beginning of 2025, not only are the variable revenue streams coming back, but as Mario also said earlier, we renewed our partnership with Red Bull. We're also announcing three new partnerships and they come off the back of improved performance.
Then also things that are happening which will lead to larger revenue generation than before is that we were included in the club partnership for eSports World Cup, where we're now partaking in USD 70 million in team payout that comes from marketing, prize money, and participation.
So, I would say in general 2024 we regard it as a rebuilding year that led to a revenue impact. We're going into 2025 with our performance is not back. We're climbing the ranking. We're playing tier one events again, which leads to revenue generation and a positive outlook.

Zuyu Wu

Thank you. My second question is, can you talk about the benefits of joining, EWC, the ESports World Cup Foundation partner program, and how these benefits may, manifest in 2025?

Hicham Chahine

Yeah, thank you for the question. I'll take that one as well. Some of the points are what I touched on earlier. There's a couple of benefits being in the eSports World Cup, and obviously we're extremely happy and thrilled that we are recognized as one of the largest teams in the world by being included, given that it's quite a It's quite a a manifestation in terms of brand power, brand pool and size, to be recognized as one of the biggest world teams in the world to be included in it.
The benefits from being in the eSports World Cup program primarily relates to funding and provides us additional large revenue streams and revenue diversification. As I said earlier, we are now partaking in USD 70 million in revenue pools that is distributed through the club championship, by us running marketing initiatives on behalf of them and also price pools.
The second, large benefit of this is the global exposure and branding it gives us. And this relates directly to our direct monetization when it comes, for example, to sponsorships, right, when it comes to continuing climbing rankings and so on.
And the last part, which is important is it's actually one of the first opportunities we have as NIP to consolidate the competing teams that we have in NIP and EStar, to demonstrate, aggregate the global fan base and marketing position in order to monetize and drive as large revenue share pool from the USD 70 million as we can. Because in the USD 70 million and USD 0.01 that is a competitive performance, we have the largest competitive footprint in the world, which means that we are competing in a large amount of games. But also by putting NIP and EStar together and the fan base, the marketing program is very much engagement fanbase driven in terms of, exposure which drives a larger proportion of revenue.
So in that sense, aggregating that positions across the whole group is the first time we can do, which is extremely exciting and that's why we're doing NIP. EStar.
And lastly, from a marketing expansion point, it is extremely good and helpful in terms of our expansion to the Middle East, to have a lot of activity going on in the Middle East. Not only for what we're building up but also when you look at commercial pipeline and revenue generation from brands, that now is easier and unblocks because of us having a lot of local activity in particular when it comes to competitive teams.
I hope that answered your question.

Operator

Thank you for the question.
Our next question comes from Bo Pie from US Tiger Securities. Please go ahead.

Bo Pie

Hi, management. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two, if I may. So the first question is, could you detail the execution timeline for the HQ, build out, and can you give us range of the P&L impact of the ADIO incentives in fiscal 2025? And then the second question is, I know the Shangdu STU complex will open soon. So what KPIs would you monitor and how replicable is this model to other Cities? Thank you.

Hicham Chahine

Great. Thank you for the question, though. I'll answer the first one and then I will hand on the Shangdu question to Mario.
If you look at the Abu Dhabi execution of the HQ, that is well underway. We had redeployments of staff moving here last year. The execution of the ADIO agreement came into effect in the beginning of this year, which grants us USD 40 million over four years in financial incentives. And in addition, we have a wide range of non-financial support.
How that deal is structured is essentially USD 40 million that's split over 4 years, which will mean USD 10 million per year by us meeting a set of KPIs which are quite achievable, and we're already starting executing on those to achieve those KPIs and we're very good on track. The incentives are non-equity, so it is a pure, subsidies to the company and will as such impact us in the amounts that we trigger them.
And in addition to that, we also for all the staff that gets redeployed to the UAE, we have a 30% payroll subsidies, which significantly lowers the operational costs that we have and then particularly when we now consolidate our HQ have and move human capital here that can give us significant OPEC benefits, right? So one thing is, the Abu agreement, the other one is the collaboration with Abu Dhabi Gaming and DCT.
And on the non-financial incentive side, we're also reducing costs in the sense of support when it comes to facilities, offices, and infrastructures, the visa sponsorships are also part of that. And in general how we're executing the agreement right now, I'm very pleased with the progress that we have of it and and which track we we are on executing towards the KPI.

Mario Ho

Right, this is Mario. I'll take the question on the, Shangdu STU complex. So the KPIs that we look to monitor, definitely will be occupancy rates, once this business model is live. We are definitely very excited to prove that the payback period on these eSport hotel complexes will beat the same, hotel, if it were to be the same building as a four-star or a three-star hotel.
Now, how replica this model is, in other cities, the answer to that is actually very. Now we expect Shangdu to do very well in terms of the eSports hotel industry, and we'll be matching or opening very close to the League of Legends finals, which the entire Shangdu will have a very big eSports theme and a big excitement around eSports during our opening.
Now, of course, we'll be building our brand as an S tier brand going forward, and even as the Hotel is being renovated and renovations are being done right now. We've already attracted a lot of interest from our existing partners, such as our offline arena partners in Shenzhen, in Wuhan, and also the government of Nanning, which we will be definitely looking at the right places to open these esport hospitality hotels in these upcoming cities where we already have established very strong partnerships.
We will be spending a lot of resources to ensure that the STU project in Shangdu is a success. With few months of very good numbers, we will expect to franchise this outwards. Now, of course, we'll be looking at opening more S tier self-funded hotels, but the majority of hotels that will be opening in the next few years will be done by the franchise model after we have proven our numbers and the strength of our brand.
Thank you.

Bo Pie

Got you. It's very helpful. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you for the question. As we are approaching the end of our scheduled time, I'd like to turn the call back to management for their closing remarks.

Ben Li

Thank you again for joining our call today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us to make a request through our IR website. We look forward to speaking with everyone in our next call. Have a good day.