Insane Brother Yang is no longer the familiar figure we often see on live commerce platforms. Once online every day selling products on live streams, he now mainly lets his apprentices take charge of the show. It was only on April 27 that he returned to live commerce, after almost a month of not broadcasting. Meanwhile, his live sessions in February of this year were few and far between.
This internet celebrity, who once securely topped the live commerce rankings, is quietly shifting his battlefield. In February this year, for the first time, he failed to make it into the top 20 of the short-video live streamer sales chart. However, amidst widespread concern, Brother Yang seems to have his own plans. He intends to reduce the frequency of live streams and instead invest his energy in the film and television industry, indicating that he might even personally direct and produce in the future.
Not long ago, “Insane Brother Yang’s” company, The Three Sheep Group, launched a new account on Douyin with great fanfare—“The Three Sheep Theater”—promising to release a series of self-produced quality short dramas. Their first short drama is named “Fu Ye, Your Substitute Bride is a Big Boss,” which has entered post-production. This new business sector successfully attracted 42,000 followers and has already released 10 videos.
Revealing the forces behind this short drama, the producers include Hefei Sanhua Film & Television Media Co., Ltd. and Hangzhou Yimeng Culture Media Co., Ltd. Adapted from Tomato’s novel of the same name, it tells a unique romantic story where the female protagonist becomes a powerful and successful woman. Notably, although Brother Yang did not appear personally in the drama, many of the leading actors are from his company.
The reason why Insane Brother Yang succeeded in crossing industries is actually quite logical. Tracing back through his history, we find that this live streaming star has shown a keen interest in the film and television industry from the start. Before he became famous, he debuted as a comedic short video creator, dabbling in a wide range of genres, from family comedy to plot twists—he is skilled in all aspects. In an interview, he once admitted that he aspired to become an actor and had already received offers from directors. Therefore, it is not surprising that The Three Sheep Group is attempting to make a significant move in the film and television industry.
Revolving around his dream of being in the film and television industry, Brother Yang and his team have already begun practical capital layout. Last April, he founded the Hefei Leading Sheep Culture Media Company, and in the following November, The Three Sheep and Forest Film Drawing established a joint venture—Hefei Jubai Xing Media Technology Co., Ltd.—investing heavily in the film and television industry.
Since December 2023, the corporate account “The Three Sheep Network,” established by Brother Yang, has been successively releasing new series of short dramas starring its artists, including “Anti-corruption Storm” and “Let Me Love You Once More,” etc. To date, these works have launched 11 episodes, attracting more than 70 million cumulative views, although the figures are not particularly outstanding.
Strictly speaking, these works might be somewhat misleadingly called short plays. Each short play is about one minute long, and each story typically only includes three to four episodes, lacking strong cohesion, but focuses on creating around specific minor themes, such as “screen corruption.” Essentially, they are more about attempting to use this small-scale creative form to hone the acting and performance skills of their talents.
Particularly noteworthy is the resident actor Zhou Qifeng, who was personally appointed as the Chief Director of Content Production by Xiao Yang Ge during the first anniversary event of the San Yang Network.
It’s worth mentioning that the producer of the first short play “Fu Ye, Your Substitute Bride is a Big Boss” by San Yang Network is Hefei Sanhua Film and Television Media Co., Ltd., which was established in April 2024. Although there seems to be no direct connection between the company’s legal person and shareholders and San Yang, both have the same registered address at 3336 Xiyour Road, High-tech Zone, Hefei City, 1st Building 3rd Floor, suggesting some kind of connection between the two.
In this regard, attempts to contact the official San Yang Group for verification have not yet received any response. In the comment section of related videos published by San Yang Theater, the official did not give up interacting with fans, mentioning that there will be authorized promotions and other hosts participating in the subsequent performances.
However, although the first short play has been completed, details about its broadcast time, channels, and whether it will be pay-to-watch remain somewhat mysterious.
Currently, the creation and production of short plays are quite favored by the market, but the process involves a series of complex steps from scriptwriting, casting, filming to editing. The production cycle of short plays is long, and costs are high, requiring significant investment of time and money, which is not something that ordinary people can easily afford. The market competition is getting fiercer, and regulation is increasingly strict. A document called “The Latest Work Reminder on Micro-short Play Filing” has indeed been implemented, stipulating that from June 1, 2024, micro-short plays that have not undergone review and filing will not be allowed to be broadcast on the internet.
In contrast, Xiao Yang Ge’s fame in the live commerce industry is much higher, allowing for daily streaming with higher efficiency, and the ability to promote through snippet live streaming. As such, it raises questions about why Xiao Yang Ge chose to enter the short play market at this time.
On the evening of April 27, 2023, Xiao Yang Ge ended a month of rest and returned to live commerce streaming. During the live stream, he revealed that he achieved an astonishing sales volume exceeding 100 million yuan in just one hour.
Analysts believe that the live commerce model has brought him direct conversion results, but due to the general entertainment nature of Xiao Yang Ge’s content, the scope for imagination is somewhat limited. The creation of live content fundamentally depends on the host’s professional competence, supply chain management ability, brand reputation, and other factors, and San Yang lacks a clear advantage to surpass industry leaders.
From an industry perspective, the live commerce industry has transitioned from a previous state of wild growth to the current standardized development, and it faces constantly increasing challenges, including the difficulty of sustained management, the test of adapting to regulation, and the continuous pressure on profits.
Facing such challenges and market changes, the transformation of The Three Sheep seems imperative. Last October, the exposure of the bottom price agreement with Florasis during Li Jiaqi’s livestream event directly revealed the complex interrelations among top livestreamers, brands, and the real economy. This incident sparked widespread discussion online. Another example is this year’s Consumer Rights Day, March 15th, when Xiao Yang became the focus of public opinion for selling problematic deducted meat products. The details of his refund were not made public, but the incident undoubtedly had a huge impact on consumer trust and Xiao Yang’s personal brand value. According to “Live-streaming and Consumer Rights Protection Sentiment Analysis Report (2023)”, the Crazy Xiao Yang’s product rights protection issues accounted for a high 31.3%, ranking second with main issues concentrated on false advertising, substandard product quality, and inappropriate sales practices, with a return and exchange rate significantly higher than the industry average. As traffic grows and regulation becomes more stringent, top livestreamers must guard against the destruction of negative public opinion while enjoying massive attention.
Compared with the product quality issues that dissuade consumers and the increasingly stringent regulations in the decelerating livestream e-commerce market, these livestreamers, despite their high traffic, face increasingly challenging circumstances. It is hard to determine how long Crazy Xiao Yang’s IP will remain popular and how long the live-streaming e-commerce business model will last. Xiao Yang himself seems to be aware of this crisis. Since last year, he frequently mentions in his live streams the desire to retreat behind the scenes, lamenting the loss of personal space due to fame, where even attending a kindergarten parents’ meeting could become a hot topic. He has also tried to cultivate apprentices to share potential risks, but so far, it seems no one can fill that role. For example, a previously promising apprentice “Traffic Light Yellow” was suspended from streaming for several months due to vulgar content. However, it is commendable that the operations of Xiao Yang’s company are becoming mature—the establishment of the Three Sheep Group on December 11, 2023, signifies a deeper business integration. Unlike relying on a single business model, company operation needs diversification to maintain healthy growth.
Although the rise of new forces has not yet kept pace, the urgency to expand new businesses is very clear, and thus Xiao Yang sees the short video industry as a new opportunity. Compared to livestream e-commerce, the short video industry is obviously more novel and dynamic. According to data from iResearch, the scale of China’s online short video market continues to rise, reaching 37.39 billion RMB in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 267.65%, and it is expected to exceed 100 billion by 2027. Even though the short video industry also experienced a series of challenges from the second half of last year, including tighter regulation, raised thresholds, and the entry and declining conversion rates of buying traffic from famous directors and stars – making it increasingly difficult for even the top companies to make money – Tang Dynasty, with ten years of experience in film investment and promotion, believes that non-traditional themed short dramas, such as those avoiding sweet pet and overbearing boss plots, still have great potential.
Taking the “Fish Pond Theory” as an example, imagine the platform as a pond, where production companies are like fishing enthusiasts, users are the fish in the pond, and short dramas are like the bait that entices the fish to bite. Tang Dynasty emphasizes, “When more and more anglers use the same kind of bait, the fish will lose interest in this bait and become difficult to catch. But once a new bait is used, the situation will be different.” Although livestream e-commerce has been indispensable, far-sighted insights and transformation upgrades appear to be particularly important.
Facing the changes in the industry, Xiao Yang Ge and the Three Sheep Group, which he leads, must explore new business models besides live-streaming e-commerce if they want to maintain long-term development. The boom of short drama industry undoubtedly becomes a choice with potential. The “star-making” effect of short dramas is self-evident, creating opportunities to push the group’s influencers to stardom, thereby feeding their live-streaming e-commerce traffic and converting it into actual profits.
How likely is it to succeed in the short drama industry? For those speculators who hope to make quick money, it may be too late. However, for those enterprises who truly wish to focus on content creation, the timing is not inopportune, according to industry insider Yan Min’s opinion. Yan Min mentioned in an interview that the short drama industry highly values the return on investment brought by traffic, and capital and traffic are precisely where the Three Sheep Group holds advantages.
According to data from the e-commerce platform Electric Number Treasure in 2023, “Crazy Xiao Yang Ge” reached nearly 7.8 billion yuan in total transactions in the live-stream e-commerce field, ranking fifth among all live-stream e-commerce influencers. From this data, it’s not hard to see that the Three Sheep Group has great revenue potential, so it’s not surprising to see Xiao Yang Ge generously invest 30 million yuan in November last year to treat fans to a concert.
At the same time, compared to short dramas, which cost from hundreds of thousands to millions of yuan, the Three Sheep Group obviously has sufficient financial resources for investment. However, to gain a foothold in the short drama market, Tang Dynasty warns that even insiders may not necessarily make money, not to mention outsiders.
The challenges of creating short dramas are also numerous, such as issues with actors’ performances, screenplay writing, and finding extras. Considering that the first short drama was filmed in Hefei, which naturally does not have the same film resources as Hengdian in Hangzhou, the Three Sheep Theatre also pointed out the inconvenience of finding suitable extras on social platforms.
Currently, the main challenges faced by Xiao Yang Ge’s team in producing short dramas include:
- Market insight, combining short dramas with MCN may be a future trend, but it is vital to accurately select a niche market.
- The problem with actors’ performances, as many of them were previously anchors, their acting abilities are still in question.
- The choice of partners is also crucial; their first short drama partner, Hangzhou Yi Meng, recently underwent a core team restructuring, which undoubtedly affects the quality of the series.
In the eyes of industry professionals, although Hangzhou Yi Meng has indeed undergone internal adjustments, this has not had a significant impact on them. With the shareholders being gaming companies and with capital support, they have good operational capabilities, and the core person responsible for investment return management has ample experience and reliable ability.
Ultimately, for Yan Min and other industry experts, successful short drama production also requires strong script adaptation capacity. The script is the key to the success of a drama, testing if the screenwriter can create content that captures the audience’s attention. As Xiao Yang Ge and his team are just stepping into the short drama industry, they not only need to attract and nurture more outstanding writers, but also invest time and effort into training their existing talent.
In the current tide of internet celebrities, “entrepreneur” seems to have become the ultimate identity pursuit for many online influencers. Many well-known streamers are gradually fading from the frontlines, working behind the scenes to build their own streaming teams, and through capital planning, aspire to transition from internet celebrities to entrepreneurs.
Take the leading figure Simba for example; his founded company, Xin Xuan Group, already encompasses multiple sectors like supply chain management, internet celebrity incubation, and digital e-commerce, employing over 4000 staff members. Simba himself not only acts as a mentor to 60 apprentices, but his team also boasts more than 10 streamers who can achieve sales figures exceeding a hundred million in a single live stream event, demonstrating their strength in this field.
Moreover, the streamers under Xin Xuan Group have shown impressive performance. In the estimated sales ranking of Top 10 live streamers on Kuaishou, Xin Xuan Group’s Dandan, Simba, and Shi Da Piaoliang all rank within the top three, with remarkable sales achievements.
Even when Simba himself isn’t personally selling goods, the business empire he has built shows strong self-sufficient capability. Although the Three Sheep Group behind Xiao Yang Ge hasn’t developed to the scale of Xin Xuan, his ventures in various fields are also noteworthy, including hosting electronic music festivals, creating his own brand “Xiao Yang’s Premium Selection”, and expanding his live streaming business to overseas markets.
According to Tianyancha, the Three Sheep (Hefei) Holding Group Co., Ltd., managed by Xiao Yang Ge, has more than a dozen subsidiaries, with a business scope from supply chain management to big data and live stream e-commerce. Although there were rumors that Three Sheep planned to set up an investment securities department and seek a listing, CEO Du Gang denied this, stating that the company prefers to serve as a mid-platform service company, with providing services as their main business model.
While Xiao Yang Ge has attempted multiple trials to transform into an “entrepreneur” identity, industry observer Zhang Shule believes there is a lack of tight connections among these attempts. He points out that the current business model for these online celebrities is mostly a replication of past successes in live stream sales, training more streamers, attempting to ensure income through quantity, but the longevity and stability of this model are limited and carry the risk of collapse.
Zhang Shule also mentioned that Xiao Yang Ge feels the crisis and tries to go further, but his business layout seems rather scattered. Although Xiao Yang Ge still maintains high popularity in this field, if the various business branches do not develop well, it will ultimately affect the performance of his main business—live selling.
