The live broadcast of card opening that has made countless netizens addicted, with an investment of several thousand, can you earn 20,000 yuan a month?

A new form of live streaming, which induces consumers to purchase blind boxes in the live streaming room, which are then opened and displayed by the anchor on the spot. It is highly interactive and has extremely high entertainment value and sense of immersion.

"I wish my boss good luck."

In front of the screen, there are a lot of blind boxes, which are beautifully packaged and the contents are not visible. The host picked up three packages and kept moving his hands. He used a knife to quickly cut and open the boxes.

Luckily, in this round, the character badge that the boss specifically asked for appeared. The host raised his voice and showed the badge closely in front of the camera: "Boss, it feels great, right, boss?"

This is one of the most popular live broadcast rooms nowadays - live broadcast of opening blind boxes.

Friends who have seen the live broadcast may be a little surprised. Hey, I saw this thing not long ago, why is it so popular?

It’s so popular. If you open various short video platforms, you will see this kind of live broadcast room at random.

Even at 3 p.m. on weekdays, when traffic is relatively low, a search will reveal a large number of card-dismantling anchors who are making rapid progress.

Of course, there are also many friends who don’t usually pay much attention to the second dimension. What are they doing? I don’t understand.

Blind boxes are boxes whose contents cannot be seen. Different items are placed inside, and no one knows what is inside before opening the box. Blind boxes contain popular anime peripherals. Different blind box series contain different contents, from character cards, badges, to standees, etc.

In the past, consumers would open the blind boxes themselves to reveal the secrets at home, but with live broadcast of blind box opening, consumers buy the blind boxes in the live broadcast room, and the host opens and displays the boxes on the spot.

Is there a big difference between dismantling it yourself or having the host do it?

Too big.

During the live broadcast of opening the blind box, the host's interactive creation and the gazes and cheers from the audience outside the venue make it easy to get addicted.

Many consumers will make a "wish" in the notes when placing an order, such as wanting to drive a certain character, or wanting to hear the host say an anime line. The host will also interact cordially, "Boss, you want this, right? I'll help you pick it out carefully."

The professional anchors are extremely familiar with every set of cards and related animations. After unpacking the cards, they will read out the nicknames of the characters in the circle, and even "add drama" according to the results of unpacking the boxes. For example, I bought three packs of cards, and the first and third packs turned out to be the same. The anchor clamped his hands and leaned close to the camera: "Boss, it's hamburgers, boss."

In addition to the interaction, what makes people addicted is the "game" over the value of the content.

Blind box series, with strict hierarchy.

Taking the My Little Pony Fun Movie Pack as an example, it is divided into N cards, R cards, SR cards, and SSR cards. The manufacturer will have a certain ratio during production, but the specific cards that are opened are random.

For example, in a blind box of "Jujutsu Kaisen", each badge is divided into regular, small hidden (hidden), and large hidden (hidden) according to the drop rate and the popularity of the character.

Cards can be circulated in the secondary market, and the rarer they are, the more expensive they are.

If you come up with something really good, it can immediately trigger the "drama queen" switch of the anchors.

Some anchors specially prepared a summoning bell, and they would press the bell when they got some good stuff. The better the stuff, the harder they would press. Some anchors were surprised and shouted, "Oh my god, is this one so bad?", "Boss, it's really bad today".

There are audiences for your crazy output, and envious people send comments in groups, "So lucky", "It's finally here", "Congratulations, teacher", and waves of cheers come to you in front of the screen through the comment area.

Some live broadcast rooms also have special "additional disassembly" gameplay.

For example, there is a small sign on the right side of this live broadcast room, which says a certain badge X 7 and a certain badge X 3. The characters corresponding to these two badges are "Real Person" and "Brain Flower" respectively.

This means that if you open a blind box with a "real person", you can open 7 more packs for free. If you open a blind box with a "brain flower", you can open 3 more packs for free. If the additional card packs "win" again, you can "open more" for free. There is no upper limit, which is very exciting.

Under the mechanism of small-scale risk-taking, there were many lucky consumers who bought 3 packs and ended up opening 30 packs. The onlookers jokingly called it "eating and taking at the same time."

In addition, there is “hide and seek”, where you have to keep opening the boxes until certain characters appear, and “carrying the box”, where you can take the whole box away.

This form of live card unpacking actually originated from the star card circle. In the past, because the price of a single box was too expensive (sometimes as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars), merchants split the value of a box of cards and sold them. A group of card friends would sit in front of the live broadcast room waiting for their own card to appear, and then the merchant would pack and ship them together.

But nowadays, people love to open cards in the live broadcast room, not just because of the price.

The strong sense of immersion, the game rules of "take a chance and your bicycle will turn into a motorcycle", and the ubiquitous emotional value are the reasons why countless consumers flock to the card-opening live broadcast room.

The market determines economic benefits, and economic benefits affect business processes.

Take the top anchor @烧鸡拆卡, who broadcasts live card opening, as an example. The account currently has 1.11 million followers on Douyin. The live broadcast starts at 17:30 every day. After the broadcast starts, the number of orders piles up quickly, and it is common to wait for an hour to be queued.

Click on any product in the live broadcast room and it has been sold for 24,000...

So, will live broadcast of card opening be a good business?

I contacted a friend who does live broadcast card opening. His company entered this track in mid-2023 and has now expanded to four live broadcast rooms. I witnessed the development of this business from a blue ocean to "overcrowded". I found an afternoon to visit his company~

Compared with other types of live broadcast rooms, the "facilities" of the Chaika live broadcast room are simple and crude.

An ordinary cubicle, two tables, equipped with a stand and lights for live streaming, and if you have the ability, you can add a few rows of shelves for card packs, and a card-opening live streaming room is set up. The overall cost is only a few thousand yuan.

After the consumer places an order, the assistant prints the express note, and the anchor opens the card and displays it based on the information. After the display is completed, the opening is "sealed" with the express note, and then placed in the carton to be shipped. The next day, it is transported to a separate small room, and the packing staff completes further delivery.

A card removal production line was thus formed.

These cartons are numbered in groups of 50. Each live broadcast room will broadcast for 5 to 8 hours every day, and usually 4 to 5 boxes can be filled after the broadcast. The largest numbered group is 551 to 600. He said that this is when the traffic is the highest.

How much money can these "boxes" be exchanged for?

This friend told me that the profit margin of this business is stable at around 30%, and it does not require after-sales service or investment.

The figure below shows the data of one of their live broadcast rooms in June. It can be seen that the transaction amount was 450,000, and the number of refund orders was only 80, and the refund amount accounted for about 1%.

He added that the age of the anime audience and whether there are gameplays (such as additions and disassemblies) will affect the return rate. Their live broadcast room does not have gameplays, and mainly sells anime peripherals for older people, so the return rate is low.

The top anchors in the industry who have better traffic and more crowded order schedules have even more impressive revenue scale.

According to a huge amount of Baidu App, @烧鸡破解卡’s monthly sales are around 1-2.5 million, 93% of which are sold through live streaming. The number of viewers for each live broadcast is around 500,000, with an average sales of 25,000-50,000 per show.

In addition, my friend also showed me the traffic structure of this type of live broadcast room.

57.58% of them are natural recommendations, followed by the majority of attention and short video (slice) traffic. He told me that if the investment traffic will be reflected in the other column, this column below 15% is likely not invested.

And his own live broadcast room? Never voted.

With a simple and crude business model, low initial cost and considerable upper limit, the number of people entering the market has skyrocketed since this year, and the card-opening live broadcast room has become a new trend.

But is this really the case?

In addition to the stable profit margin and worry-free after-sales service, this visit also produced two impressive figures: 3 days – 1 million.

"Last year, we started out by making Guogu (domestic anime peripherals), but due to unlimited distribution and rampant piracy, Guogu depreciated quickly. The copyrights of these anime are foreign and cannot be controlled domestically, so many small factories pirated and made their own products. We once considered making our own cards."

"(For a period of time) if it cannot be sold within three days, the price will drop. The original purchase price was 98, and the selling price was 148, making a profit of 40 per box. But if it cannot be sold in the next few days, you will have to wait to sell it at a loss. I have several boxes of Ultraman, and now no one wants it even at a few dollars a box."

"If it can be sold on Xianyu, then sell it on Xianyu. If it can't even be sold on Xianyu, then it will just rot in the warehouse."

Cards piled up in the warehouse, becoming waste

Although the design and card quality of Guogu are improving rapidly and the life cycle has been extended, the risk of depreciation still exists due to almost unlimited issuance. If you are not careful, something worth a hundred dollars may become a piece of waste paper.

Secondly, this business appears to have a very low initial cost, but few people know that the real cost of live card unpacking lies in: getting the goods.

Let me put it this way, guess how much this small (gray) shelf on the right for card holders is worth?

The operator in charge of handling the goods told me, "The goods here are only worth about 40,000 to 50,000 yuan, at least not even 100,000 yuan."

The more live broadcast rooms there are, the more goods are needed. In order to maintain the operation of his four live broadcast rooms, this brother told me: "I currently have more than one million yuan in goods."

He also added that the most common type of live broadcast room is a couple, assuming that 200,000 yuan is deposited into it every month, and the monthly profit is around 20,000 yuan. From the perspective of investment-output ratio, it does not seem to be a particularly good business.

Live streaming of blind box unpacking is essentially a business that makes money around goods, and the price of goods is relatively stable, so if you want to expand it as a business model, there are two key issues:

First, do you have enough funds to purchase the goods?

Second, are there enough channels to get goods? If it is Guogu, it is easy to get goods. If it is Japanese Gu, channels such as purchasing agents will be used. How to ensure that the goods from the channels can support the operation of multiple live broadcast rooms has become a science, and now Japanese Gu is also very competitive.

If you do Guogu, there is no limit on the number of Guo cards, and they can be demolished anywhere, so the anchor is also very important. Can you make others like you? Do you have any personal characteristics?

Now, do you still think this is a low threshold?

At the same time, we also noticed that the current "blind box opening" gameplay is spreading.

In addition to opening cards, there are also refrigerator magnet blind boxes, key chain blind boxes, and luminous turtle blind boxes.

On August 6, the women's 10-meter diving platform final of the Paris Olympics was held. In the early morning of that day, some netizens discovered that Quan Hongchan appeared many times in the "Turtle Match" live broadcast room.

The gameplay of "Turtle Match" is simple. You place an order and open eight bags of blind boxes. Inside the blind boxes are resin turtles of different colors. Two turtles of the same color count as one match, and one match adds one pack. If the turtles in the nine-square grid are of the same color horizontally, vertically or diagonally, it counts as three in a row, and three in a row adds 5 packs.

If there are no turtles of the same color, the game will stop. All turtles taken out during this period belong to the players. Many people spend 19.9 to take away a big bag of turtles.

There are often thousands of people watching in such live broadcast rooms. Even if they don’t play a round, they want to see how lucky the next player is and how many turtles they can take away.

In addition, underwear also comes in pairs.

Don’t worry, there are also wet wipes, paper towels, scented tea, etc. It seems that all kinds of practical small objects in life are suddenly given a collision mode.

If these small toys were sold separately, you would usually only spend a few dollars to buy 2-3 to play with. However, under the gameplay of the live broadcast room, the originally plain small toys shine, sales volume soars, and they are "enchanted".

Of course, in the field of these grains, card dismantling is still the only king.

Because every step of opening the card controls human nature.

The randomness and uncertainty of blind boxes make people constantly look forward to what surprise will be hidden next. In addition, the collectibility and displayability of the cards are top-notch and carry certain social attributes.

Do you have cards from this anime? What characters do you like? How far have you progressed in collecting? You can start a conversation by following the blind box, or even compare yourself with others.

Live streaming provides emotional value. Once the product is successfully shipped, it will quickly gain attention. It will seem that this is not a live streaming room, but your own performance venue that will attract everyone's attention.

The excitement of winning big with a small investment is also driving everyone to join this game.

The price of rare cards in the secondary market, with no upper limit on the "addition and removal", is like a black hole. The anchor will make slices of the "3 packs become 30 packs" removal and spread them.

However, as live card removal becomes more popular, the problems behind it are also constantly being exposed.

The two most controversial points are: Is the live broadcast of opening cards with a small bet for a big win a gambling nature? Do the live broadcast rooms involve selling blind boxes to minors?

As early as February 2024, Douyin issued the "Notice on Special Governance of Gambling-Related Card Unpacking in Live Broadcast Rooms", and carried out special rectification of high-value blind boxes, virtual commodity blind boxes, and discount recycling. Then in April, it issued the "Interpretation of the Rules for Trendy Blind Boxes" to further govern the platform. Now most of the live broadcast card unpacking that remains tend to be formal.

Regarding the existing "additional demolition" mechanism, we consulted the legal team, and the legal team replied that it is possible to constitute a crime, but because there is no direct provision for the crime of gambling, it depends on the procuratorate and the court's characterization of the incident.

After CCTV reported the chaos in live streaming, the leading blind box live streaming rooms began to gradually cancel the “additional dismantling” mechanism.

As for the second question? The State Administration for Market Regulation has issued the "Guidelines for Blind Box Business Conduct", prohibiting the sale of blind boxes to minors under the age of 8.

At present, live broadcast rooms will place signboards and provide text prompts in product links and details, but these cannot effectively verify the age of consumers.

It will be worth looking forward to how the live broadcast rooms plan to solve this problem.

Any emerging industry will have certain problems in its early stages. Any industry can only go further through continuous standardization and iteration.

Written by: Dodo Warrior

Editor: Mangshan soldering iron tip & noodles

Art Editor: Sunshine

Image and information source: Douyin: Guigui card opening, Shaoji card opening, etc.

"Full of memories! 108 high-definition pictures of Little Raccoon Water Margin cards"

Before winning the gold medal in the 10-meter diving platform, Quan Hongchan was still opening the "Turtle" blind box