Tencent Sends New Directors to Boards of Douyu and Huya

Tencent, the world’s largest video game company, has appointed new directors to serve on the boards of Douyu and Huya, two Tencent-backed Chinese game livestreaming companies similar to Twitch.

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Douyu announced that its main shareholder Tencent has replaced Ting Yin, who had served on the board of directors since January of 2019, with Zhou Song. Zhou Song is currently vice general manager of finance in Tencent’s Interactive Entertainment Group (IEG). She also serves as a supervisor of several Tencent companies.

Prior to Douyu’s announcement, Huya also issued an statement to announce a new director from Linen Investment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tencent. Zheng Lei, who is the general manager of IEG’s user platform department, will succeed Ma Xiaoyi, Tencent’s senior vice president and president of IEG.

Both livestreaming platforms said the change of director is simply normal procedure and will have little impact on their businesses.

Tencent, holding approximately 37.2% shares, is Douyu’s largest shareholder. It’s also Huya’s second largest shareholder, with a stake of 39.4%. Douyu founder and CEO Chen Shaojie, when asked about the possibility of a merger with Huya, said whether there will be a merge will largely depend on Tencent but has nothing to do with whether Tencent increases its stake in Huya.