460-Hour Life Stream: How Streamer 'GPT' Signals Platform Evolution

Live streaming platform 'SOOP' is expanding its service areas, focusing on 'Life Streaming' where users share their daily lives. The recent 460-hour life stream by streamer 'GPT' showcases 'SOOP's new potential to evolve into a platform where users not only watch but also participate and co-create.

SOOP is broadening its scope by incorporating lifestyle-focused content like music, comedy, and travel, alongside expansion into the virtual domain. The average revenue for comedians on the platform's comedy category saw a 55% increase year-over-year, and the number of concurrent virtual broadcasts grew by 61%.

SOOP's strength lies in how this participatory structure has precisely operated within the gaming and esports sectors. Professional gamers continue their activities as streamers even after retirement or return to leagues, maintaining consistent communication with fans. The cyclical structure, flowing from players to streamers to fandom, leads to high platform retention. Amateur leagues and streamer-led tournaments serve as entry points for new creators, fostering creators who possess not only gaming skills but also engaging personalities and strong communication abilities.

Recently, SOOP has been rapidly expanding its reach into social and virtual domains. As lifestyle-focused content such as music, comedy, and travel expands, the average revenue for streamers in the comedy sector increased by 55% year-over-year, and the number of concurrent virtual broadcasts rose by 61%.

SOOP's transformation is interpreted as an effort to redefine the platform's role itself, going beyond mere category expansion. Since transitioning to a dual CEO system under Choi Young-woo and Lee Min-won, SOOP has been strengthening its gaming and esports production capabilities while accelerating the expansion of comedy and lifestyle content. This shift signifies a move towards a structure that directly involves planning, production, and operation, beyond just content distribution, with a focus on securing proprietary content intellectual property (IP).

As a result of these efforts, SOOP's performance has grown significantly: starting from 2013 with 40 billion won in revenue and double-digit operating profit, it recorded mid-300 billion won in revenue and around 100 billion won in operating profit in 2023. The high proportion of revenue from sponsorships and subscriptions is evaluated as a stable business model, where user participation directly translates into profit.

Live streaming platform 'SOOP' has integrated domestic and international platforms, creating a structure where global users can operate within a single service. SOOP lowers the barrier to entry with features like automatic translation subtitles and improves user experience by applying artificial intelligence (AI) across content creation and operation.

In South Korea, Naver has entered the market with ChiChiGame, while globally, platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok are competing with strategies combining live and short-form content. SOOP's core competitiveness lies in its long-accumulated fandom economy and real-time participatory content structure. Maintaining a sustainable diverse content ecosystem is identified as a challenge. An industry insider commented that platform competition is decided not by viewing time but by the depth of relationships between users and creators, and evaluated SOOP as having a competitive edge in accumulating participatory structures.