Former Weverse executive is now working on creating a Faker fan platform

May 19, 2021 - Ex-leaders from Weverse, also known as the world’s largest fan community platform for K-pop artists such as BTS, are now working on similar yet something different - the second Weverse. This time they teamed up with T1, the e-sports team where Faker (the best e-sports player in the world) belongs to. 
 

Engineers background from top tier IT companies 

SK Telecom CS T1 recently signed an MOU with bemyfriends to develop a direct to consumer (D2C) solution to establish a fan community and commerce platform. 
 

bemyfriends’ founders are from Weverse, a subsidiary of Hybe (formerly known as Big Hit), who developed Weverse and Weverse shop from Big Hit Shop. At the time, Aaron, currently the CEO of bemyfriends, was the head of business planning & strategy department responsible for the global operations. June Kay, currently the CTO of bemyfriends, was the head of the R&D department responsible for development. 
 

These two leaders, together with the developers, redeveloped Weverse from the formerly Big Hit Shop which was merely an online shopping mall selling BTS goods. This redevelopment yielded a platform for the fan community, handling online and offline event reservations, merchandising sales and communications tools between artists and the fans. 
 

Upon the huge success of “Weverse,” similar platforms were introduced to the market such as ‘Universe’ by NCSoft and ‘Listen’from SM Entertainment.  

Aaron and Jue Kay made Weverse a successful platform for two years, but constantly saw the unmet needs from a wider range of industries who wanted to have similar solutions for their loyal customers or true fans. So,  they decided to make their own platform built for more general business use. 
 

Software developers with strong backgrounds from top tier IT companies such as Kakao or Naversaw the vision from the two leaders and joined bemyfriends.
 

bemyfriends, similar to Weverse and Weverse shop, provides an omni-channel solution, but this time, there is no need to separate the communications and e-commerce channels, and the platform is owned and operated by the content provider, not a single, open platform. 
 

Previously, the fans had no choice but engage with contents from the different channels of media, commerce and social media. Thanks to bemyfriends’new solution, all of these can be integrated, and the content providers can run loyalty program on top of it.

Birth of the largest global e-sports fandom platform

The T1 League of Legends (LOL, LoL) team is the first and only team to win all international competitions hosted by Riot Games, and hold the most titles in major domestic and international competitions. The fandom across the globe is huge for this winning team with a strong record. 
 

In Spring 2020, counting the average number of views of the total Korean, American and European leagues, G2, the most popular team in Europe, had 284,000, while T1 had 388,000. The difference is nearly 100,000.
 

Even if you compare the number of YouTube subscribers of each team right now, T1 alone has more than 755,000 subscribers compared to DRX’s 125,000 and Gen.’s 66,000. Faker alone has over 1 million subscribers in June 2020, receiving the gold button for the year. 
 

bemyfriends aims to provide an official platform for T1 by the end of this year. Aaron said, “I am delighted to collaborate with T1 and we are excited to deliver an amazing experience for both T1 and their global fans.”
 

bemyfriends plans to target various industries with its official launch of the product in 2021.
 

Aaron continues, “We are currently focusing on developing a platform for T1, but solutions will be designed for a wide range of industries.”He also said, “In the e-sports field, we’ve received interest from other powerhouse clients. Many are already showing interest in building their own platform.”
 

Aaron continues, “bemfyriends is a startup, but we have so many huge projects to carry on, and we are lucky to have many strong background developers who can get the job done. I can’t wait for the date to announce the availability of our product to the market.”

You may read the original article in Korean here