Some of the BIGO Live Apps biggest and most well known stars are going to Singapore on January 7th, 2023 to celebrate the annual BIGO Live Awards Gala 2023. Many people look to this event as a major achievement on the top streaming platform, but is it really that impressive? Is it really an honor to be crowned as one of BIGO Lives top streamers in 2023?
In the United States region, the top streamers are measured in beans received, not in average viewers, or content delivered. In December 2022, there were 44 hosts in the US Region who earned at least 3 million beans for the month. Those hosts are the ones who earn the $24,000-$30,000 tier salary that is often advertised on social media. In January 2022, it was stated that there were over 30,000 official hosts in the United States region on BIGO Live. That’s less than 1% of its broadcasters earning the top prize offered for live streaming.
If you go into many of these broadcasts, there is no actual content being delivered. Many of them sit in broadcasts of less than 100 viewers, with most of them being bots. In BIGO terms, about 60-70 viewers means you have 0 real viewers and for every real viewer your room will increase in score about 10 points. Somebody with 2 real viewers, and one person watching from a logged out device (also known as a BIGO TV viewer) might have a room count of around 100, in a single solo live.
How Is It Possible To Get High Beans With No Content?
So somebody might as the question, “How is it possible to get high beans with no content or viewers?” The answer is trades. Almost all of the apps top broadcasters are part of a network of other top broadcasters, to manipulate the system for their own profit. This network is made up of the regions top families like Karma, Direwolves, Ruthless, Friends Unite, Ivy, and others. These broadcasters and families have conspired with each other to send each other exactly as many beans as they need to reach the required targets.
Almost every one of those broadcasters will sit between zero and five real viewers during their entire months streams, and one or two days of month they will do what is called a Box PK, or max out a high rebate PK and for one broadcast it will look like they have great support and high room counts. These events artificially inflate the numbers to make the broadcasters look more relevant than they actually are.
It’s through this series of trades, where one broadcaster might send one million beans in one single day, which is slightly less than $5000 worth of beans, and in exchange that broadcaster will return $5000 worth of beans to somebody else in the network. The system is simple: you send out 3 million, you receive 3 million in return, and as a reward you will earn the maximum salary plus event rewards, plus ranking rewards, plus rebates, which if done during a major event like Gala 2023, means a trip to Singapore to participate in the awards show.
How Does It Work?
The start of the scheme starts with the family leader or the person bank rolling the entire plan. This person is generally not a host, but has the funds from being an agency owner to jump start the entire operation. In the easiest example, the family leader will finance somebody who will then finance the next person in line, all the way down through the pyramid until everyone has sent out 3M, and received back 3M. The trick is to avoid the 40% inter-agency cross support rule, which is designed to prevent one agency from doing this system entirely within itself. In order for this plan to work, agencies and families work together so that it spreads out their inter-agency cross support percentage across multiple agencies.
So Can Anybody Do It?
Yes, on the surface level anybody can do it. All you need is a bunch of money and a network of people trying to do the same thing. One thing that most people won’t have access to starting out is the in-wallet beans. Having in wallet beans keeps the cost low, which is the only way to turn a profit. If you recharge for the same amount, it will cost you 20-30% more in diamonds which will eat up all the profits. You need to convert beans from the wallet of one user into diamonds as opposed to recharging the same amount. One “dragon” costs about $200 recharge and about $170 worth of beans. So at 3M beans received and $30 loss per dragon, you’re taking about a $9000 difference between recharging and converting. Without “taking a loan out” with a broadcaster who already has beans to send, there’s not a practical way to make a profit.
There’s also the problem that only the top 5 families on BIGO Live in the United States region have the ability to do a Box PK, which pays a rebate of between 80% and 94% which is the profit margin required to turn a trade and make it profitable. Many other families try to do Big Box PKs but will take a loss by doing 100 boxes or less where they’re only getting a rebate of 60% or less. They see the top families doing the same thing and want to be just like them, not realizing until much later that they are taking a loss by doing the trades. So you will need to be within the network of the top 5 families to even be able to turn a profit with the trades.
Most of the top 5 families are stacked with members from the same family’s agency owners, meaning that the agency owners want this network because they’re making free money from the hosts doing these trades. Those family members who are in the same agency are going to get first preference when it comes to available Box PK spots. If you’re not going to make the family leader money by being from their agency, then you provide limited value.
What Can Be Done To Make It Fair And Reward Top Hosts?
In my opinion, the only way to neutralize the advantage that the top BIGO families and agencies have, is to lower the rebate percentages and eliminate the Box PK system. The current system allows the people at the top to trade between one another and guarantee a profit in the process. Whereas if the rewards were lowered to say 60% or less, it would make it impossible to trade beans and still turn a profit. The hosts at the top would no longer find value in trading beans to be at the top, and many of these frauds would leave the app entirely. This would leave more rewards and more incentives for top broadcasters, like Sleepwalker, Bendy Barbie, and Naty Snow, who earn their beans organically from users who send beans based on content value instead of mathematics and trades.
Eliminating the Box PK system would also force broadcasters to supply content over the entire course of the month, rather than in one high rebate PK. These hosts would be forced to deliver content regularly, instead of mailing it in for the majority of the month. Box PKs allow hosts to effectively cover one million or more of their three million bean target in one day. Most regular users who are not apart of a beans trading network don’t have access to $5000 worth of gifts received in one day, so the average user can not compete for daily and weekly ranking, even though they are the ones putting in constant effort.
The current system is flawed and rigged in favor of those already at the top, and unless they lower the rebate percentages and eliminate the Box PK system, regular content creators will never be able to shine as the top stars on the BIGO Live App. The people who trade beans and manipulate the system will always be the only ones collecting trophies at the end of the year award show event, and it will never reflect the truth about which streamers are honest broadcasters delivering high quality live streaming content.
Why Do You Spend Time On BIGO If You Hate It So Much?
First of all, I don’t hate BIGO. Quite the opposite, actually. I love BIGO for it’s community, it’s ability to meet new people and to experience things you might not regularly get to experience in your own part of the world. BIGO is an amazing and tremendous place and I love to call it home. What I don’t like, is how money has taken over and people cheat and manipulate the system to win, then pat themselves on the back. I just want this place to be fair and equal for everyone, especially the ones who put in effort and create content. It shouldn’t be about who has the most money available to launder and recycle into more money.
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