To stretch things only slightly, gaming can be regarded as straight men's lipstick. Although quite a few women are into video games, it is by and large a man's realm. The 2018-19 China Online Live Streaming Industry Research Report by iiMedia Group, a consulting agency in the Chinese mobile internet industry, says male users account for 81 percent at Douyu, 80 percent at Huya, China's two leading game streaming platforms.

For the internet company Tencent, apart from mobile games that have emerged in recent years, men have always been their biggest cash cow. Taking the most representative game, League of Legends, as an example, Tencent says 67 percent of its players are male.

Compared with the ocean that is the female-dominated online community, men are a huge market yet to be fully developed.

Hupu, with millions of sports enthusiast users, is arguably one of the Chinese internet communities that understands straight men best. The forum was set up by Cheng Hang and several basketball enthusiasts in January 2004. Initially it was devoted mainly to translating foreign basketball news, something the founders did in their spare time. Today, Hupu has developed into a Chinese male community with more than 70 million registered users, and with investment pouring in it came up with an app called Poison that last year was valued at more than $1 billion.

The street competition the King of Underdogs, hosted by Hupu, has grown into an influential sports intellectual property. Every month 12 city matches and qualifying rounds are held. At present it is the largest independent sports intellectual property on short video platforms with more than 5.2 million TikTok followers, attracting a series of sponsors such as Adidas, Nike and NBA2KOnline.

Last year the makers received 1.26 billion yuan in financing from the Pre-IPO round of Bytedance, a technology company operating a range of content platforms including Tik-Tok.