Visionary Leaders
They measure the business empire from the commanding heights of the era.
He Youjun
“AI does not replace people, but allows people to do more creative things.”
The son of a gambling king could have won on his own. But he chose e-sports. The team once set an embarrassing record of 0 wins and 16 losses in the league, and the outside world was generally not optimistic about it. Six years later, he put Chinese e-sports on Nasdaq. He Youjun: The starting point is 0, and the end point is determined by yourself. July 26, 2024, Nasdaq, New York. He Youjun pressed the bell button. At that moment, Xingjing Weiwu Group became the “No. 1 e-sports stock in China” with a market value of approximately US$500 million. Six years ago, he founded the V5 e-sports club and entered the LPL. In the 2020 Spring Split when he started his business, his team suffered a dismal record of 0 wins and 16 losses, setting the worst record in the league. The outside world is generally not optimistic about it, and no one thinks he can do it. It took him 6 years to go from 0 wins to Nasdaq. 1. Starting point: The "0" of the gambling king's son. In 1995, He Youjun was born, the son of Stanley Ho and Anqi Liang. Since his birth, he has been placed under the huge business aura of his father's generation. The outside world has habitually assumed that his life trajectory will rely on his family background to move forward smoothly, without the need to take risks and make mistakes alone. In order to get rid of the established label, he focused on his studies and went overseas to receive systematic education. With his solid learning ability, at the age of 21, he became one of the youngest graduates of MIT with a master's degree in finance. With a degree from a top prestigious school and a professional background in finance, it would have been logical for him to enter the high-end financial circle and take a safe elite route. But he did not choose the best path in the eyes of everyone. Instead, he turned around and entered the e-sports industry, which was still on the fringes and was full of controversy. Putting aside the convenience brought by his family background, he has no ready resources in the field of e-sports.
He Youjun
Asia Cover Character｜He Youjun: From 0 wins to Nasdaq, he took Chinese e-sports to the market
Asia's "Cover Man" Magazine·Pattern
Total Issue 053-ACF-2026
【Abstract】
The son of a gambling king could have won on his own. But he chose e-sports. The team once set an embarrassing record of 0 wins and 16 losses in the league, and the outside world was generally not optimistic about it. Six years later, he put Chinese e-sports on Nasdaq. He Youjun: The starting point is 0, and the end point is determined by yourself.
July 26, 2024, Nasdaq, New York. He Youjun pressed the bell button.
At that moment, Xingjing Weiwu Group became the “No. 1 e-sports stock in China” with a market value of approximately US$500 million.
Six years ago, he founded the V5 e-sports club and entered the LPL. In the early 2020 Spring Split, his team suffered a dismal record of 0 wins and 16 losses, setting the worst record in the league. The outside world is generally not optimistic about it, and no one thinks he can do it.
It took him 6 years to go from 0 wins to Nasdaq.
1. Starting point: the "0" of the gambling king's son
In 1995, He Youjun was born, the son of Stanley Ho and Anqi Leung. Since his birth, he has been placed under the huge business aura of his father's generation. The outside world has habitually assumed that his life trajectory will rely on his family background to move forward smoothly, without the need to take risks and make mistakes alone.
In order to get rid of the established label, he focused on his studies and went overseas to receive systematic education. With his solid learning ability, at the age of 21, he became one of the youngest graduates of MIT with a master's degree in finance. With a degree from a top prestigious school and a professional background in finance, it would have been logical for him to enter the high-end financial circle and take a safe elite route.
But he did not choose the best path in the eyes of everyone. Instead, he turned around and entered the e-sports industry, which was still on the fringe and full of controversy. Putting aside the convenience brought by his family background, in the field of e-sports, he had no ready resources, no industry experience, and no mature layout, so he started everything from scratch.
When talking about his choice, He Youjun said bluntly: "I don't want to be said, 'Whose son is this?' I want to prove myself."
His starting point is 0—0 capital, 0 experience, and 0 industry accumulation.
But he has one thing: he doesn't want to be defined.
2. Darkest: Encountered 0 wins and 16 losses
In 2018, He Youjun officially founded the V5 e-sports club and entered the League of Legends Professional League LPL as an investor and entrepreneur. When entering the industry for the first time, the team lacks coordination, the player configuration is unbalanced, and the operating model has not yet been formed. In the 2020 Spring Split, his team posted a record of 0 wins and 16 losses, setting the worst record in league history.
In the fiercely competitive environment of the e-sports industry, the bottom result quickly attracted attention from both inside and outside the industry. The outside world was generally not optimistic. Voices of the son of a gambling king playing cross-border gambling and finding it difficult to deepen the industry continued to appear. Doubts and wait-and-see sentiments almost surrounded this young team.
The attention brought by his background has now amplified the pressure of public opinion brought by failure. But He Youjun did not choose to withdraw from the game. Instead, he faced the dilemma head-on, settled down to sort out the team's problems, adjusted management methods, optimized the player training system, and quietly polished the team during the long dormant period.
Looking back at this trough, He Youjun said: "When I was 0 wins and 16 losses, everyone was laughing at me. But I had no way out."
0 wins and 16 losses was his darkest moment.
It was also the starting point for him to prove himself.
3. Breaking the Game: From Bottom to Global Layout
After two long years of dormant adjustment, He Youjun relied on his professional financial thinking to break away from the traditional model of simply running a team and reconstruct the development path of e-sports clubs from a capital perspective. He optimized the internal team structure, rebuilt the competitive team, improved the youth training and operation system, and made up for the shortcomings in competition and business.
In 2020, he acquired the Wuhan eStar Club to integrate the resources of the leading domestic e-sports teams and supplement the domestic core competitiveness; in 2023, he acquired the legendary Swedish e-sports team NIP, officially taking a key step in international layout. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, he integrated high-quality domestic and foreign teams, operations, and business resources to form the StarSports Powerful Group, completing the leap from a single team operation to a global eSports group.
The acquisition of eStar, the merger of NIP, and the promotion of listing on Nasdaq are not scattered investment layouts, but a clear and complete set of capitalization, securitization, and internationalization paths. For a long time, the domestic e-sports industry has mostly relied on emotion-driven and personal investment, with loose business models and immature financial systems. He Youjun is trying to use modern capital logic to build a modern enterprise system and standardized financial model that can be replicated, financed, and listed for this industry that once "generated electricity with love" to promote e-sports from an entertainment project to a standardized industry.
In his view, the value of e-sports goes far beyond winning or losing on the field: "E-sports is not about playing games, it is sports, it is an industry, and it is the dream of young people."
It only took him 5 years to go from 0 wins to global layout.
It’s not luck, it’s capital thinking + industrial insight.
4. Outbreak: Nasdaq and the Business Landscape
On July 26, 2024, Xingjing Weiwu Group officially landed on Nasdaq and became the first overseas listed company in China's e-sports industry. After listing, its market value was approximately US$500 million. He Youjun also became one of the youngest founders of a Nasdaq-listed company in Asia. This is not only a milestone for his personal entrepreneurship, but also a landmark event for China's e-sports industry to enter the international capital market.
After completing the capitalization layout of the main e-sports business, he further expanded the business boundaries and promoted the e-sports industry to break out of the circle. In 2025, he took over Wang Sicong's Huanju Commercial Company and served as chairman to improve the business operations sector; in the same year, he invested in the NBA Celtics to deeply integrate into the international sports business system; he won 111 acres of land in Haitang Bay, Sanya for 680 million yuan, and planned to build an e-sports sports cultural tourism project with a total investment of no less than 1.4 billion yuan to promote the in-depth integration of e-sports with cultural tourism and sports consumption.
Buying shares in NBA teams, bidding for cultural tourism land, and taking over commercial companies are not simple diversified expansions, but a clear set of "esports+" logic to break the circle. He tried to graft the young traffic brought by e-sports to traditional physical business resources, explore the value of e-sports as a new consumption entrance and a lifestyle carrier for young groups, and extend e-sports from a single competitive event to a complete industrial ecology covering sports, culture, tourism, and commerce.
It took him 6 years to go from 0 wins to a market value of US$500 million.
E-sports is no longer a plaything, it is an industry.
5. Definition: Live your life as a wealthy family
In ten years, He Youjun completed the leap from an e-sports newcomer with 0 wins and 16 losses to the helm of a Nasdaq-listed company. He has grown from a single team entrepreneur to a young entrepreneur with financial vision, industrial layout and social responsibility. He has promoted e-sports to get rid of public stereotypes and gradually move towards the mainstream capital market, allowing Chinese e-sports to be recognized by the global capital market.
The family label brought by his birth has always accompanied his entrepreneurial journey, not only bringing public controversy, but also providing innate conveniences such as attention, funds and connections. But He Youjun's core value lies not in relying on existing resources, but in his attempt to transform these innate advantages into a business methodology that can be understood by the global capital market and can be standardized and replicated. His series of industrial practices are essentially a commercial experiment in emerging industries, exploring how China's young industries can connect with international capital and establish a mature business system.
He always hopes to shed his inherent labels and establish himself as an industry promoter: "I hope that one day, when people think of He Youjun, they will not think of the son of a gambling king, but the promoter of Chinese e-sports."
Origin can bring about the starting point, but it cannot determine the ending point.
He started from scratch and put Chinese e-sports on Nasdaq.
ending
In July 2024, when the Nasdaq bell rings, He Youjun will be 28 years old.
Six years ago, he founded the V5 e-sports club and entered the LPL. In the early 2020 Spring Split, his team suffered a dismal record of 0 wins and 16 losses, setting the worst record in the league. Six years later, he stood on the stage of the world's financial center.
His starting point is 0. But he turned 0 into 1 in his own way.
He started from "0", not only to rectify his own name, but also to try to find the "origin" for the entire Chinese e-sports industry where everything can be reset to zero and start again.
The starting point is 0, and the end point is determined by yourself.
The real strong person is not that he has never fallen to the bottom, but that after climbing out of the bottom, he stands taller than anyone else.
Data source
Regarding He Youjun, who was born in 1995 and is the son of Stanley Ho and Anqi Leung: Xingjing Weiwei Group’s prospectus and public media reports.
About becoming one of the youngest graduates with a master's degree in finance from MIT at the age of 21: MIT official alumni directory, public interviews and reports.
Regarding the founding of the V5 e-sports club in 2018 and 0 wins and 16 losses in the 2020 Spring Split: Official season data and public news reports of the League of Legends Professional League LPL.
Regarding the acquisition of Wuhan eStar in 2020, the acquisition of the Swedish NIP team in 2023, and the establishment of the Xingjing Weiwu Group: the official announcement of the Xingjing Weiwu Group and the official information of LPL.
Regarding the listing of Xingjing Weiwu on Nasdaq on July 26, 2024, with a market value of approximately US$500 million: the listing announcement on the official website of Nasdaq and the prospectus of Xingjing Weiwu Group.
Regarding taking over Huanju Commercial Company and serving as chairman in 2025: Huanju Commercial discloses industrial and commercial information change records and public media reports.
Regarding investing in the NBA Celtics: NBA Celtics official announcement.
Regarding the bid for 680 million yuan to acquire a 111-acre plot of land in Haitang Bay, Sanya, to build an e-sports sports cultural tourism project, with a total investment of no less than 1.4 billion yuan: Hainan Provincial Land Trading Center announcement, Sanya City investment promotion public information.
Regarding becoming a member of the Hainan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference: Official announcement of the Hainan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
[1] Official website of Xingjing Weiwu Group, www.nipgroup.gg
[2] "He Youjun: In-depth analysis of industries related to Xingjing Weiwu Group", Xingjing Weiwu Group E-sports Industry Development Report
[3] Compilation of He Youjun’s public speeches and media interviews
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