How long do you guys think Hololive's success is going to last?
Tl;dr: If Cover manages to keep Hololive relevant through all of 2021 then, I think they have at least another solid 3-5 years of growth.
From what I understand the Holo talents got their first bump in the Western market early in 2020, a second larger bump around gen 5's debut, and a huge bump after HoloEN debuted. The quarantines were a blessing to the Holo talents whose main form of content are 1+ hour long streaming sessions. As a bit of context on
12/10 the total streaming time of all combined female talents who debuted before the widespread quarantines was over 43 hours. There is no way in hell that even the average weeb-folk would have been able to get as invested in Hololive when there was so much other waifu content available to consume in more convenient time spans. But, the virus took away our jobs and started to chip away at our sanity. Enter Hololive; basically a real-time anime that could keep us distracted for hours on end after we eventually burned through the backlog of content we finally had the chance to go through.
What happens around mid-2021, after much of the vulnerable population in 1st world countries has received a vaccine, when much of the world begins to re-engage in pre-covid levels of activity? (I specify 1st world populations because those have the fans with the most money and money is the only thing that's going to keep Hololive alive.) Hololive is going to start losing momentum given that their main content format doesn't mesh well with the pre-covid lifestyle. Currently, Cover only has a few more months left to establish the Hololive brand in the massive english market strongly enough that Hololive doesn't just fade into another fad by the end of 2021.
As far as I know, Cover is a toddler of a company (
about 4-years-old) and small in size as well. Yagoo didn't even plan for Hololive Production (only about 3-years-old itself) to be a thing when he first began, he just went with it. Essentially, Cover had no expertise as a talent agency, much less one with virtual talents, and has had to build itself from the ground up as one all by itself. The huge success that it has recently seen appears to be too much for its current size and state of expertise/competence to handle long-term. I feel like Cover should stop debuting new talents after the new HolcoEN singer debuts and instead focus on building an adequate internal framework for their future plans. Who the fuck knows what that entails, but Cover is going into uncharted territory with their virtual anime idol/streamer agency idea and keeping that shit profitable long-term in a world with ever increasing competition is key to keeping the Holodream alive.
2021 is going to be a wild ride and if Hololive makes it through that shit storm then, I believe they are truly destined for great success for 3-5 years until the vtuber saturation and fatigue becomes too much for even Hololive to overcome.
