Live streaming platforms are promoting a novel format of entertainment called PK event where live streamers compete to solicit virtual gifts from viewers. Although the two live streamers in a PK event come across as rivals, they implicitly collaborate to emotionally arouse viewers and solicit virtual gifts. We advance a curvilinear moderated mediation model to disentangle the effects of streamers’ shared PK experience on revenue growth through enticing viewers’ emotional arousal, which is moderated by streamers’ within-team experience acquisition difference. Estimating a multilevel linear model on a sample of 118,323 PK records, we discovered that shared PK experience has an inverted-U-shape relationship with emotional arousal level, which is positively associated with revenue growth. We further attested to the moderating influence of experience acquisition difference in strengthening this curvilinear relationship. Our findings help platforms to improve team member recommendation systems and streamers to find the “right” teammates for optimizing PK performance
