Today, iQIYI VIP members have raised prices again.
Now the ordinary monthly card costs 30 yuan, and the consecutive monthly subscription is 22 yuan (previously it was 19 yuan).
For this wave of price increases, iQiyi's statement is as follows: the price of members has been low, which has affected the healthy development of the industry, in order to establish a more benign industrial ecology, it was decided to adjust the price.
The current membership price is not low, and the bad reviewer is not good.
But I know that iQiyi members of course have to raise prices, otherwise as soon as the next quarter's financial report comes out, they may be beaten by investors on the ground.
You may not believe it when you say it, but the first one to be upset should be Baidu.
According to iQIYI's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, as of February this year, Baidu held 52.2% of iQIYI's shares and had 91.6% of the voting rights
Although iQiyi has been very beautiful on the surface in recent years, and Youku and Tencent Video are tied with the three giants of video websites, the actual life is not good, burning money is very fierce, and it is roughly estimated that it has lost more than 40 billion yuan since its listing.
Last month, iQIYI released its third-quarter earnings report, which showed a net loss attributable to iQIYI in the third quarter of 1.7 billion yuan.
The loss in the same period last year was 1.2 billion yuan, and the loss widened by 42% year-on-year.
As soon as this earnings report was issued, iQiyi's stock price directly fell out of the big green pillar.
It must hurry up and make some big moves to save itself.
How to save it?
Like most video platforms, iQIYI's monetization means are mainly composed of membership services, advertising services, content distribution revenue and other revenues.
Membership services are the majority, reaching $4.2 billion in the third quarter, accounting for 56% of revenue.
iQiyi reported third-quarter earnings this year
The unit of measurement is 1,000 yuan▼
And iQIYI has received more and more membership services in recent years, collecting 10.6 billion in 2018, 14.4 billion in 2019, and 16.4 billion in 2020.
It is obviously feasible to continue to grasp this piece of income.
But, the cruel thing is...
iQIYI's membership is expected to peak after exceeding 100 million, with a total of 103.6 million members in the third quarter, more than two million fewer than in the second quarter.
At this time, increasing the average income per user has become the general trend, so the increase in membership fees naturally has to be put on the agenda.
And in October, iQiyi also canceled the "advanced on-demand".
Gong Yu, CEO of iQIYI, said that this is to make members satisfied...
When member Lawyer Wu Shengwei sued iQIYI for "advanced on-demand", you did not satisfy the member.
Well, when netizens scold "advanced on-demand" on the hot search, you don't make members satisfied.
As soon as the Consumer Protection Committee interviewed, I thought of satisfying the members, what a coincidence...
Why didn't the "advanced on-demand" not canceled before being scolded?
Let's review what Gong Yu said on the fourth quarter of 2019 earnings conference call: Advanced on-demand is an important way to increase average revenue per user
Now that "advanced on-demand" has been abolished, means such as increasing membership fees and "paying for a single film" for some movies are of course more important.
So ah, up, will go up.
You may be curious, iQIYI can earn more than 10 billion yuan a year in membership fees, why are you still losing money?
Because they themselves die.
I'm not just talking about iQiyi, I'm saying that many video sites are dying.
In the case of iQIYI, for example, iQIYI has revenue of 7.6 billion yuan and content cost expenditure of up to 5.3 billion yuan. This means that a large part of the total revenue is eaten up by the cost of content.
Click to see the big picture▼
And almost every year after iQiyi's listing, the cost of content eats up to 70% of revenue.
In 2019, iQIYI's total revenue was 28.9 billion, with revenue costs of up to 30.3 billion and content costs of 22.2 billion.
In 2020, iQIYI's total revenue was 29.7 billion, with revenue costs of 27.8 billion and content costs of 20.9 billion.
Click to see the big picture▼
This content cost is mainly the cost of purchasing copyright and original content production.
To put it simply, the reason why the cost of content is so high is because the video platform tosses self-made content and establishes many original content studios, and the other is because of the high copyright cost.
Okay, here's the point.
However, such a high content cost is completely rolled up by the industry.
The copyright contest began roughly in 2009 and culminated around 2015.
At that time, video websites and televisions frantically competed for resources and invested heavily in popular TV series and sports events.
The intensity of the money thrown at once made people lament that these people's money is the same as the wind blowing...
In 2011, the online copyright of the TV series "Attacking the Heart" sold for 20 million.
In 2015, Sport Dynamics won the rights to the Chinese Super League for 2016-2020 for 8 billion.
You know, in 2015, the price of the Super League copyright sold by the Super League company was in the range of 70 million - 80 million.
Shock and sky-high prices were the voices of the spectators at the time
In 2018's "Ruyi Chuan", when Jiangsu and Dongfang Tv each produced 3 million episodes, a video website obtained the network exclusive broadcasting rights for 9 million episodes.
Well... It should be known that the online copyright price of the 81 episodes of "Wulin Waichuan" in 2006 is 100,000 yuan, and each episode is about 1200 yuan.
I can understand that copyright fees will definitely rise year by year, but is such an exaggerated increase a normal increase?
How much effort have the video sites behind this that refuse to lose the copyright race?
You know, popular TV series are limited, if you don't pay to buy, it will be bought by opponents, and the traffic and advertising revenue and membership service income behind the traffic will also flow to the right home with high-quality content.
And you will find that the TV series that have sold sky-high prices in recent years are either popular IPs or have the blessing of traffic stars.
For this point, the well-known screenwriter Wang Hailin gave a very clear answer.
The gist of this is that these video sites are different from traditional drama centers, they often don't buy based on the quality of the script, they only look at the traffic.
Traffic stars are traffic, popular IPs are also traffic, as long as there is traffic in business success.
That's why there are more and more brain dramas, and the price can be so expensive.
Wang Hailin's comments are wonderful
What's more disturbing is that now the major video websites have also engaged in the draft, to create their own traffic stars, and then to the traffic stars to open higher remuneration, from one link to another link.
Under the operation of this link after link, the price of copyright is constantly being raised, and the actor's remuneration is becoming more and more deformed.
In this way, the cost of content can not be tens of billions of dollars per year?
iQiyi is still relatively clever, taking the lead in self-made dramas, last year made a few good films, if you can really do more "The Hidden Corner", "Silent Truth" and other good dramas, presumably the users who pay the bill will not be less.
And they seem to use the accelerated depreciation method in the copyright fee, in the early stage of the use of the extraction of depreciation more, the later extraction of less, if you can survive, the cost of the content will really be smaller and smaller.
However, in this situation, after all, it is self-inflicted.
You said that they have obviously contributed to the creation of a lot of brain dramas, and it is they who have messed up the ecology of the film and television industry, and they also have to try to make consumers pay under the banner of "establishing a benign ecology of the industry".
Is this reasonable?
Of course, for bad judges, capital of course has the right to price the goods it sells, and the increase in membership fees is understandable.
But let's not forget that consumers also have the right to choose to buy or not to buy.
If the quality of the content cannot be improved, how many people will pay for the insatiable greed of capital?
Author: Yanan Editor: Xiao Xinxin & Junction Cover: Huan Yan
Image source:
iQIYI's official website
Weibo: iQIYI VIP member, Sina Technology
sec.gov 《 iQIYI Announces Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results 》
sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001722608/000156459021011590/iq-20f _ 20201231.htm
Yangtze River Business Daily "iQIYI capital increase does not increase efficiency in the past 7 years loss of 40 billion yuan "
Zinc Finance "iQiyi membership fee increased again, this time it is a price increase without increasing the amount"
The Economic Observer "Tencent's 1.27 billion efforts to ensure that Ruyi Chuan" Xinli Media has not yet completed its performance commitments"
Sohu Sports", "Super League copyright price soared 20 times! Once the price of cabbage 3 years only 150 million 》
china.huanqiu.com/article/9CaKrnJUMXY