Wen | Zhou Mengting, a weekly magazine of "Finance and Economics"
Edited | Sun Yue
(Source: Visual China)
Tangde Film and Television, which was seriously injured by "Ba Qing Chuan", turned its attention to live e-commerce.
On January 16, Tangde Film and Television issued an announcement that it would use its own funds to invest in the establishment of Zhejiang Blue Media Culture Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Blue Media Culture"), which means that it will do live e-commerce and carry out live broadcast training for celebrities. In addition, it also wants to seize the outlet of "short dramas", and intends to cooperate with platforms such as ByteDance and Kuaishou to develop micro-variety shows, short dramas, and Chinese videos.
Many people know that the decline of Tangde Film and Television is related to the "overturning" of stars such as Fan Bingbing and Gao Yunxiang. A masterpiece starring two people with an investment of 500 million yuan, "Ba Qing Chuan", due to the "scandal" of the two people, has not been heard so far, and has dragged the investor Tangde Film and Television into the quagmire, even if the late "change of ownership" Of The wholly-owned subsidiary of Zhejiang Radio and Television Group, its vitality is also very different from the past.
At present, the rapid development of live e-commerce, many stars, enterprises, etc. have entered the game, but the current live e-commerce also has a lot of chaos in the industry, leading to consumer complaints and other issues. In addition, the competition in the industry is also unprecedentedly fierce, which makes people wonder whether it is too late for Tangde Film and Television to enter the game at this time?
Incoming live e-commerce
On January 16, Tangde Film and Television announced that it would use its own funds to invest in the establishment of Zhejiang Blue Media Culture Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Blue Media Culture"),and entrust the company's management to be responsible for the incident.
(Source: Tangde Film and Television Announcement)
Blue Media Culture registered capital is 5 million yuan, 100% controlled by Tangde Film and Television, the business scope to be applied for includes the creation of movies, TV scripts, artist brokerage, training services and Internet live broadcast services.
Tangde Film and Television said that the establishment of blue media culture this time is because the company wants to pilot the layout of live e-commerce, as well as provide live training services for celebrities, and will also cooperate with platforms such as ByteDance and Kuaishou to enter new media content such as micro-variety shows, short dramas, and Chinese videos. At the same time, Tangde Film and Television said that the investment can enhance its market competitiveness and profitability.
On the same day, Tangde Film and Television issued another announcement saying that it had received a civil judgment with Gao Yunxiang and Beijing Yixuan Cultural Brokerage Co., Ltd. on the performance contract dispute case of the TV series "Aranya Love", and Gao Yunxiang was arrested in Australia at that time because of the filming of "Aranya Love".
In this judgment, Gao Yunxiang will compensate Tangde Film and Television for losses of 48.85 million yuan and interest losses.
The Inseparable Biography of Ba Qing
In addition to starring in "Aranya Love", Gao Yunxiang also starred in another "Ba Qing Biography" that gave Tang De Film and Television a fatal blow.
"Ba Qing Biography" is a masterpiece that Tangde Film and Television claims to have invested 500 million yuan, filmed in 2017, starring then popular stars Fan Bingbing, Gao Yunxiang, Ma Su, etc. It is reported that this drama was frantically purchased by Various David TV and network platforms when it was not fully completed, and sold for 915 million yuan.
When Tangde Film and Television thought that it would make a lot of money, it did not expect that the male protagonist Gao Yunxiang was arrested in Australia, and under the influence of Gao Yunxiang, the broadcast of the drama was hopeless. Subsequently, Tangde Film and Television had to change another popular actor Li Chen to change the role. However, after the reshoot, Tang De Film, who thought he was at ease, did not expect that the heroine Fan Bingbing had another accident.
In October 2018, Fan Bingbing's tax evasion and tax evasion incident shocked the entire entertainment circle, and the 880 million yuan tax penalty bill is still mentioned by netizens from time to time, and Fan Bingbing has not yet come back. Implicated in this, Tang De Film's "Ba Qing Biography" was completely hopeless to broadcast.
Tangde Film and Television, which was dragged down, has since opened a loss model, and from 2018 to 2019, Tangde Film and Television has accumulated losses of more than 1 billion yuan. By the first quarter of 2021, its operating cash flow has been very "tight", with a net cash outflow of 110 million yuan from operating activities, and the existing funds are only 25.7156 million yuan, but the short-term debt has reached 380 million yuan.
At the same time, affected by the great environment, the entire film and television drama industry is in a cooling off period, in this case, Tangde Film and Television began to seek a backer. In May 2020, Tangde Film and Television transformed into a subsidiary of Zhejiang Yitong Digital TV Investment Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zhejiang Radio and Television Group.
But even so, Tangde Film and Television has not changed the state of performance loss, as of the first three quarters of 2021, Tangde Film and Television's net loss was 105 million yuan. Operating cash flow is also still in a tight state, with a net outflow of 127 million yuan.
Can live e-commerce save Tangde Film and Television?
In this context, it is not surprising that Tangde Film and Television wants to seek new business growth points. However, can the live e-commerce industry really save Tangde Film and Television?
If the hottest industry in the past two years is undoubtedly live e-commerce. According to the data of "E-commerce Industry Insight 2021H1", the scale of China's live e-commerce transactions increased from 140 billion to 1.06 trillion yuan in 2018-2020, with an annual growth rate of 183% and 161% respectively; in the first half of 2021, the scale of live e-commerce transactions has exceeded one trillion yuan, and it is expected that the scale of live e-commerce will exceed 4.9 trillion yuan in 2023.
The huge outlet has also attracted many stars, enterprises, etc. to settle in, such as Jia Nailiang, Qi Wei, Luo Yonghao, etc. have entered the live broadcast room and opened the goods. According to iResearch data, by the end of 2020, there were 8,862 live e-commerce-related enterprises registered in China, and the number of anchors in the industry has reached 1.234 million.
The influx of many people has also made the competition of China's live e-commerce more intense than ever. At the same time, the phenomenon of chaos on live broadcast platforms has also been criticized. On January 16, according to media reports, the Shanghai Municipal Supervision Bureau conducted a sampling inspection of 6 types of goods such as infant clothing, adult clothing, shoes, bags and other 6 types of goods sold by 9 e-commerce live broadcast platforms, and the results showed that 22 batches of 113 batches of samples were unqualified, with a failure rate of 19.5%.
The most worrying thing is that in addition to unqualified product quality, some products also have certain safety hazards. According to reports, the goods sold on some live e-commerce platforms are not only not marked with the goods number, but even the name of the production enterprise, which is a typical "three noes" product.
In this case, it has also triggered more consumer dissatisfaction with it, and they have begun to complain. According to the information released by the State Administration for Market Regulation, in 2020, the national 12315 platform accepted a total of 25,500 "live broadcast" complaints and reports, of which "live broadcast with goods" appeals accounted for nearly 80%, an increase of 357.74% year-on-year.
"Finance and Economics" Weekly once reported that some merchants have made live broadcast agreements with a number of MCN agencies, but the contract of 100,000 yuan, or not broadcast, broadcast will bring thousands of yuan of sales, making it difficult for merchants to return the cost. At the same time, after the merchant paid a deposit of nearly 10,000 yuan, the MCN institution "disappeared", resulting in the merchant no longer trusting such MCN institutions.
The lack of traffic of live e-commerce itself, the lack of professionalism of small and medium-sized anchors, and the low conversion rate of goods make it difficult for live e-commerce to guarantee merchants in terms of sales, and also make many merchants distrust live e-commerce and begin to seek the layout of other channels.
Its own live broadcast has become the first choice for many merchants. The data shows that during the Double Eleven period in 2021, among the 165 live broadcast rooms on Taobao, the live broadcast rooms of merchants accounted for nearly 90%. There are also questionnaire results that show that 64% of the brand merchants surveyed said that they had better results in their own live streams.
In addition, the live broadcast business of training stars planned by Tangde Film and Television is not fragrant. Star live broadcast can not guarantee sales, not long ago star Chen Xiaochun live broadcast related contract disputes exploded the network, 515,000 yuan of promotion service fees only sold more than 5,000 yuan.
Therefore, if Tangde Film and Television relies on e-commerce live broadcasting to win profit guarantees in the future, its results may not be optimistic.
This article is originally produced by AI Finance and Economics, an account of Caijing Tianxia Weekly, without permission, please do not reprint it on any channel or platform. Violators will be prosecuted.