Author / Xiao Bao
Since the formation of the double strong pattern of cat tao in 2017, the cup of movie network ticket sales has not been touched for a long time.
However, ByteDance Has two big moves in recent days, one of which is to acquire the ticketing platform "Shadow Topian"; and after the acquisition is completed, in addition to retaining the original B-end business, Shadow Topon will also create an online ticket service with Douyin.
In this regard, the industry generally believes that byteDance has completed the remaining puzzle on its large entertainment plate. However, it is not easy to divide the world from the hands of Cat Tao - there were more than 30 second-tier ticketing apps to share less than 5% of the market share, and then Baidu Nuomi borrowed iQiyi ticketing to "resurrect" with little effect, and even the boss of the cinema ticketing platform "Wanda Movie" had to compete with Cat Tao by continuously consolidating members and connecting offline sales.
So, why Shadow Tuobang? Why online ticketing? In the long run, if ByteDance wants to use this as a springboard to build a comprehensive ticketing platform like Ali's "Taobao Ticket + Damai" or a movie entry model like Maoyan 'Ticketing + Marketing + Project', what are the chances of winning?
Why Shadow Tuobang?
Although the online ticketing of Chinese movies is changing rapidly, if you think about it, after the 1.0 era opened by the Che Guevara group purchase model, the 2.0 era with the help of e-commerce large-scale ticket subsidies, and the 3.0 era of Maotao double strength, our imagination of the 4.0 era has also stagnated for five or six years.
At first, it was hard to imagine who could match the powerful resources of companies such as Tencent and Alibaba behind Cat Tao; later, we watched Baidu Nuomi (iQiyi Ticketing), Migu Cinema (China Mobile), and each theater's own APP to try to deepen the ticketing platform. Moreover, there is no policy subversion at the national level, so until byte action, the industry generally believes that the 3.0 era has not yet reached the bottom.
However, the success of Douyin and short videos under the epidemic has given ByteDance the opportunity to incarnate into a macho man from heaven, and the choice of Shadow Tuobang is probably because its original ticketing business is more refined and vertical.
According to public information, the main company behind The Shadow Tobon is "Sky City (Shanghai) Industrial Co., Ltd.", which previously mainly provided B-end enterprise customers with film benefits, gift services, film entertainment marketing and other services and provided C-end individuals with movies, performances and other entertainment services, the platform covers more than 8,000 theaters across the country, supporting online seat selection, a variety of payment and exchange methods. According to Tianyancha industrial and commercial information, Sky City (Shanghai) Industrial Co., Ltd. (zeng) is a subsidiary of Far East Horizon Group, and Far East Horizon Group and Industry Giants such as China Film Co., Ltd., Wanda Film and Television, Huayi Brothers, Bona Pictures and other industry giants are partners with each other, thus accumulating industry resources for them in the early stage of the operation of Theo Tuobang.
▲The source of the picture is the eye check
Therefore, Byte's acquisition of Shadow Tuobang seems to be a rational decision after full research. In addition to the obvious speculation on the Spring Festival stall business, Byte should be more inclined to develop new consumption and local life business in terms of corporate strategy.
At present, Shadow Tobon has officially entered the Douyin movie ticket purchase platform and warmed up the Spring Festival ticket purchase activities. Compared with the previous situation of "making a wedding dress" for Maotao as a third-party traffic platform, Douyin with Shadow Tuobang can launch more and more comfortable gameplay.
At least, in the matter of issuing coupons, Douyin is no longer passive. Through Shadow Tuobang, Douyin is planning to launch the "sell coupons" and "issue coupons" program after the Spring Festival pre-sale starts; the former has the entrance to the talent, douyin shop and douyin self-operated live broadcast room, and the latter has the live broadcast room to issue coupons and task/short video coupons. In this way, the same is the sale of coupons and the issuance of coupons, douyin finally has all the links that can realize traffic realization in its own closed loop.
The advantages of Douyin selling tickets
That being the case, is Douyin really easy to sell tickets?
After actually experiencing it, The Intelligence Jun admitted that he had not yet felt the advantages of "Douyin X Shadow Tuobang". Probably because of the reason for the start-up, from the perspective of the three more intuitive product evaluation dimensions of ticket price, theater, and ticket-buying friendliness, the shadow trombon is clumsy compared to cat tao.
First of all, the current vibrato is the shadow trojan, cat's eye, Taobao ticket three single ticket prices juxtaposed display, in addition to the shadow trobang ranking first and there is a "recommended" symbol, the three ticket prices are about the same, do not see the necessity of non-selection of shadow trobons.
Secondly, the shadow tropian ticket purchase channel on Douyin has not achieved full cinema coverage. If you do not click on the "Filter Preferential Cinemas" function, there are only a few theaters that can use "Cat/Tao/Shadow" to purchase tickets on the page as far as the eye can see; if you click on the "Filter Preferential Cinemas" function, although the results of the ticket purchase can be purchased using the shadow opia, the corresponding theaters are mostly in the suburbs of the city. In other words, if you want to buy a theater with relatively good geographical location and hardware on Douyin, it is not feasible.
The lack of ticket prices and theaters has damaged the user's ticketing experience, and in terms of ticketing friendliness, Shadow Tuobang has not been able to screen special cinema halls and connect offline sales like Cat Tao. As a product, its user experience really needs to be improved.
Although slightly clumsy, Douyin still has the absolute advantage of cat tao's coveted tickets: traffic.
According to the "2022 Douyin E-commerce New Brand Growth Report", in 2021H1, the usage rate of China's short video platform has approached 88%, and the scale of short video users has reached 890 million, surpassing the scale of China's online shopping of about 810 million people. Because the mainstream short video platform has the characteristics of both communication channels and sales channels, users' purchasing habits are being reshaped. Obviously, from the phenomenon that large and small film marketing companies have paid more and more attention to vibrato marketing in recent years, it is in line with this trend.
At the same time, in addition to reaching the audience through short video marketing, the new brands cultivated by Douyin have also become another position for film publicity.
For example, as one of the typical cases listed in the "2022 Douyin E-commerce New Brand Growth Report", the halogen snack brand Wang Xiaosha has cooperated with film projects in different industries. In 2021 alone, the brand not only signed Qiao Shan, but also successively produced co-branded products with theaters or online movies such as "Hello World", "The Sky of burning wild teenagers", "Anger and Serious Cases", "Accompany you for a long time", "Uninvited Guest", "Northeast Love Brother", "Lion Boy" and other cinema or online movies, covering various categories from animation to live-action, from love to suspense.
More importantly, at present, the new brands in Douyin e-commerce are mainly gathered in the beauty and food and beverage track, accompanied by clothing, shoes and bags, personal care, 3C digital home appliances, maternal and infant books, smart homes and other categories also reflect the potential of growing into core categories. Obviously, the user portrait corresponding to this type of brand is in line with the main force of Chinese film consumption.
▲Image source "2022 Douyin E-commerce New Brand Growth Report"
The possibility of overtaking in corners
Therefore, The Intelligence Jun believes that if byteDance's acquisition of Shadow Tuobang is to go far, it is necessary to explore the "way of selling tickets" in line with the market law in a more targeted manner. If Byte can also explore a new model to reshape consumer ticketing behavior, then it can be regarded as an iron wrist that has been fought, and the 4.0 era of China's online film ticket purchase market can also be regarded as the beginning.
For traffic e-commerce, the first point that can be used may be to make each artificial shopping festival cooperate with each theater/network schedule in both directions.
At the beginning, traffic e-commerce will probably be in line with the inherent schedule, such as "Douyin 818 New Wave Good Things Festival" with summer files, "Douyin National Day New Trend Week" with National Day files, etc.; but as the role of search traffic in Douyin e-commerce becomes more and more important, maybe Douyin will one day reversely affect the theater/network period, thus driving the current market's repeatedly criticized "cold period".
Take the "double 11 files" that have existed for many years but have not greatly pulled the film market as an example. Until today, there are still few film producers with waists and above who boldly set the "double 11" before and after, not that the consumption power of the schedule is insufficient, but the industry generally believes that the consumption power of the slot will not flow into a large cinema. Therefore, if the ticketing traffic of Douyin can drive the consumption power during the "Double 11" period every year in the future, wouldn't it be beautiful?
Moreover, since there are already so many new consumer brand resources on Douyin, we must work hard in the future to improve the friendliness and experience of ticket purchase.
At present, what we can see from the warm-up activities of the Spring Festival file of Theoban is still generally the "low ticket price tactics" of the era of class ticket supplementation, and the "hot movie tickets" are impressively written with "as low as 30% off", "as low as 6.6% off", "as low as 5.5% off" and other promotional slogans. Unfortunately, even though low prices will always have higher consumer appeal, the past of the ticket subsidy era has also proved that this model is not a long-term solution to maintain a healthy film market; compared with low-price activities, consolidating users and connecting offline sales may be the service direction that deserves Douyin's attention.
Overall, the current incremental market for movie ticket sales in the mainland is still very impressive. According to comprehensive third-party research and Maoyan Entertainment's financial report, the company's ticket sales in the 2021 Spring Festival file accounted for 57.2% of the total online ticket sales, and achieved revenue of 1.8 billion yuan (Hong Kong) and net profit of 387 million yuan (Hong Kong) in 2021H1 as China's largest online movie ticketing platform. The second-ranked Taobao ticket is not inferior, not only in the 2021 Spring Festival file to achieve a 2.5 times increase in consumption level, but also by further opening up the "Taomai VIP" to consolidate users.
Next, it depends on how far the new entrants' vibrato can go.