In the post-epidemic era, a new pattern of the performance industry has opened

Recently, Jay Chou, Mayday, Zhang Shaohan, Zhang Jie, Hua Chenyu, Xue Zhiqian and other singers have successively announced this year's tour plan, and the tickets were sold out as soon as they went on sale, not only large-scale concerts, Livehouse, drama, talk shows, stage plays and other offline performances are also extremely hot, obviously, compared with the previous two years of decline, today's offline performance market is gradually moving towards normalization, a new round of performance blowouts are coming.

To this end, the Beijing Cultural Industry Investment and Financing Association and Entertainment Capital jointly launched a seminar entitled "Offline Performance 2.0 - New Pattern of the Industry in the Post-epidemic Era". The conference invited Pan Yan, vice president and secretary general of China Performance Industry Association, Yang Shucong, secretary of the party branch and deputy general manager of Tianqiao Art Center, Wen Juan, general manager of Happy Twist Theater Line, Zhu Ruijian, general manager of Modern Sky Cultural Tourism Business Department, Icy, co-founder of Solitaire Comedy, and Lu Yiyun, director of Xiaoguo Cultural Performance Operation, to discuss the changes in the offline performance industry pattern and new opportunities for cross-industry cooperation, as well as what new problems will arise after the market recovery.

After three years of dormancy, business convergence has produced new formats

"Cancelled, no need to operate the same way to return (ticket payment)" is the last message ticket buyers want to see, but such things have not been staged many times between 2020 and 2022, and the repeated epidemic has made the offline performance market that sees the light of day die again and again. According to data from the China Performance Industry Association, the number of performances cancelled or postponed from mid-February to mid-March 2022 exceeded 4,000, and increased to 9,000 by the end of March, accounting for 30% of the total number of performances in professional theaters and new spaces in the first quarter.

The difficulty of the performance market under the epidemic is not only that the event cannot be held, but also that many activities are facing the sudden cancellation. In the face of the continuous problems in the performance market, major theaters and performing arts companies have also sought breakthroughs.

Yang Shucong, secretary of the party branch and deputy general manager of Tianqiao Art Center, explained: "One vertical is to develop from the operation end of the theater to the industrial chain, and the other horizontal is to play the role of resource integration and resource empowerment in the entire Tianqiao Performing Arts District." "As a result, we can see that in addition to musicals, plays, children's dramas, and dance dramas, the Tianqiao Arts Center has also increased its efforts to expand commercial exhibitions, cultural and creative products, projects developed by using public space such as the central axis reading space, as well as art education and training such as youth dance troupes, children's choirs and youth musical theater troupes."

For Happy Twist, the more thoughtful question is whether the performance can go out of the theater and into the mall, so that young people can go out once without changing the scene, and the entertainment experience is richer.

Wen Juan said: "Happy Twist has worked hard to expand the boundaries of performance in recent years, we have developed Stage One, an entertainment bar where you can drink and watch plays, an immersive meal play "Heart Stealing Dinner" while eating, a drama killing "Countdown to the Sea" by acting + script killing, "Detective Fang Orange City" in the drama + secret room, and Happy Little Twist Children's Drama Training and other experiences. After the successful trial of these products alone, we combined a cultural complex with theatrical performance as the core - Happy Twist Flower World. At present, the first store has been opened in Beijing Wangjing Jiarui Cultural Center. In the future, we hope to continue to expand the boundaries of the 'Flower World', cooperate with more high-quality brands in the form of drama + catering, entertainment, retail, experience, community activities, etc., and create a one-stop immersive new space for eating, drinking, and playing, and become an entertainment base loved by urban young people." From this point of view, the dormancy and reflection of the past three years is quite valuable, and now that spring has arrived, I hope to recover the lost time as soon as possible. ”

"Crossover" is the most considered issue between Tianqiao Art Center and Happy Twist Theater Performance Company in the three dormant years, and how to make cross-border not only better play the brand effect, but also form a unique commercial track, is the problem that Modern Sky has been thinking about in recent years.

Zhu Ruijian said that in addition to producing online performances, Modern Sky has also laid out in many sectors such as visual arts, commerce, and consumption, including the use of visual and music content to co-brand clothing and research and development of digital collections. "The music festival brings people a wonderful experience, we hope that all consumers and users come together to interact, to dialogue, to create new things together, so we also try to extend the music festival to the commercial body in the center of the city, incubating the 'People's Paradise · MODERNSKY FEST's project, we hope to bring the story of the Modern Sky Music Festival in New York's Central Park back to China, where you can interact in a civic and commercial center, which will also include many commercial areas, such as restaurants, retail, bars, etc., and present these commercial content with different music themes. ”

Talk shows are growing wildly, and online fire is moving offline markets

For concerts, livehouses, musicals, stage plays and other performances, the three-year downturn has brought many new challenges to enterprises. Talk shows, on the other hand, have embarked on a crazy growth pattern in the past three years. According to the "2021 National Performance Market Annual Report" released by the China Performance Industry Association, there were more than 3.5 million audiences under talk shows in 2021, and the box office was nearly 400 million yuan. From 2020 to 2022, the box office of the entire talk show industry increased from 20 million to nearly 480 million, and the box office increased by 20 times. So how did talk shows achieve deep cultivation and broaden boundaries under the vigorous development of these three years?

In Lu Yiyun's view, the current achievements of the talk show category have a lot to do with the popularity of talk show variety shows, so how to continue the popularity of online to offline, Lu Yiyun also shared some experience on the spot. "The first is to deepen offline cultivation and expand the audience. Whether it's "Talk Show Conference", which is about to usher in its sixth season this year, or "What to Do!" which premiered last year! Talk show special", after the success of the online also timely followed up the offline traffic undertaking. After letting everyone know about talk shows through online programs or artists, take into account the cooperation between upstream and downstream, carry out offline performance activities, and gradually cultivate the audience's viewing habits. When the demand becomes more, it is necessary to enrich our products and find ways to make the supply more and go to more cities. From free open mics, to ticketed performances, cultivate audience acceptance of talk shows. Finally, there is the consumption scene, taking into account the theater of various sizes of small, medium and large. At the same time, try a more integrated space, so that the actors and the audience can have some interaction in this environment. ”

The same stand-up comedy that does comedy content, driven by popular variety shows, has also ushered in an increase in offline demand. In 2020, from 7 or 8 per week before the epidemic, it will increase to 14 or 15, and there will be a situation where it is difficult to find a vote. Comedy performances in the past three years are indeed relatively lucky, and asked about the secret of "success" of Shan Li people, Icy said that the main body of Shan Li people still focuses on deep cultivation of content, "Our innovation part in terms of content has not stopped, in the period when the external environment was forced to stop, the performance market was forced to stop, we concentrated on researching new works, actors were also polishing their acting skills, and the market feedback after that also proved that solid and innovative products did allow us to gain benefits." ”

Behind the accelerated recovery, opportunities and crises coexist

During the 2023 Spring Festival, major performance groups will add a different kind of excitement to the Spring Festival with various artistic masterpieces with exquisite art and well-made art products, relying on offline performances + online exhibitions. According to the box office data of major ticketing platforms by the China Performance Industry Association, there will be more than 9,400 commercial performances nationwide during the Spring Festival holiday in 2023 alone, a year-on-year increase of 40.92% over 2022 and 22.5% year-on-year in 2019; The box office revenue was 378 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.85% compared with 2022, and the number of viewers was 3.238 million, a year-on-year increase of 5.56% compared with 2022, and the number of spectators recovered to about 80% of 2019.

At present, many performing arts companies and theaters are busy preparing for this year's performances, and several industry leaders are cautiously optimistic about whether the offline market can usher in a retaliatory recovery. In Wen Juan's view, scarce performances definitely have the potential for retaliatory consumption, while normalized performances have a retaliatory consumption tendency in the first two or three months of release, and will still return to rational consumption after a short period of popularity.

"Products are really very important, word of mouth is also particularly important, we can't expect retaliatory consumption to support the industry, and doing a good job of products is the basis for future survival." This idea has also been recognized by Lu Yiyun, in her opinion, industry practitioners should pay more attention to what the public's free time is doing, and the audience's time is the most precious and limited, rather than blindly immersed in the sudden hot vortex.

The hottest offline performance market is music festivals and concerts, which can be seen from the fact that the projects "open pre-sale" one second and "sold out" the next. As the organizer of a series of offline performance activities such as music festivals and concerts, Modern Sky has the strongest feeling of the market, in Zhu Ruijian's view, the opportunities and challenges behind the heat are coexisting, "The market recovery is popular with the public, but too much is also easy to cause a bubble economy, now the market environment is different, can not use the previous ideas to do things, but to have a new model, otherwise opportunities may also have a crisis." ”

And this is also Pan Yan's concern, she believes that behind the hot market, performance institutions should think more about how to drive new consumption, rather than excessive consumption of brand value, "I think there are two points to pay attention to: first, how to improve the quality of performing arts content, how to improve service quality, attract new consumer groups; Second, a large number of large-scale projects have entered the market this year, and we must be vigilant against vicious competition and illegal marketing, so as not to affect the audience's experience, so as to reduce the audience's favorability of the brand. ”

At present, the scheduling of theaters, theaters and large venues in various places has begun to become saturated, and the booking volume of large stadiums in many places in China has skyrocketed, and it is not an exaggeration to describe it as a "rush period". But behind the accelerated recovery of the market, it is actually a contest between brands, in such an environment, how to make brand characteristics and advantages, use good content to retain the original audience, attract new audiences, is the biggest test for performance companies after the recovery.