(Text/Observer.com, He Xige, Editor/Zhang Guangkai)
Xiaoguo earned more, but also "floated", and the punishment of Xiaoguo also came after being speechless.
With the rise of two ace programs, "Spit Conference" and "Talk Show Conference", Xiaoguo has held the top position in the domestic talk show market in recent years. But Xiaoguo, who is often on the cusp of public opinion, often gives people the feeling of "seeing, but difficult to distinguish the truth, and the mystery between smoke and rain", and they all know that Xiaoguo's business is booming, but everyone has no concept of "how profitable Xiaoguo is". And through this punishment, some clues may be seen from it.
On May 17, according to the WeChat public account of Cultural Tourism Beijing, on May 15, 2023, the Beijing Municipal Cultural Market Comprehensive Law Enforcement Corps received a report from the public and decided to file a case for investigation against Shanghai Xiaosheng Culture Media Co., Ltd. in accordance with the law. It was verified that the company and its actor Li Haoshi wantonly tampered with the content of the performance declaration, and seriously insulted the people's army during two consecutive "Xiaoguo talk show" performances on the afternoon and evening of May 13, causing a bad social impact.
The Beijing Municipal Cultural Market Comprehensive Law Enforcement Corps decided to impose corresponding administrative penalties on the company: warning, confiscation of 1,325,381.6 yuan of illegal gains, and a fine of 13353816 yuan. The relevant violations of the personnel involved in the case, their performance agencies and performance venue operating units will be further investigated for responsibility in accordance with laws and regulations. The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism decided to suspend all performances of the company involved in Beijing indefinitely.
The penalty information of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism mentioned that the amount of confiscated illegal gains was more than 1.32 million yuan, and it was "two consecutive performances in the afternoon and evening", based on this calculation, the average income of Xiaoguo's two performances that day was about 660,000 yuan.
Such income also made some netizens sigh, "A talk show actually has more than 600,000 income? ”
According to Maoyan movie information, the ticket prices of Xiaoguo talk show city roaming Ningbo Field on May 21 and Xi'an Field on May 28 range from 280 yuan to 880 yuan.
Source: Maoyan Movie Mini Program
According to the "2022 China Performance Market Annual Report" released by the China Performance Industry Association, the annual box office revenue of opera performances, including talk shows, was 615 million yuan, with an average ticket price of 143 yuan.
Prices that far exceed the average fare level can also reflect Xiaoguo's ability to absorb money to a certain extent.
Compared with his past self, Xiaoguo's income today is also surprising, after all, in 2016, Xiaoguo Culture's operating income was 39.7356 million yuan. At that time, even the people of Xiaoguo Culture themselves could not imagine that the income of a single talk show could reach 660,000 yuan.
According to the single performance revenue of 660,000 yuan, if you want to complete its revenue in 2016, 60 offline performances of this level are enough.
However, Jin Zhongbo, CMO of Xiaoguo Culture, once revealed to the media that in 2021, Xiaoguo Culture will perform offline and open wheat nationwide, reaching nearly 2,000 performances. Moreover, this part of the revenue only accounts for about 20% of the company's total revenue.
Xiaoguo Culture's business is divided into three major segments. In addition to offline business such as performances, it also includes online long-form video services, such as "Talk Show Conference", "Spit Conference" and "Talk Show Anti-New Year's Eve" and other long-form video programs cooperated with Tencent, which can account for 40% of the company's business revenue; The commercialization business, including content marketing services, generated 40% of Xiaoguo Culture's revenue in 2021.
Today's Xiaoguo culture has become the "top stream" in the talk show market, and the blessing of traffic also makes Xiaoguo favored by capital.
According to the disclosed information, Xiaoguo Culture has completed 8 rounds of financing from 2016 to 2021. In March 2021, Tencent's affiliate invested in Xiaoguo Culture, with a valuation of more than 4 billion yuan.
According to enterprise investigation information, Shanghai Xiaoguo Culture Media Co., Ltd. was established in May 2014 with a registered capital of about 2.0813 million yuan, the legal representative and largest shareholder is the founder Ye Feng, with a shareholding ratio of 31.57%, and Guangxi Tencent Venture Capital Co., Ltd. is the third largest shareholder with a shareholding ratio of 12.55%.
Source: Qichacha
In addition, Li Sheng (Li Ruichao), a key figure in Xiaoguo, still holds 4.58% of the shares although he stepped down as a director of the company in February last year. I believe that the "miserable" days of renting a house that he talked about many times during the performance are gone.
However, Xiaoguo, whose business is becoming more and more prosperous, has also begun to "let go of itself", and Xiaoguo has caused many controversies in recent years.
Take the talk comedian House who was punished this time, this is not the first time he has "lost his mouth".
In September last year, House "shared" a personal funny stock trading experience during the performance:
He made 3,000 yuan on the first day of his debut, and 5,000 yuan on the second day, when he thought, "it will not be luck", "this will definitely be the norm in the future life", "every day in the future I will only earn more money than the day before, with an annualized rate of return of 46,000%", and his self-confidence burst made him release such a bold statement that "Buffett is like this". But on the third day, he lost 4,000 yuan, on the fourth day he lost 6,000 yuan, and at the worst time, he lost half a year's savings in one day, and finally only 25,000 yuan of the 120,000 yuan he invested. In the clip, House revealed that he bought the stock symbol "600759".
After the first night of the paragraph, ST InterContinental, which had the 600759 ticker code, was on the top ten of the hot search on the second day, and on the third day, it was up and down, although stand-up comedians House and ST Intercontinental had both clarified before.
House clarified on his personal Weibo account: Talk shows are talk shows after all. Neither he nor his family currently owns the stock, nor do they have plans to do so. The stock market is risky, investment needs to be cautious, and please treat it rationally.
ST Intercontinental issued an announcement that up to now, the company's production and operation have not undergone major changes. Please invest rationally and pay attention to risks.
At that time, some people questioned, "Is it suspected that a public figure is violating the law by reporting the code in the media?" Some people also said, "These tricksters, sooner or later, play with fire and hit the high-voltage line." ”
Screenshot of the comment area of the Observer's previous report on House
The stock price change has also attracted the attention of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, which issued a notice on the situation related to ST Intercontinental at noon on September 13 last year. The Shanghai Stock Exchange announcement: "This morning, ST Intercontinental price trend is abnormal. The listed company has issued a clarification announcement to make it clear that the company's production and operation have not undergone major changes. In accordance with regulations, the SSE has adopted self-regulatory measures against abnormal trading behaviors such as inflating the opening price of stocks. The SSE will continue to strengthen supervision, strictly identify abnormal trading behaviors that affect the normal trading order of the market and mislead investors into normal trading decisions, and take self-regulatory measures seriously. SSE once again reminds investors to pay attention to risks, participate prudently and trade in compliance.
The rapid growth of Xiaoguo can also be seen as a microcosm of the rapid prosperity of the talk show market in recent years.
Lu Yiyun, director of Xiaoguo Cultural Performance Operations, once said that compared with the dramas and musicals of traditional large theaters, new formats such as stand-up comedy, comics, and improvisational comedy have developed rapidly, which has become an important variable in the performance industry in the three years of the epidemic. From 2020 to 2022, the offline box office of the entire talk show industry has increased 20 times, from 20 million at the beginning to 480 million.
As mentioned in the "2022 China Performance Market Annual Report", with the increase of the market influence of talk show performances, the number of large and medium-sized talk shows held in professional theaters in 2022 is higher than that of the previous year.
In addition, according to the data provided by the research report, the market growth rate of the industry in recent years has reached 41.33%, and it is expected that the compound annual growth rate of the industry from 2021 to 2029 will continue to maintain a high growth rate of 20.18%.
However, as with all high-growth and savage industries in the past, the biggest challenge facing talk shows today is regulation.
For example, this house, in addition to attracting the anger of public opinion, has also touched the bottom line of supervision.
Stand-up comedy is known as the "art of offending" and may use controversial or provocative remarks on some occasions. But essentially, stand-up comedy is about conveying information through humor and drama, as well as through playful and satirical performances that provoke the audience to think.
Nevertheless, it does not mean that stand-up comedy can ignore the feelings of others and the interests of society as a whole, and should operate within the framework of law and morality if it is to speak out in front of the public.
However, ironically, in March this year, Xiaoguo Culture signed the "Letter of Commitment to Patriotism for the People and Virtue and Art in the Network Audiovisual Industry in the New Era", promising to:
Cultivate patriotism for the people, understand great virtue, and undertake missions; Adhere to the people-centered, write about the people and express the truth; Committed to the pursuit of artistic ideals, casting ingenuity and producing fine products; Adhere to the standards of both virtue and art, abide by public morality and strict private morality; Consciously maintain the industry ecology, establish new wind, and display the image.
Judging from the performance of this house, not every Xiaoguo person has taken this heavy promise to heart.
Resources:
"The History of Xiaoguo Culture: 8.4 billion viewers of the conference, revenue increased by 3.5 times in 2017" Southern Metropolis Daily
"The Commercial Development of "Xiaoguo Culture", from 1.0 to 3.0" 36 Kr
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