Text | Moment Business, author | Wuwei Wang, Editor, | Yu Mu
Shiver is grabbing The business of Ai Youteng again, this time aiming at sports events.
Recently, the Copa America and the European Cup are in full swing and have become a sports event that has attracted much attention this summer. And Douyin and Kuaishou are dividing up traffic behind them.
Douyin, Today's Headlines, and Watermelon Video are new media partners of the 2021 America's Cup, which obtain all the live broadcast rights of the competition, and users can create secondary creations of the event according to their own preferences. At the same time, Douyin is also the official partner of the ongoing European Championship.
Kuaishou also won the rights to the CBA League, copa America live broadcast and short video. At the same time, it has also become the right broadcaster for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
Douyin cooperates with the America's Cup, photo/Douyin official blog
There is no doubt that after experiencing the black swan of the epidemic, 2021 is a big year for sports.
Long video platforms naturally won't miss this traffic feast.
Recently, iQIYI won the new media copyright of the European Cup and launched the live broadcast of the european cup, program production and other content; Tencent Sports has reached an agreement with the Chinese Football Association Super League, and in the next three seasons, Tencent Sports will serve as the "official new media partner of the Chinese Super League" to bring the full live broadcast of the Chinese Super League.
It is worth noting that it has been a long video platform competing for sports events before. Players who have competed in this field earlier include Aiyouteng, Migu Video, suning's PP Sports, etc. But in the past two years, the addition of Shudder has broken this trend.
In fact, before targeting the rights of sports events, Jitter has also been grabbing film and television rights. The rapid re-layout is a growing threat to Aiyouteng.
It is worth noting that compared to Tencent Sports' multi-billion dollar copyright fees, Jitter's copyright fees seem to be lower.
According to Lazy Bear Sports, ByteDance pays the NBA an overall guaranteed royalty of tens of millions of dollars each year, and NBA China also brings its own sponsor customers to the ByteDance platform, and the two sides share according to the agreement, and Tencent Sports's NBA digital media rights, from the 2020-21 season, the new five-year contract, with a total price of about $1.5 billion.
NBA Game, Photo/NBA Weibo
As Jitter continues to occupy the long video hinterland of Aiyouteng, the market pattern has become more complex. Aiyouteng's own profitability problems, user growth problems itself is difficult to solve, coupled with the invasion of short video platforms, iYouteng's future days may be more difficult.
<h2>01 Shake fast to compete for the rights to sports events</h2>
Entering the sports event, to a large extent, is regarded by the industry as another attempt by Byte and Kuaishou in the field of film and television copyright.
Recently, ByteDance's Douyin, Today's Headlines, and Watermelon Video also announced that they had obtained the copyright of the 2021 America's Cup, which is the same as the scene when it won the NBA short video copyright three years ago.
As a fierce enemy of ByteDance, although Kuaishou entered the game a year later than ByteDance in time, the situation was very fierce. In 2019, Kuaishou became a partner of the CBA League, and then began to lay out its layout in sports events. Since last year, Kuaishou has begun to harvest the copyright of the event, and has reached content cooperation with the NFL, ONE Championship, FORMULA E, Snooker and so on.
It is worth noting that in March this year, Kuaishou acquired the CBA, The America's Cup live broadcast and short video copyright, and then became the first short video platform to hold the right to broadcast at the Tokyo Olympic Games. Interestingly, when winning the CBA copyright, Kuaishou deliberately emphasized that it had obtained the copyright for the secondary creation of CBA live broadcasting.
Kuaishou became the right broadcaster of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, photo/Kuaishou official blog
For video platforms, whether it is traffic or grabbing users, sports events are indispensable positions. At the same time, the dividends of high-quality sports content are also emerging. According to The latest financial report of Kuaishou, as of the end of April 2021, compared with before the launch of CBA live broadcasting, the number of Viewers of Kuaishou Sports vertical category increased by more than 200%.
Obviously, Douyin and Kuaishou have tasted the sweetness brought by the copyright of sports events.
In fact, the big cake of sports event copyright, the long video "big three" Aiyouteng has been laid out for many years. After the collapse of the forerunner LeTV Sports, in the field of event copyright, Aiyouteng set off a boom in copyright disputes, and is showing a "three-legged standing" situation.
In this competition, Tencent is the one with the earliest layout and the most profitable
In 2014, the traditional media no longer monopolized sports events, and the sports industry exploded, and sports copyright fees became a big outlet.
A year later, Tencent Sports won the NBA's exclusive five-year new media broadcast rights for $500 million, monopolizing the copyright market for Chinese basketball network broadcasts. After tasting the sweetness of the NBA, the world's top event, Tencent became the exclusive partner of FIBA (International Basketball Federation) New Media China in 2017 for a period of nine years.
You know, some data show that since Tencent got the exclusive NBA copyright, the penetration rate of Tencent sports users in the domestic Internet has increased from 180 million users to 430 million.
Backed by the Tencent Empire and basketball events, Tencent is also constantly laying out other niche events. It is reported that Tencent has obtained the exclusive new media rights of the NFL (Major League Soccer), the NHL (National Hockey League), MLB (Major League Soccer) and F1 (Formula One World Championship).
Perhaps due to Tencent's strong layout of basketball, Youku and iQiyi have successively chosen football events as a breakthrough in the copyright competition. In 2018, Youku bought the rights to the World Cup in Russia at a high price. According to the "Late Post" report, regarding the investment in the purchase of copyrights, Ali only took three days to pass a budget of nearly 1.6 billion, and sneaked up on Tencent, which planned to bid 1 billion, which is enough to see Youku's determination to lay out sports events.
Youku 2018 World Cup, Photo/Youku Official Blog
Subsequently, Youku joined hands with PP Sports, a subsidiary of Suning Sports, to create the "Youku Sports" channel, which pocketed the top football rights such as the five major Leagues in Europe, the Champions League, and the Chinese Super League.
In the same year, iQIYI and Xinying Sports jointly established "iQIYI Sports", which also aimed at football events. According to public information, iQIYI Sports has successively won the all-media copyright for 6 seasons of La Liga, the rights of the Asian Cup, the AFC Champions League, and the World Cup Asian Qualifiers. Previously, as the latest to enter the game of Aiyouteng, it chose to lay out niche events, such as golf, boxing and other small events. These include the Australian Open, ATP (Professional Tennis Federation), WTA (International Women's Professional Tennis Federation), Golf PGA Tour and more.
In recent years, the sports event copyright market has formed a stable pattern with Aiyouteng as its own. But now, the rights to the sports event are fast entering the game, stirring up the seemingly calm waters of this beach.
<h2>
02 Shake fast and attack in an all-round way to grab the traffic of Aiyouteng
</h2>
All along, the war between Jitter and Ai Youteng has not stopped, and it is constantly marching into the hinterland of Ai Youteng.
In the big cake of long videos, the film and television industry is the most important piece. During the epidemic, ByteDance seized the window period of domestic films, and the domestic film industry opened up new boundaries.
Last year's Spring Festival, Watermelon Video announced that it bought the copyright of the movie "囧Mom", and for a time, the "byte three-piece set" invited the people of the whole country to watch "囧Mom" for free, which was regarded as the first shot of the film and television industry's "hospital transfer network". Soon, search for movies on the Douyin app, and hundreds of classic Chinese movies can be watched for free.
This year's Spring Festival, Douyin exclusively cooperated with seven movies "Detective Chinatown 3", "Hello, Li Huanying", "Assassination of a Novelist", "Surging Crowds", "Samurai Order", "New God List: Nezha Reborn", and "Bear Haunting Wild Continent".
"囧Mom", photo/Douyin official blog
At the same time, Byte also registered film and television companies and economic companies last year, involving the production and broadcast of film and television, trying to share a piece of the upstream of the film and television industry.
Kuaishou followed suit, participating in the release of the theatrical movie "Empty Nest" last year. At present, on the official account of Kuaishou's "Kuaishou Screening Hall", there are 148 film and television works.
For copyright owners, Douyin and Kuaishou have strong users and channels, and their attractiveness is no less than that offline theaters. For Jitter, a new way to get traffic has been explored. To some extent, this also triggered a boycott of the film industry for Jitter.
There is no doubt that the film and television industry is an important export of the fast march into the hinterland of Aiyouteng, and the base camp of the hinterland of Aiyouteng is copyright.
Two months ago, it was hard to imagine that Aiyouteng, who had been fighting in the field of long video for ten years, would stand on the same front and collectively defend its rights. The spearhead of rights protection points directly to vibrato and kuaishou.
How serious is piracy on Jitter? Gong Yu, founder of iQIYI, said: "The total length of the broadcast of segmented pirated short videos is basically the same order of magnitude as the broadcast time of the long video industry. ”
In the absence of film and television copyrights, there are a large number of clip numbers on the jitter. Simply put, it is by editing a few hours of movies and long-form TV series into a short video of several minutes. This is very much in line with the fragmented use time of users in the short video era, but it indirectly brings great damage to Aiyouteng, who spends money to buy copyrights.
As we all know, in this decade, spending money to buy copyright has become the norm for long video platforms.
According to public information, in the copyright dispute of "Ruyi Chuan" in 2016, Tencent and Youku originally agreed to pay 600 million yuan each, but Tencent estimated that "Ruyi Chuan" may become the second "Zhen Huan Biography", and offered a sky-high price of 1.3 billion yuan, and finally won the copyright of "Ruyi Chuan". In 2018, Youku did not want to show weakness, spending 1.6 billion yuan to win the rights to the Russian World Cup and win back a round.
In fact, this is only a small microcosm of the ten-year copyright war of Aiyouteng, and the high cost is also the bitter reason why it is difficult for them to make large-scale profits.
Today, short video platforms come to grab traffic, and long video platforms finally can't sit still. In April this year, more than 70 film and television media companies led by Aiyouteng issued a joint statement to protect film and television copyrights, which would legally protect unauthorized editing. Subsequently, a large number of secondary creation videos on the Jitter platform were removed.
A consensus is that this kind of secondary creation without copyright restrictions brings the possibility of commercial monetization to short video bloggers, and also brings platform traffic and revenue, plus the model has a long history, and prohibition is not an overnight thing. Nowadays, browsing the Jitter fast platform, there are still a large number of edited videos, or bloggers appearing on camera to explain, or avoiding film and television works with aiyouteng copyright. Generally speaking, it is still in the stage of "policies at the top and countermeasures at the bottom".
Nowadays, Jitter is still taking the initiative to attack and compete for the cake of Aiyouteng, and how will Aiyouteng eventually fight back?
<h2>03 The more fierce the copyright competition, the more passive Aiyouteng</h2> is
Long videos are a good business, but they're also a hard bone to gnaw on.
Judging from the current market pattern, Jidun has fully entered the hinterland of Aiyouteng copyright, not only taking root in the film and television field, but also tearing up the mouth in the sports field. In this complex situation, the addition of jitter will only make Aiyouteng more and more distant from the pace of profitability.
More importantly, in the past ten years, profitability has always been the thorn in the heart of Aiyouteng.
At the 9th China Online Audiovisual Conference, Fan Luyuan, president of Alibaba Entertainment, lamented: "It is difficult, the long video industry is too difficult. The industry is profitable, but when will the three of us (Youku, iQiyi, and Tencent) become profitable? According to the current living environment, profit is just around the corner. ”
Backed by BAT, with the "Netflix dream" of Ai Youteng, not only has no profit, but also faces the risk of huge losses. According to public data, in 2017, the total loss of the three companies exceeded 10 billion yuan, and in 2018, it rose to 19 billion yuan. Although the loss situation is gradually improving, it is still losing money. In 2020, iQiyi's net loss is still 7 billion yuan.
A strong contrast is that according to the data disclosed by ByteDance, the actual revenue in 2020 is 236.6 billion yuan, while the Kuaishou financial report shows that the annual revenue in 2020 is 58.78 billion yuan. For Jitter, their capital reserves are still sufficient, and what is most needed at present is traffic growth.
At present, the 600 million douyin of daily active and the 400 million daily active kuaishou are facing the problem of entering a period of slow user growth, and how to expand the number of users is about to be considered. At present, it seems that long video users who are closely related to short videos have a very high degree of matching with Jitter.
Shivering has money to burn, but Ai Youteng can't afford to lose. In the past ten years, the war within Aiyouteng has seriously injured their vitality. According to the "Late Post" report, Aiyouteng has burned out 100 billion yuan,
What is more serious is that the user ceiling of IYoteng is already visible to the naked eye. The high cost of content production and the inequality of membership and advertising revenue, price increases have become a new means for Aiyouteng to increase revenue.
In the second half of 2020, iQIYI's membership prices rose, which was the first fee upgrade in 9 years since the launch of the video paid membership system in 2011. In contrast, Netflix, which is regarded as the object of IYouteng's learning, has been upgraded six times in terms of membership fees.
iQIYI Gold VIP Price, Photo/iQIYI APP
Even so, the membership fee is still much lower than Netflix, and after increasing the membership fee, iYoteng still inevitably has a decline in the number of members. In the first quarter of 2020, the number of iQIYI members reached 119 million, and in the second and third quarters, they began to decline, at 105 million and 105.8 million, respectively.
In the situation where its own profitability and user growth are very difficult, in the face of a rapid entry, Aiyouteng has only one choice, passively responding to the battle, because the long video market Aiyouteng cannot give up. This also means that in the copyright war, Aiyouteng and Jitter will form two forces and fight for a long time. The result of the open struggle between the two sides is that the profit of Aiyouteng is far away.
Another difficulty is that the second-creation behavior of the clip number on the platform such as Jitter Is like a weed, and Aiyouteng cannot completely stop it.
According to the "2021 China Online Audiovisual Development Research Report", since December 2017, the per capita single-day use time of short videos has increased year by year, from 76 minutes in 2017 to 125 minutes in 2021. The average daily use of integrated video has stabilized, showing a downward trend in 2020, and finally fixed on the 98 minutes in March 2021.
That is to say, short videos have occupied most of the user's time, and short video clips can let users understand what a film and television work is about in a short period of time, which is very in line with the needs of users to use fragmented time and short and fast movies.
What's more, the film and television second creation has been favored by many film and television companies. According to reports, after the battle of aiyouteng to defend the copyright, many film and television companies still choose to cooperate with the editing bloggers of the Jitter platform, and said that they can authorize the bloggers.
Obviously, film and television companies have taken a fancy to the tap water effect of short video platforms, and short video platforms have become an important publicity channel for filmmakers. From the success of "Predecessor 3: Goodbye To the Predecessor" in 2017 by "crying", breaking up and "eating mangoes", etc., to "Hello, Li Huanying" counterattacking "Tang Detective III", it can be seen that the Jitter Fast platform has made great contributions to the film box office invisibly.
Photo / "Hello, Li Huanying" official blog
In general, the trembling "scissor hand" can not be cut one-size-fits-all, and the copyright defense war of Aiyouteng will continue to be fought.
In the history of the Chinese Internet, there has not been a war like a long video, spanning ten years, burning hundreds of billions of dollars, and finally not knowing what the end game will be.
Whether it is aiyouteng's "Three Kingdoms Killing", or the copyright dispute between long videos and short videos, it is extremely stressful for Aiyouteng, and they are becoming more and more passive, can they finally break a way to live?