This article is from WeChat official account:Letter List (ID: wujicaijing)< span class = "text-remarks">, author: Takeaki containing Long Teng, head Figure from: vision China
At the moment, Zhang Yiming is facing an opportunity to win three birds with one stone: first, to prevent Tencent Video from becoming stronger; second, to find a breakthrough for the watermelon video that revolves in place; third, to counteract the fact that the old opponent is in a certain way. First mover advantage in each field.
This opportunity is to receive the “legacy” of Suning Sports and enter the sports copyright market.
Before speaking, Zhang Yiming had already taken action.
On March 4th, Douyin announced that it has become the official partner of this European Cup. At the same time, the official European Cup Douyin account “UEFA European Cup” is also officially settled today. It will share the latest developments of the star team and exclusive behind-the-scenes Content, wonderful videos of this and previous European Cups, etc.
This cooperation does not involve live events, but Byte has obviously taken a tentative step. In Zhang Yiming’s style, it’s just a matter of quitting, and it’s necessary to “make miracles vigorously”.
Although the state-owned investment has eased Suning’s debt crisis, Suning Sports has clearly been unable to pay for high-priced sports copyrights. On March 1, the news that the Chinese Football Association and PP Sports end the exclusive copyright agreement of the Chinese Super League was circulated on social media. Based on the current economic difficulties of Suning Sports, after the Premier League and Serie A have been suspended, the Chinese Super League cannot continue to land in the new season. Sports are almost certain.
“A lot of the copyrights in Suning Sports still owe money, and these copyrights will soon not belong to Suning.” Wu Hao, an investor who has been concerned about content ecology for a long time, told Alphabet List.
“This part of Suning Sports is scattered on the market copyright. Xinying Sports, ByteDance, Tencent Sports, including Baidu, etc. may become potential acquirers of this part of the copyright.” Qiuding Football CEO Chen Ze analyzed the alphabet list Dao, operating the copyright of sports events costs a lot of money, and only the giants can play it.
For Bytedance, who is not bad for money, it is more strategic to take over the sports copyright scattered by Suning.
As we all know, the content of most video websites is mainly entertainment, which is a pan-consumer and pan-cultural industry-this is also the content advantage of Bytedance. Sports events are better content resources, and sports IPThe life cycle is very long, and the regulatory pressure is relatively small.
From another point of view, if Zhang Yiming does not make a move, he will only be further seized by his rival Tencent.
As early as 2015, Tencent bought the rights to the NBA for five years at a price of US$100 million per year. In September last year, Tencent realized the dream of “Left-handed NBA and Right-handed Premier League” with a US$10 million “buying the bottom” in the Premier League. . In the middle of last year, Tencent made internal adjustments to transfer the full power of the NBA business originally in charge of Tencent Sports to Tencent Video. This is considered to be Tencent’s exploration of new ideas in sports IP operations-focusing more on the integration of advantageous resources , And put sports content into its own larger content ecology to operate.
In an interview with Caijing in 2015, Zhang Yiming mentioned that the principle of Byte to expand business boundaries is, “Try not to do what others have done, and do not do better than others, unless it is a business. Key points of defense”. Tencent holds the exclusive rights to broadcast the NBA and is unmatched in the field of basketball broadcasts, but in terms of football matches, Tencent has just started. Bytedance, if you catch up and attack with all your strength at this time, it may prevent Tencent Video from establishing its dominance in the sports broadcasting field. If you hesitate, let Tencent Video calmly deploy. Tencent Music’s example tells everyone that once it’s copyrighted Behind, the gap will only widen.
More importantly, sports copyright content may become a breakthrough point for the watermelon video.
In October last year, Watermelon Video raised the banner of “China Video” and announced that it would invest 2 billion subsidies to support creators, but the effect was not obvious. “Instead of spending 2 billion sprinkling subsidies for creators, it is better to directly purchase sports copyrights, which not only strengthens sports content, but also provides creators with copyrighted creative materials.” A content practitioner analyzed the alphabet list.
From the current point of view, the Bytedance products seem to have gained enough vertical sports audiences. At present, in the IP matrix of Douyin, there are four major leagues including the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga and French Ligue 1. There are more than 30 top European clubs, including such giants as Manchester United, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern which have a broad fan base in China. Among the many club accounts, there are 6 with more than one million fans.
In the future, ByteDance will also have the opportunity to access many vertical fields such as basketball, football, and fighting more conveniently on the basis of existing content, to reach the core users of various vertical circles in sports, and to build a new crowd of people. Consumption scenarios, and promote the operation of its platform e-commerce. In the field of sports, Bytedance is not without the possibility of overtaking in corners.
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Prior to this, Ali had tried to nugget the copyright market of football matches.
In 2018, Youku defeated Tencent, which was once “almost talking” with CCTV, with a record-breaking 1.6 billion yuan, and won the World Cup copyright. During the World Cup broadcast, Youku’s new effects were obvious. According to the statistics of IResearch Institute, during the opening match of the 2018 Russia World Cup, Youku, who bought the broadcast rights of the tournament, gained 160% of new users on a daily basis. On the day of the final, it was a single game. The data of more than 24 million users who watched the game hit a new high in Youku’s history.
On July 19, 2018, Alibaba announced a strategic investment in Suning Sports, including the copyright of the world’s top football matches.
However, Youku’s internal personnel changes and operating conditions have caused Youku’s sports event operations to be anticlimactic.
Compared with Youku, Byte’s “money capability” is obviously stronger. As a content company, its motivation to compete for sports copyrights is also more direct and strong. For Byte, abandoning copyright seizure is not only to hand over the promising new market of live sports events to its rivals, but more importantly, the accumulation of sports copyrights may affect the offense and defense of the short video field of both parties.
An insider close to the video number told the Alphabet List that the current daily life of the video number has reached 300 million, and the average usage time per capita is 15 minutes. The shortcoming of the current video number is the lack of high-quality content. If sports copyright content such as NBA and Premier League can be introduced as the material for short video creation, it can undoubtedly build a long board.
As competition in the short video track is becoming increasingly fierce, various platforms are bound to purchase copyrights and foster creators.He, be the strongest in this field.
From the perspective of users, watermelon video and sports content are a perfect match. According to the “2018 World Cup and Chinese Fans Research Report” released by MobData, men still watch sports events, with 25-34 years old occupying nearly half of the market. This user portrait is the main group that Watermelon Video is aimed at. According to the “Watermelon Video: Byte Beats Attempt to Layout Medium and Long Video” released by CITIC Securities, the gender distribution of Watermelon Video users is mainly male, and the age group is concentrated in 25 -35 years old, of which 31-35 years old accounted for 25.2%.
In addition to copyright procurement content, UGC content also constitutes another content dimension of the watermelon video, which has generated a high degree of demand for fans to pay attention to the surrounding content of the game, such as post-match highlights, expert comments, game statistics, and goal clips. Fit.
As mentioned in the previous article “B Station Jumps out of the Copyright Competition Game” in the alphabet list, “The purchased content will be sprinkled on the platform as the seeds of IP, which will become a richer content form, and even derive other IPs, thus forming a positive cycle. “, is a more favorable choice for content platforms.
If ByteDance purchases a large number of exclusive copyrights and opens them to users of Douyin, Watermelon and other platforms for free creation and use, it will not only use copyright advantages to attract more creators to produce content, and further build themselves on the content. The moat can also use its own traffic to increase the exposure of the event, attract more users to pay attention to the event, and cultivate the habit of paying to watch the game.
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Another content platform that is working hard on sports copyright is BYTE’s old rival, Kuaishou. According to Lanxiong Sports, both Kuaishou and Douyin chose to expand their sports teams in 2020. At that time, both teams had around 20 people.
Compared with ByteDance, Kuaishou’s effort in sports content is relatively late, and it will not start to focus its efforts until the first half of 2020. At that time, ByteDance already has the rights to NBA short video. But Kuaishou has taken a bigger move. During the Spring Festival, it has announced that it has bought the right to change the system of Snooker, and is one step ahead of the live broadcast of the event.
As the scale of short video users continues to expand, the growth rate has gradually slowed down. Statistics show that from 2018 to 2020, the number of monthly active users in December was 7.31, 8.23, and 8.72, respectively, with a year-on-year increase of 70.8%, 12.6%, and 6.0%. It is not difficult to understand why short video platforms with entertainment as the main content have begun to increase sports content. And exclusive rightsIt has a significant effect on promoting user activity. According to the Mob Research Institute’s “2020 China Short Video Industry Insight Report”, after BYTE bought the popular movie “囧Mo” during the Spring Festival in 2020, the installed capacity of the app in the two days before and after the premiere was all There is a significant increase.
Coincidentally, 3 days ago, Kaishou began to test the main video app “Jinvideo”. Although some people in the industry said that this app is against the standard Aiyouteng, but “China Video “The positioning is hard not to remind people of the watermelon video. In the field of China Video, Kuaishou, Station B, and Watermelon Video have become major competitors. Station B has a unique community culture, and its content longboard is also very obvious. The video coming into the game quickly will bring a lot of pressure on Watermelon, especially both of them are mainly sinking the market. For Watermelon Video, buying a large amount of exclusive copyrights will help offset Kuaishou’s first-mover advantage in sports copyrights.
Copyright has always been the vane of the sports industry. For copyright holders, it is not realistic in the short term to only rely on the attention of the competition to earn advertising revenue. On the contrary, it is not realistic to operate content and monetize e-commerce around copyright. Become the choice of more and more people.
How to “roll up” this part of content like a snowball is also an extremely important thing. “Everyone knows how to spend money. The key lies in the development and operation after the copyright is taken. This includes live events, direct broadcasts, and channels and fan publicity.” Chen Ze said.
At present, both Douyin and Watermelon have begun to experiment with self-made content, which means that there is one more path in the realization of sports copyrights. It can imitate Tencent’s “Super Penguin League”, “Supernova National Games” and other self-made IP , Combine sports copyright with entertainment content to build more sports content consumption scenarios.
However, Byte’s strength lies in short sports videos. “Sports event live broadcast” is a rather unfamiliar field for ByteDance. Whether it is Douyin or Watermelon Video, they lack experience in live broadcast of events, and do not have the copyright broadcast and operational capabilities of major sports events. Although in 2020, people have watched movies such as “囧Mom” from the byte system platform, and have experienced the view on the byte system platform.The experience of watching long videos, but from short videos to live matches, there is still a huge gap that needs to be bridged.
Reference material:
“2020 China Short Video Industry Insight Report”-Mob Research Institute
“New Short Video Campaign: Douyin, Kuaishou, and WeChat Video Accounts Perform “Three Kingdoms”-36氪Pro
“Watermelon Video: Byte Beats Attempt to Layout Medium and Long Video”——CITIC Securities
“Tencent, bargain-hunting for the Premier League”, sports industry ecosystem
“Tencent won the NBA copyright for $1.5 billion, is it worth it? “, Lanxiong Sports
“C Ronaldo VS Beckham, the “Quick Shake” battle enters the sports battlefield”, Sloth Bear Sports
“BAT Fights for Sports Copyright”, Chinese Entrepreneur Magazine
This article is from WeChat official account:Letter List (ID: wujicaijing)< span class = "text-remarks">, author: Takeaki containing Long Teng