In the battle for sports copyright, the video platform has not stopped for a while.
On August 17, La Liga 2019/20 season officially kicked off, Iqiyi Sports announced that will be broadcast exclusively on the whole network. This means that 20 teams including Real Madrid and Barcelona will only be able to watch on the iQi platform.
In addition to the exclusive live broadcast La Liga 380 events, iQiyi Sports also launched “Lite Cold Knowledge”, “Return to the West”, “Green Shade”, “Dream Team 100” “Original derivative content, etc., to capture the golden file of live sports events.
One data that can be referenced is that Youku won the World Cup live broadcast rights for the first time in 2018. This game created huge traffic for Youku. QuestMobile data shows that Youku Mobile DAU has continued to grow since the live broadcast of the World Cup on June 14 last year, and broke through 100 million on June 23, and has remained stable over 100 million in the period. Affected by the live broadcast of the event, Youku has also surpassed Iqiyi and Tencent video during the focus period.
Sports events can be seen in the video platform, and the competition for the copyright of sports events has become the focus of the video platform layout. In the final analysis, this is the continued looting of the video platform in terms of user size and user duration in the vertical content category.
And Iqiyi’s right to broadcast the 2019/20 La Liga is not always smooth. The copyright of the sporting event was once in the hands of Suning Sports and was signed until 2020. However, because Suning Sports attracted audiences in the form of solo broadcasts, it was not distributed to other platforms. The La Liga Alliance believes that this move did not help La Liga bring coverage and influence, so it was cancelled. Another listed company, Contemporary Mingcheng, became the exclusive media exclusive copyright for La Liga’s five seasons of 2017-2022.
In the four years from 2015 to 2018, Xinying Sports gradually merged into contemporary Mingcheng, and with Aiqiyi announced the establishment of New Love Sports in August last year, which is now Yiqiyi Sports – — The La Liga copyright owner for the next 6 years, the copyright of the event has only flown here.
The copyright of sports events has become an important part of the content ecology of video platforms. The battle for BAT video platforms that compete for user time with sports content has begun. However, this also has to pay a lot of money.
In 2015, Tencent won the NBA copyright for five years and $500 million.Compared with the previous round of contract price increase of 5 times; in 2016, Suning won the 2019-2022 Premier League copyright for 721 million US dollars, compared with the previous round of Xinying Sports contract rose 10 times.
But the giants are still happy. Different from the high market risk faced by entertainment film and television dramas, sports events naturally have a stable user base. The competition for the copyright of sports events is not only to complement the content ecology, but also to drive the renewal and retention of paid members.
Alibaba Sports, which has tasted the sweetness, was also exposed by the media to establish a new company plus sports content, but today the tiger sniffs that the plan has ended. Tencent Sports, this year renewed the NBA, Tencent will continue to be the “NBA China Digital Media exclusive official partner” until the summer of 2025.
It is foreseeable that the video platform will continue to compete for the copyright of sports events.