BAT enters the film and television industry and the industry war is about to break out

Just as Alibaba invested 2.4 billion in Guangguang, Youku made a major internal restructuring. Other Internet giants are also not idle, and are sharpening their knives to enter the content industry. 2015 will definitely be the year when the Internet rushes into the film and television industry, and the industry war is about to break out.

Alibaba picked up Shanda 's "Internet Disney" dream

In fact, Alibaba's shopping cart in the cultural industry is already full. The previous big investments were Sina Weibo, Youku, Huayi, and China Culture Media. With this acquisition, it is said that it will also acquire Hollywood companies. It is simply unstoppable. There are many speculations about Alibaba's acquisition intentions. In fact, all of Alibaba's acquisitions revolve around one thing: integrating content with its own e-commerce model to find more traffic and channel entrances for e-commerce.

For Alibaba, all content is to serve the core business of e-commerce. To put it bluntly, it is still a strategy of channel first, casting a wide net as much as possible, and grabbing as much territory as possible. For Guangguang, this account is also very cost-effective. With the help of Alibaba's money and concepts, the stocks of both companies have risen. As for the strategic integration of business, we can't expect too much in the short term, because even Alibaba's own sons, Digital Entertainment Department and Alibaba Pictures, can't coordinate the resources of core departments such as Taobao and Tmall, let alone Guangguang. In addition, these acquisitions by Alibaba are also Jack Ma's way of hitting his two own sons, Digital Entertainment and Pictures, because the performance of these two business segments is actually not ideal.

In fact, Alibaba's series of acquisitions are more like buying insurance for itself, and it is also implementing a "horse racing strategy" for these companies to see who will come out on top in the end. Some people analyze that the companies invested by Alibaba have "clear division of labor and complementary businesses", but in fact, they are more of a repeated competitive relationship. For example, Guangguang and Huayi are definitely in a life-and-death competitive relationship, and Huayi Brothers also has Tencent's investment. A few years ago, Huayi New Media and Tencent QQ reached a strategic cooperation platform "Star Film Alliance". In addition, Huayi's main film business is already on the decline, and Alibaba's film and digital entertainment departments are actually not up, so it is necessary to find other stronger racehorses.

As for whether Alibaba can become the Chinese version of Disney, there are many variables. Shanda tried it before but failed. The Disney model is not as simple as just derivative products and theme parks. Its genes are inherently different from Alibaba. Alibaba's content layout model is more like "spreading a big cake", while Disney's model is "kebabs". So it depends on whether we can find a model that connects the businesses of various investment companies.

Youku leads the video industry into a content war

This new round of organizational restructuring of Youku Tudou Group has formed six business groups, namely Youku, Tudou, Cloud Entertainment, Heyi Pictures, Heyi Culture and Innovative Marketing. This is to elevate content to the same strategic level as Youku and Tudou. Although this restructuring is also partly due to the redistribution of power among senior executives: some senior executives have increased their power, while others have been marginalized, the general direction of transformation to content is unwavering.

In the past two years, the competition among video websites has changed from traffic competition to content competition. At first, the sky-high copyright fees made all the companies miserable, and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has imposed policy restrictions one after another, which is like a tight ring. For example, the recently issued foreign restriction order requires that foreign TV series must be reviewed before broadcasting, which greatly limits the speed of introducing foreign dramas. In addition, Hunan Satellite TV took the lead in launching the exclusive broadcast strategy and no longer sold content copyrights to video websites, which caused collective panic in the entire video industry.

Youku, iQiyi, Sohu , Tencent and other major video websites have stepped up their pace in producing their own dramas, and each of them has plans to invest hundreds of millions or even billions of yuan in their own dramas in 2015. If 2014 is the first year of online dramas, then 2015 is definitely the explosive year of online dramas.

Video websites are not just competing within the industry; they all have a common enemy: traditional TV stations.

In 2015, video websites also blew the horn of attack on traditional TV stations! Previously, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television stopped IPTV and boxes from video websites, so everyone simply broke through from the content of self-made web dramas. For video websites, whether it is to reduce copyright procurement costs, to reduce policy risks, or to gain a larger market space, these all require video websites to resolutely transform into the content industry.

Internet giants are making frequent moves

In addition to Alibaba, the other two BAT companies have also frequently made plans. Baidu and Tencent have just established Baidu Pictures and Tencent Pictures. There is nothing BAT cannot do, except what you can't think of. All mergers and acquisitions are beyond your expectations, but also within reason. However, the three companies have different ways of entering the content industry. Alibaba is blooming in all aspects, while the latter two have relatively few investments and acquisitions, preferring to make their own plans, but they are also big-handed. For example, Baidu's mobile business has listed O2O movie tickets as a business focus, and Tencent has transformed the entire team of Gaopeng into WeChat movie tickets. In general, Alibaba is learning from Shanda, Tencent is learning from Jack Welch, and Baidu is practicing its own magic.

In addition to the BAT Big Three, other companies such as 360 and Xiaomi have already begun to lay out content industries. Xiaomi poached Chen Tong , the editor-in-chief of Sina, and Lei Jun claimed to spend 1 billion US dollars to build a content strategy. Last year, it invested in Xunlei, and later invested in iQiyi, and there will be a series of actions in the future. 360 has also established a film and television department, and recently established a video website in a joint venture with Guangguang. 360 Film and Television has become the largest platform for directing traffic to video websites. Zhou Hongyi has always had a special liking for entertainment, and it is said that there will be even bigger actions in the future.

The film and television industry will explode in 2015

The competition between Internet giants is actually the competition of the entire industry chain. Since the competition pattern of channels and traffic has been determined, the next step is to enter the competition of content. Especially in the era of mobile Internet, the decentralization of information makes those content platforms that can retain users' attention more and more valuable. Film and television content has the elements of detonating popularity, which makes the film and television industry the first target of Internet giants. For film and television companies, the rules of the game have become that the fast fish eat the slow fish, so they must also find a godfather with strong capital as a backer.

The Internet giants' acquisition of the film and television industry is actually an insurance policy for themselves. The pattern of the PC Internet era has been determined, and it is impossible to subvert BAT. However, the mobile Internet is a decentralized era, which is a terrible subversion for the giants. Many new business models do not emerge from the BAT system at all, which may shake the position of BAT at any time. For example, mobile games, "Dota Legend" suddenly appeared with a monthly turnover of tens of millions. Since the giants cannot achieve absolute monopoly, the safest way is to desperately acquire all potential businesses that may challenge their position.

In addition, Internet giants value the "IPization" of the content industry, which is the magic weapon for giants to fight against "decentralization" in the mobile Internet era. Decentralization makes the various businesses of giants scattered, and they cannot be relatively aggregated like in the PC Internet era. Therefore, IP can play the role of connecting various businesses together, which is equivalent to the "Mickey Mouse" of the Disney Empire, connecting movies, television, the Internet, games, derivative products, theme parks and other businesses. At this time, content companies that can incubate IP become crucial!

The film industry has another big cake that attracts Internet giants, that is, online ticketing websites. In 2014, online ticketing websites accounted for 40% of the box office share, and it is expected to reach more than 50% in 2015. O2O online ticketing has become the entrance to the mobile Internet, and this will definitely become the next key acquisition area for Internet giants. Although BAT has its own layout, Meituan Maoyan, Guevara, Dianping, etc. have already formed a climate. In particular, Meituan Maoyan has a turnover of more than 5 billion and has occupied half of the market share of online ticketing. In the future, the online ticketing business will become a world of subsidies from giants, just like taxi-hailing software.

Finally, despite the booming scene of Internet giants’ layout in the film and television industry, there are also some concerns. If these acquisitions are not digested well, they will become a burden! When Jack Welch rebuilt General Motors, he sold all the businesses that were not in the top three in the industry so that he could focus on the core businesses with core competitiveness. If Internet giants acquire a large number of burden businesses that have no chance of becoming the top three in the industry, the final cost will be huge. Not only will they lose money, but they will also lose the opportunity cost of losing the growth of the main business due to the involvement of energy. So we can’t just focus on acquisitions. Sometimes we should stop and ask ourselves, which businesses need to be sold?

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.