Watching the World Cup on TV: Sense of Presence and Participation

On June 13, the quadrennial World Cup will kick off in Brazil. When it comes to the World Cup, the most popular topics for the country's 240 million fans are: exciting matches, fair referees, and high-tech products related to the World Cup. These high-tech products include chip footballs, chip boots, goal-line technology and other high-tech technologies on the field; for Chinese fans who cannot go to Brazil to watch the football festival in person, the use of emerging technologies such as high-speed bandwidth, 4K recording, and 4K broadcasting has also become a hot topic of discussion among fans.

Television has undoubtedly become the most popular electronic product during the World Cup.

Large-scale international sports events such as the World Cup have played a positive role in promoting the development of television broadcasting and manufacturing technology.

From the first attempt to record color video at the 1966 World Cup in England to the first attempt to broadcast high-definition events through H.264 encoding during the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the transition from analog signals to digital signals was realized; the first attempt at 3D video broadcasting during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa...

In this year's World Cup in Brazil, the most popular products among fans are large-screen TVs over 50 inches, 4k ultra-high-definition TVs, curved TVs and O-LED TVs. The main reason why these new products and technologies are sought after by fans is that they have a significant effect on improving the sense of presence! Fans in China can also experience the "passion of Samba" up close.

Judging from the market performance, the structure of the color TV market has undergone a significant change during the World Cup promotion period. Compared with the higher-priced curved TVs and O-LED TVs, the 4K ultra-high-definition TV and large-size TV markets performed more prominently.

According to the forecast data of AVC, the penetration rate of ultra-high-definition TV has been rapidly improved, thanks to the active promotion of ultra-high-definition panels by upstream panel manufacturers and the promotional activities launched by major manufacturers around the World Cup. It is expected that the penetration rate of ultra-high-definition TV in China's domestic market will reach 17% during the World Cup; and the sales volume of ultra-high-definition TV in 2014 will exceed 10 million units, and the penetration rate will exceed 22%. In terms of large-size TV, the penetration rate of large-size TV is expected to reach 26% during the World Cup, and the annual sales volume of large-size TV is expected to reach 11.47 million units, and the penetration rate can reach 25%.

In the post-hardware profit era, in addition to improving fans' sense of presence by improving hardware configuration, enhancing user participation, allowing more users to interact with color TVs, watch more video content on TV, and conduct social activities through TV... is the key to whether companies can capture users and thus increase the activity of the smart ecosystem.

Since the second half of 2013, Internet companies have entered the traditional color TV industry on a large scale, accelerating the pace of change for traditional color TV companies.

In 2014, LeTV generated a revenue of 400 million just from the program "I Am a Singer". The model of Internet companies subsidizing hardware with content revenue has further squeezed the space for traditional color TV manufacturers to create profits through hardware. Similar to talent shows, large-scale international sports events such as the World Cup are very beneficial to the operation of content resources for companies with content resources and user resources. They will make up for the lack of hardware revenue by charging back-end advertising fees, value-added content services, TV shopping, copyright transfer and other models, and push the business model of the color TV industry to user-centered operations more quickly.

For the color TV industry, at this juncture of the World Cup, in addition to using the World Cup as a powerful promotional theme, it should also think about how to lay out a smart ecosystem earlier, make up for its own content disadvantages through cooperation or independent operation, and build a smart ecosystem with excellent sense of presence and participation.

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.