Southern Finance All-Media Reporter Wu Liyang 21st Century Business Herald Reporter Cai Shuyue Reported from Beijing and Shanghai
Cards are childhood memories of many people. Playing or collecting cards with exquisite pictures is a rare childhood fun.
But a small card, in addition to the fun of battle collection, also contains huge collection and commercial value. Take Pokémon cards, one of the three major TCG (Trading card games), as an example. According to statistics, this product contributes more than one-tenth of the annual income of "Pokémon", the world's number one IP, second only to other peripheral and game income, and even significantly surpasses its comics and animations. In more mature overseas secondary markets, the price of a rare card can reach up to one million yuan.
Nowadays, this TCG trend has begun to spread in the Chinese market. Well-known card games such as Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon, One Piece, and Digimon have successively launched simplified Chinese versions, vying to seize the Chinese market. Domestic Douluo Continent, Qin Shi Mingyue, Legend of Sword and Fairy, and even well-known IPs such as the LPL e-sports league have also launched their own card products. For a time, the Chinese card market was undercurrent, and it tried its best to increase its popularity and influence with the help of trendy games, live broadcasts and other channels.
Why will the Simplified Chinese card market explode this year? As a card toy that combines competitiveness and collectibility, what is the value logic behind trading cards?
The hot card market
The most recent new product in the card market is undoubtedly the simplified Chinese version of the Pokémon card PTCG that has just been released. As one of the three major trading cards in the world, the early Japanese version, The US version of the cards and the Traditional Chinese version released in 2019 have accumulated a considerable number of players in the mainland market. Coupled with the high popularity of the Pokémon IP itself, the popularity of the Simplified and Chinese Pokémon cards has remained high once they were released, and it was once "hard to find a box".
It is worth noting that there are many well-known cards that have chosen to release simplified Chinese versions this year, such as the Digimon card DTCG simplified Chinese version released in April, and the One Piece card OTCG simplified Chinese version released in November. As the other two of the world's three major trading cards, the simplified Chinese version of Yu-Gi-Oh! was officially released in September 2020, while Magic: The Gathering released a simplified Chinese version as early as 1999.
In addition to imported IP, many domestic IPs have recently begun to test the card market. Domestic IPs such as Legend of Sword and Fairy, Douluo Dalu, and Qin Shi Mingyue have launched their own card products. The domestic e-sports league League of Legends LPL has also launched e-sports player cards modeled on star cards.
Although various card companies are competing to release new products and strive to get a share of the card market that is still in its infancy, their intentions are very obvious, but there are also significant differences in the sales models they adopt.
Take Digimon cards and One Piece cards, which focus on competitive battles, as examples. Their sales channels are mainly concentrated in offline card stores and online. Douluo Continent cards and Qinshi Mingyue cards, which focus on collection value and do not emphasize competitive battles, have relatively rich sales channels. In addition to online authorized stores, many offline fashion stores, stationery stores and even convenience stores can also purchase corresponding products.
"The sales channels for cards are actually highly related to the type of audience." Li Hui (pseudonym), the owner of a physical card store in Beijing, told reporters that for physical toy products such as cards, the cost of expanding and maintaining offline sales channels is very high, so manufacturers often need to be careful when planning sales models.
Among them, the audience for competitive cards is relatively small and "hard-core". The layout of physical card stores can cover most of the audience, and card stores are the main places for players to play and compete offline. Focusing on maintaining corresponding channels is also conducive to the development of merchants. Exhibiting various offline activities; as card products that mainly focus on collectible attributes, they are mostly targeted at young consumer groups such as students and white-collar workers. Compared with card stores, trendy toy stores and convenience stores are undoubtedly more accessible channels for products. It is not surprising that manufacturers choose to distribute goods in these stores on a large scale.
However, there is no clear distinction between "hardcore" and "non-hardcore". The popular Pokémon cards have chosen a multi-line parallel sales model: on the one hand, relying on traditional card stores to hold offline events, cultivate and maintain gamers. The popularity and user stickiness of the game among competitive players; on the other hand, it actively explores sales channels such as fashion stores, convenience stores and even live broadcast rooms of various live broadcast platforms. In addition to the first phase of pre-assembled packs and supplementary packs, it also specially launches supermarket packs sold in convenience stores.
Wang Lei (pseudonym), a senior TCG game player in Beijing, told reporters that because Pokémon IP is well-known, and PTCG cards themselves are both competitive and collectible, it is easy to attract new players outside the original player group. The official hopes to increase the popularity of Pokémon cards among consumers, copy the successful path of the Japanese and American versions of "National Cards", and distribute the goods through multiple channels as much as possible.
The business logic behind a card
What are the main factors behind many well-known games and animation IPs competing for the domestic TCG card market?
Guo Chengjie, Director of Interactive Entertainment at iResearch Consulting, pointed out in an interview with 21 Reporter that cards are an important category in the IP derivative market. The popularity of the TCG card market actually reflects the maturity of the IP derivative market/cultural and creative product market.
"The domestic related industry chain is now relatively mature, especially the rapidly developing online and offline sales channels. In addition, the country is paying more and more attention to the protection of intellectual property rights and , and the crackdown on piracy continues to increase, which also ensures the healthy development of the card market." He said.
Previously, there were cases where customs seized pirated cards and detained them in accordance with the law. In November 2021, Shanghai Pudong Airport Customs seized more than 760 million tons of counterfeit Pokémon TCG cards. Xi Xiaojun, director of the Pudong Airport Customs Comprehensive Business Department, pointed out that this is also one of the cases with the largest number of goods seized in the field of intellectual property protection at the Pudong Airport port in recent years. The data fed back by the
market side shows that the commercial value behind the cards is rising. The "2023-2029 China Trading Card Industry Market Survey and Strategic Consulting Report" released by
Gongyan.com mentioned that China's trading card production will reach 330.958 million in 2021, a year-on-year increase of of 524.71%. It is expected that my country's trading card production will reach 287.671 million in 2022.
Among them, TCG cards are "appreciative", "collectible" and "interactive", which is an important reason why they stand out from many IP derivatives. Guo Chengjie believes that in addition to being derived from IP and enabling viewing and collection, TCG cards can also be assigned numerical values for use in battles between collectors, which is quite different from traditional figures and other toys. The low monetization cost of
IP is also a key advantage of the wild growth of TCG cards. " card monetization has lower entry cost requirements, and the original IP image is relatively reusable. Moreover, the cards are highly portable, easy to collect and exchange, and are naturally equivalent to collection attributes, making them suitable for IP monetization. " he said.
At the same time, the "appreciation" and "collectability" of TCG cards also overlap with the current hot trendy play concepts. 21 Reporters observed that currently Ultraman cards, Pokémon cards, Naruto cards, etc. are included in the business scope of many trendy toy stores. In addition, some trendy toy brands, such as Bubble Mart , Looking for Unicorn, etc., have also sensed the business opportunities and have joined the TCG card track.
"The viewing and collection attributes of the cards themselves are very similar to those of trendy games. Broadly speaking, IP cards can also be regarded as a type of trendy games. The cards themselves are very suitable for various sales channels and models of trendy games. In addition, due to their small size and low cost, cards are often co-branded gifts between IP and other physical products, which will boost the sales of physical products and enrich the gameplay." Guo Chengjie said.
" Players participate in offline card battles. On the one hand, they can have competitive entertainment. On the other hand, it is also a place to socialize with their peers. For card players, going to the card store to play a few games of card battle with friends in their free time, or unpacking and replacing cards in the card store when new cards are released is actually the same as playing chess and entertainment in the park." Wang Lei described his experience of participating in offline card games.
With the triple support of IP blessing, collection orientation, and competition orientation, it is not surprising that the Simplified Chinese card market is booming. The above-mentioned Gongyan.com report predicts that the demand for trading cards in my country will show a rapid growth trend. Domestic demand will increase from 71.176 million in 2015 to 330.198 million in 2021. It is expected that the demand for trading cards in China will reach 286.997 million in 2022.
"As an old player, I am definitely happy to see more and more newcomers trying card games, but I also hope that newcomers will not be obsessed with opening cards and return to the original fun of playing cards and trading." Wang Lei said.
For more content, please download 21 Finance APP
