iQiyi leverages Xinying Sports, a subsidiary of Contemporary Mingcheng (600136), to enter the sports broadcasting market, and will compete with Alibaba, which recently invested in Suning Sports, and Tencent Sports for the broadcasting rights of mainstream football matches. After LeTV lost, BAT started a war to burn money to grab users in the field of sports broadcasting.
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Author | Ma Cheng Editor | Anxin
On August 6, 2018, Xinying Sports Media, a subsidiary of iQiyi and Contemporary Mingcheng (600136), jointly announced that the two parties will establish "Beijing Xinai Sports Media Technology Co., Ltd.", The independent new company will actively build a super online sports platform and uniformly operate the merged iQiyi Sports platform, including Xinying Sports App, iQiyi Sports Channel, Xinying Sports App and Xinying Sports The names of terminals such as Ying Sports Network will also be officially renamed iQiyi Sports.
Based on this cooperation, the newly upgraded iQiyi platform will bring high-quality improvements in live content, user experience and membership services. Since August, iQiyi Sports Platform will include top sports events such as football, tennis, golf, etc., including high-quality copyrighted content such as Premier League , European National League, Australian Open , ATP, WTA and other high-quality copyrighted content.
At the same time, iQiyi Tennis Members and Xinying Sports’ original membership system will also be connected to become iQiyi Sports members. iQiyi Sports Member Exclusive Content not only includes live broadcast content such as the European National League, Carabao Cup, English Championship, golf, etc., but will also add exclusive games for the Premier League, tennis and golf. Members receive a single-game viewing ticket every month, which can be used to watch paid Premier League live broadcasts and paid tennis live broadcasts at the same time.
Xinying Sports has exclusive broadcast rights for the 2010-2019 Premier League season. In 2017, A-share listed company Contemporary Mingcheng issued an announcement stating that it would acquire Xinying Sports with full capital. After the acquisition, Xinying Sports will also share a number of events under Contemporary Mingcheng, including the Champions League and the European Cup.
Coincidentally, the one who seized the copyright of the Premier League from 2019 to 2023 from Xinying Sports was Suning Sports, which Alibaba invested not long ago. On July 19, Alibaba strategically invested in Suning Sports' A round with RMB 600 million.
At present, BAT's competition for online sports users has become increasingly fierce. iQiyi and Alibaba reached cooperation with Contemporary Mingcheng and Suning Sports, two of the largest sports copyright operators in China. In contrast, Tencent Sports, which had previously made the limelight by relying on the broadcast rights of events such as NBA, is slightly inferior. Who is
Xinying Sports?
According to the "Tianyan Check" data, Beijing Xinai Sports Media Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Xinai Sports") has a registered capital of 100 million yuan, and the legal representative is Yu Lingxiao, the president of Xinying Sports. Among the shareholders of Xinai Sports, Xinying Sports holds 42.5% of the shares, iQiyi holds 38.25% of the shares, Beijing Xinying Huizhi Media Technology Enterprise (Limited Partnership) holds 15% of the shares, and Yu Lingxiao himself holds 4.25% of the shares.
Xinying Sports is a sports communication agency jointly invested by IDG Capital and Xinyadi Media.
Xinying Sports signed a contract with the Premier League for the first time in the 2010-2013 season. Then in 2012,Xinying Sports renewed its contract for the Premier League broadcast rights for six years. Until the 2018/2019 season, the renewal fee was RMB 1 billion, an average of 1.67 per year. 100 million yuan (about 24.5 million US dollars)
Premier League is one of the most copyrighted events in the world. By 2016, when Suning Sports won the Premier League broadcast rights from 2019 to 2022, it spent a total of more than US$721 million, which is nearly 10 times that of Xinying Sports that year.
But the Premier League has a wide audience. According to statistics, in the 2011-2012 season, the cumulative number of viewers watching the Premier League through TV, IPTV and the Internet in mainland China and Macau has reached 300 million.
Xinying Sports also gained huge profits through copyright distribution. From 2015 to the end of May 2017, Xinying Sports' revenue totaled RMB 1.555 billion, and the Premier League copyright-related revenue was RMB 1.507 billion, accounting for as high as 96.94%, and the profit proportion was even as high as 144.86%.
In 2013, Xinying Sports also took advantage of the hot iron, and launched the first sports paid viewing model in mainland China and launched the app.In 2016, Yu Lingxiao, president of Xinying Sports, said in an interview that the company has been fully developing its paid membership business for some time. In the 2016-2017 season, its paid users reached 2.08 million after deduplication.
In August 2016, Xinying Sports announced that the new media broadcast rights for the new season were obtained by LeTV Sports , PPTV First Sports and Xinying Sports. However, in December of the same year, LeTV Sports owed Xinying Sports $30 million in copyright fees, and the Chinese copyright holder of the Premier League, Xinying Sports, cut off LeTV Sports' live broadcast signal in accordance with the prescribed contract.
It is reported that the broadcast contract reached by Xinying Sports and LeTV Sports at that time stipulates that the fees are divided into two periods of payment. The first period of payment is paid before the start of the Premier League. LeTV Sports has completed the payment, and the remaining payment in the second period is US$30 million. Payment date is paid in December 2016. Subsequently, Xinying Sports reached a settlement with LeTV, and LeTV promised to make up for the debt in a short period of time.
According to relevant media reports, Xinying Sports had plans to go public, and another company from Hong Kong has filed a purchase request.
Finally, in 2017, A-share listed company Contemporary Mingcheng issued an announcement that it plans to acquire Xinying Sports for 3.4 billion yuan, but subsequently, the acquisition was questioned by the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
One of the reasons why
was questioned is that the copyright of the Premier League in Xinying Sports will expire in 2019. After that, Xinying Sports, which has lost its important profit points, can still reach a valuation of RMB 3.4 billion.
In fact, Xinying Sports currently has many resources, including the exclusive copyright of new media and global sponsorship market development rights for the 2018-2022 UEFA National Team Series (including the 2020 European Cup and the 2022 World Cup European Qualifiers, etc.) ;The exclusive copyright and sponsorship operation rights of the AFC 10-year event, covering all the AFC events in 2021-2028, including the Asian Cup, the World Cup Asian Qualification Championship, the AFC Champions League and other AFC events. It can be said that it still has a competitive advantage in sports events copyright.
This transaction has been progressing slowly since then. During this process, Xinying Sports' valuation has not decreased. Until the evening of July 5, 2018, Contemporary Mingcheng issued another announcement, mentioning that the company had completed the payment of the second phase of the transaction price, and said that the consideration of the purchase price of the major assets was fully paid for US$431.5 million, and both parties are actively Promote the delivery of assets and related handover work. After LeTV, BAT is competing to plan sports events
At present, LeTV and PPTV have been eliminated, taking over iQiyi, one of the three major video websites.
Some experts revealed to all-weather technology that live events are the biggest traffic responsibility of sports. For video websites, sports events are indispensable positions in terms of traffic or snatching user time.
LeTV Sports once ran in the front. From 2014 to 2016, LeTV Sports launched LeTV Super Sports members with its live broadcast rights with a presence of 590 yuan per year, gaining many fans. However, the expensive event broadcasting costs once put LeTV Sports in a capital chain dilemma. In 2016, LeTV Sports was stopped by ATP for arrears of copyright fees, and the Beijing International Championships were temporarily cancelled. But none of this could stop LeTV Sports from being widely favored at that time, and its valuation was as high as 23.6 billion yuan.
In 2015, Tencent Sports signed the exclusive live broadcast rights of the NBA network for US$500 million in 5 years, and gained many basketball fans. After the first season, Tencent Video's total number of users increased by more than 2 times.
At that time, neither Alibaba nor iQiyi had taken action.
In 2015, although Alibaba had established Alibaba Sports, it did not purchase the copyright of the event, but focused on offline event services and operations for e-sports, road running and other projects.
Previously, iQiyi was also very "Buddhist" in the field of sports events copyright, but it only entered the fields of golf, tennis, fighting, rugby, etc. After 2017, iQiyi Sports once focused on the tennis field and launched the "Tennis VIP Membership".
At that time, Tencent Sports had already won the broadcast rights of Wimbledon, French Open and US Open after the four major slams. In order to confront Tencent Sports, iQiyi purchased the Internet broadcasting rights for other major tennis events, including the broadcasting rights for ATP Masters, Australian Open, etc.However, due to the number of tennis fans, this membership system has not attracted much attention.
After 2017, LeTV Sports gradually declined, and a huge blank market appeared in the field of online live broadcast of events, and Alibaba and iQiyi took action one after another.
On July 19 this year, Alibaba invested US$600 million in Suning Sports' Series A financing. The investors also include Goldman Sachs , Evergrande, SenseTime, etc. Suning Sports' valuation exceeds 15 billion yuan. Previously, Youku , a subsidiary of Alibaba Entertainment, won the World Cup new media live broadcast rights, which once attracted the attention of the whole people.
This time, iQiyi entered the copyright of mainstream sports events through cooperation with Xinying Sports, reflecting that iQiyi is seizing user time and taking advantage of this opportunity to help membership business.
is different from video platforms competing for resources. Contemporary Mingcheng and Suning Sports are instead "harmonious". The two companies established a joint venture in June 2017 and will launch a cooperation on international football match copyright distribution platforms for at least 10 years, thereby enhancing their respective competitiveness and profitability in the copyright market, while further improving their own sports. Industrial chain. Whether the competition between iQiyi and Youku will affect the future cooperation between the two companies is still unknown.
In the past few years, the cost of broadcasting sports events has been increasing. No matter which company enters the game, it is inevitable to praise "burn money". But in any case, iQiyi and Youku chose Xinying Sports and Suning Sports, which had already accumulated sufficient resources in the industry, and spent huge amounts of money, which also found a shortcut.
