Where is the future of the highly competitive tripartite platform?

A few days ago, with People's Daily's criticism of iQIYI, Inc. and other video websites for "paying to show" the new play "Qingyu years" in advance, various social platforms also set off a hot discussion about whether the charging system of video websites is reasonable. After intensive discussion, people can't help thinking.Why does Youai Teng, as an old video portal, break out this kind of "ugly eating" behavior one after another?

01 "Youai Teng" struggles in the Red Sea

In 2004, Leeco, the first professional video website in China, was launched, which opened the growth curtain of professional video websites in China.

Over the next decade, from the "barbaric growth" of Youku, Tudou, PPS and other websites, to the two "reshuffle" of the industry pattern affected by the policy and financial crisis of the former State Administration of Radio, Film and Television in 2008, to the "sword net operation" and the integration of mergers and acquisitions in the industry, Chinese video websites have gradually formed a pattern with "Tencent", "Youku" and "iQIYI, Inc." as the leader. The consciousness of formalization of copyright, refined content and innovative profit model has gradually matured in the industry.

Throughout the domestic market, the huge demographic dividend and the popularity of broadcast products such as smartphones have made this early and orderly industry a "blue ocean market" that everyone envies.However, with Youai Teng's endless plunder of head resources and flow dividends, this promising field has stepped into the "Red Sea" too early.

Looking at the development history of enterprises in the world, it is not difficult to find that most industries often show monopoly or competition after fierce market competition. "Tripod" as an anomaly in the competitive environment, generally only as a primary form of competition, but does not have long-term stability.

In recent years, the exclusive copyright war formed between "Youai Teng" clearly indicates that China's video websites are also at this stage.

If it is said that the e-commerce field relies on a huge trillion-scale market to feed a series of brands such as Amoy, then the video port that feeds on traffic undoubtedly does not have the soil to nurture this form of fierce competition. With the entry of new brands such as Bilibili Inc. and Mango TV in the rear, the future of this track is bound to be more crowded.

On this basis, reviewing the development of some start-up industries, the "wreckage" of bicycles all over the ground after the bike-sharing "subsidy war" also reminds people that the more melee there is, the more resources may be wasted for no reason in the process.

If there is still a huge capital support behind the "money burning" of e-commerce, then in the current video world of "Youai Teng" melee, who should pay for these resources that may be "wasted"?

02 the upstream pressure of "paying"

Today, 15 years after the launch of "Letv", although it has become a saddening topic, the Chinese video website driven by it has realized the transformation from "barbaric" to "relatively formal". And is constantly exploring on the way to cash in revenue.

Self-love Qiyi introduced the "Netflix" model, the mode of watching dramas by video website members has been gradually promoted, and the copyright protection of Chinese film and television resources has gradually become a consensus. Today's video platform, user payment + advertising, has become the main source of revenue.

However, in this era when Chinese video users gradually develop the habit of "paying", the payment method of "Youai Teng" video platform seems to be moving towards "madness".

From "members free of advertising" and "members watching movies at half price" to the early on-demand finale of Tencent's solo drama "Chen Ling", to iQIYI, Inc. and Tencent jointly launching super members plus "50 yuan advance screening" for "Qingyu years", paid "routines" emerge one after another, but users "burn money" into a "bottomless pit".

Why is the payment pattern of "Youai Teng" constantly updated? When looking at the way video platforms compete in recent years, these eagerness to harvest "fees" from users may be explained.

Buyout exclusive broadcast rights is the most important means for current video websites to compete for users.In the whole film and television industry, the broadcast platform is currently at the bottom of the industrial chain, and there are many stages in front of it, such as production, performing arts brokerage, contract production, late stage and so on.

When the investment is seriously skewed, actors need "sky-high pay", and the entire film and television industry develops in a "bubble", the film and television costs of a ring accumulate in front of the video platform, making the buyout price of "exclusive rights" become a "sky-high price."

Therefore, in order to make up for the cost, whether it is "paid by members" or "paid on demand", the "wool" changing from users is actually the platform's compensation for the upfront input cost.

However, it is not a long-term way for the development of video websites to compete for copyright at high prices.

On the one hand, the platform's high-priced copyright purchase is only a scramble for resources, but it does not recognize the fundamental reason why users are willing to pay: in this era of developed Internet information, free resources abound, while users pay for it. it is more to support the genuine version, enjoy a higher viewing experience, or form a viewing habit.However, on this basis, the platform will intensify the "payment", which will only erode the patience of users and "force" the spread of pirated resources.

Therefore, the advantage of unicast resources in the Internet era is actually a very weak support.In this case, the platform that buys resources crazily not only faces the situation that the backlog of resources cannot be broadcast, but also is more likely to lose the copyright "solo broadcast" after other platforms pay higher prices, which will also make the substitutability of the platform very high.

For example, in Youku's resource collection in 2019, although it has a reserve of as many as 60, there are 19 non-solo dramas that need to be "carved up" with users. Moreover, 60 dramas are not really available for broadcast, of which the backlog of resources accounts for almost half, while the number of hot dramas broadcast is very few.

And just when Youku was in the vanguard of the industry competition with "12 hours in Changan", but in the twinkling of an eye, when the popular "Dear Love" and "Qingyu year" swept through the moments, because it did not get the right to broadcast, and fell behind again.

On the other hand, there is no lower limit of "user pay", in the final analysis, it is a behavior that consumers pay the bill, but let the film and television industry make unlimited profits.

According to statistics, Tencent video spent 800 million yuan on the copyright of "Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace", which cost 300 million yuan, while Youku exclusively bought the copyright of 48 episodes of "12 hours in Changan" for 12.2 million yuan per episode.

In addition, at what price will the "Great Master", who invested NT $300 million under the Wolf Hall, invested NT $500 million in Kyushu, and paid Wang Yuan 10 million pieces of money? How will you choose to sell it to the platform?

When the platform only repeatedly charges users to make up for the "bubble" at the front of the film and television industry chain, the formation of this habit will fully deliver the "bargaining power" to the film and television industry at the front end of the broadcasting platform.

At this point, if the film and television copyright premium or choose to sell on multiple platforms on a quarterly basis, do users need to tolerate the possibility that a play may have to be paid for from multiple platforms?

Behind the bubble of "sky-high pay" and "big investment", consumers pay for it. In the long run, such an environment will only encourage a vicious circle in which the platform buys copyright at a high price, consumers pay the bill, and the film and television copyright is overpriced.

03 possible choice of "self-help"

The broadcast platform at the bottom of the industry chain is gradually "alienated" in the cycle of continuous resource grabbing and traffic realization, while the video website industry is bound to change in this non-virtuous circle.

When we are in the environment of excellent competition, it may be meaningless to talk about M & A monopoly.So apart from that, where is the future of the current highly competitive tripartite platform?

At present, Youku, iQIYI, Inc., Tencent video in the competition in order to seize more traffic, chose to "spread the net". In the repertoire reserve in 2019, Youku reached 60, iQIYI, Inc. 64 and Tencent 76, covering plot costumes, historical costumes, fantasy costumes, adventure costumes, love costumes, suspense times, suspense crimes, science fiction suspense, fantasy adventures, suspense adventures, urban love and other categories, not to mention animation, variety shows and other larger categories.

Although this model can get a large amount of traffic in a short period of time, these users who are gathered by lovers in various fields will become a burden on the platform while forming huge traffic.

Because in the process of maintaining this part of users, the platform should continue to obtain video resources in various fields, which is extremely costly and unstable for the three video platforms in the highly competitive market.

In order to alleviate the cost pressure, the "Youai Teng" platform has taken the road of self-made dramas, expanding the repertoire with a large number of self-made dramas.

However, from the broadcast results, the platform "popular style" homemade dramas are still a minority, and most of the homemade dramas are not the huge traffic entrances of Youyou, Ai and Teng platforms.

In addition, for the current situation that there is a serious industry bubble in the film and television industry, homemade dramas cannot obtain high-quality actor resources and production crew if they want to reduce costs; if they want to produce well, they are bound to invest a lot of costs, and behind this, you still need to keep getting cash from users. Therefore, to simply increase the choice of "homemade drama" is to change the soup without changing the dressing.

Before 2018, industry bubbles appeared one after another at the front end of the film and television industry chain, and the broadcasters lost their "bargaining power" in the competition. In this case, instead of using "sacrificing consumers" to cater to the "film and television royalty" of excessive premium, it is better to take advantage of the "cold winter" of the film and television industry after 2018 to shift the energy used to deal with the front-end film and television bubble to cultivate their own direction.

Just like mango TV to self-made variety, Bilibili Inc. to animation as the brand features to obtain a stable user group, for "Youai Teng", the capital behind the support, has let them in the platform characteristics, their own advantage direction, which for the content characteristics to create a platform brand, is a good direction.

At the same time, the experience from Sony Group Corp, an elder in the film and television industry, seems to be a reference.

As we all know, Sony Group Corp Film became a world-class giant in the industry after gradually stabilizing its business situation and taking advantage of the declining trend of the US film market to acquire two film and television companies, Colombia and MGM, one after another, and completed the layout of the whole industry chain.

As a business legend, Warren Buffett also has the investment motto that "low price means the best time to buy".

From this point of view, the current film and television winter, for Youai Teng, may also be an opportunity to go up against the current and break through the whole industry chain.

In fact, Yu Sanjia has long been aware of this. Fan Luyuan, president of Youku, pointed out that through the "VIP personal service" provided by Youku, the production company is no longer simply selling copyright to the platform, but has the opportunity to deeply participate in the whole chain of content planning, production, user operation and commercialization, sharing profits.

At the same time, Gong Yu, CEO of iQIYI, Inc., and Wang Xiaohui, chief content officer, have repeatedly mentioned in recent speeches the expectation of halving the sky-high royalties of TV dramas and a sharp drop in the remuneration of stars. On this basis, BAT, which Youai Teng three rely on, has already begun the layout of the artist brokerage plate, so as to control the cost at the source.

Of course, for the results of this series of operations, no one can predict, the Chinese video website port of this "three Kingdoms", is far from the moment to tell the outcome.

However, with the heated discussion of this "advance screening", executives belonging to China's leading video sites may really need to reflect on the path of curbing losses.

After all, people are happy to witness the occurrence of competition, in essence, because enterprises such as PepsiCo Inc and Coca-Cola Company have guaranteed concessions to consumers in years of incentives, even the competition between DiDi Global Inc. and Uber,ofo and mobike is based on preferential treatment to the market.

On this basis, if it belongs to the Red Sea fight of the video broadcasting brand, the final cost will be transferred to the users, then this competition will undoubtedly lose its meaning for the Chinese film and television copyright that all parties are determined to protect.