Look at the footsteps of Wanda Cinema and Alibaba Pictures

On August 27, Alibaba's Yueke released Phoenix Jiaying's "Movie Cloud" product in Beijing. However, on the evening of August 31, just one week later, Wanda Cinema Line announced that the company would sign an investment agreement with Mtime Holdings on August 31 to strategically invest 20% of its equity to fully launch the film e-commerce O2O business.

In April this year, Alibaba announced the news of the acquisition of Yueke Software; on April 27, Tencent and Wanda led the investment in WeChat's built-in movie ticket purchase platform "Weipiao".

On August 27, Alibaba's Yueke released Phoenix Jiaying's "Movie Cloud" product in Beijing. However, on the evening of August 31, just one week later, Wanda Cinema Line announced that the company would sign an investment agreement with Mtime Holdings on August 31 to strategically invest 20% of its equity to fully launch the film e-commerce O2O business.

Such a consistent pace makes people can't help but wonder, is the confrontation between Wanda and Ali in the film industry inevitable?

Wanda: Investing in Shiguang is based on film promotion and the e-commerce of derivatives

Wanda films, but the effect is still limited.

On April 27, 2013, Wanda participated in the online seat selection platform Microfilm Era, hoping to use "micro-ticket" to draw people from large social platforms such as WeChat to introduce people into the movie-watching group; at the same time, it can also use the big data mastered by the Microfilm Era to conduct in-depth cooperation with the films invested, produced and distributed by Wanda, so as to achieve precise film marketing and drive box office.

Although the main business of the lithography era is online ticketing, unlike other platforms, the main products of the lithography era are "movie tickets" based on WeChat wallet and QQ wallet. By setting up the ticket purchase portal on large social platforms, a large number of users are connected to movies. In other words, users and platforms are mainly limited to WeChat and QQ.

When I re-invest in Time, I took a fancy to the latter's film promotion and film derivatives advantages.

Time is an online database of movies and TV series, including information, trailers, posters, photos and film reviews. According to the press release provided by Shiguang on September 1, Shiguang has developed into the most influential film media and service platform in the domestic film field, participating in the promotion of more than 120 Chinese and foreign films every year. In January this year, Shiguang's movie derivatives mall was launched. In half a year, it has developed from online to offline. The movie derivatives physical stores have also entered the top 10 high-ticket cities across the country, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. And these are all things that micro-tickets do not have for the time being.

According to Shiguang. com, in July this year, Wanda Theater Line announced its cooperation with Shiguang. com. Wanda Cinema will open its cinema positions in first-tier cities and second-tier key cities, and jointly build a film derivatives sales experience center with Shiguang. com.

In an exclusive interview, Zeng Maojun, general manager of Wanda Cinema, revealed for the first time the ins and outs of the in-depth cooperation between Wanda Cinema and Shiguang. com. Speaking of the development background of film derivatives, Zeng Maojun believes that with the improvement of Chinese people's consumption power, purchasing movie peripheral products has become the general trend. He believes that the development rate of domestic film derivatives in the past two years has been very rapid, close to that of developed countries.

Speaking of the cooperation between Wanda Cinema and Shiguang, Zeng Maojun said,

"Shiguang's advantages are: First, Shiguang currently ranks first in the number of app downloads for movie-related products in China, with nearly 100 million user downloads. Second, Shiguang's online comment function collects comments from many fans and viewers. Every year, there are hundreds of millions of traffic, and tens of millions of people browse various film reviews every day. Third, Shiguang. com has helped Hollywood do marketing work for many years and has rich experience. Fourth, Shiguang has a good derivative design team, and they also have a very complete online ticketing platform."

Zeng Maojun also said that although Shiguang is currently the only one among all online ticketing platforms in China that does not provide subsidy models, the number of members has been growing, and the growth rate of online ticketing is also rapid, indicating that its customer composition includes a group of high-net-worth people. He believes that such customers are not price-sensitive, but more concerned about the culture of movies.

"Wanda's characteristic is offline, and Shiguang's advantage is online." In Zeng Maojun's view,"The cooperation between Wanda and Shiguang can easily achieve complementary advantages, both online and offline. Shiguang. com has good derivatives design capabilities, we have good derivatives offline sales capabilities, and we can also combine with each other. There are many opportunities in the future."

Integrating global theaters and Wanda's membership + strategy

On August 29, 2015, Zeng Maojun announced Wanda's membership + strategy at the opening ceremony of Wanda Theater's 200th store in Dalian: "In the first half of this year, the total number of Wanda Theater's members has exceeded 40 million, making it the world's largest movie screening terminal membership system."

In addition, Wanda also plans to establish an online theater company by the end of the year. Zeng Maojun said that Wanda will not adopt a copyright buyout model, but will use a separate account form to become a service provider integrating traditional and online theaters. First, Wanda focuses on movies and basically won't show other videos; second, it may also show some important sports events and put the exclusive resources of acquired sports companies on it.

In addition, Wanda Cinema also acquired a 100% stake in Hoyts Group, Australia's second largest cinema operator, for US$365.7 million in cash in the first half of this year. It also reached a strategic cooperation with Shimao to acquire 18 of its cinema chains through a share swap cooperation. It also expanded its theater layout through the acquisition of domestic integrated marketing company Muwei Fashion.

It can be seen that while Wanda is in the Internet + cinema wave, it still does not forget to consolidate the foundation of its offline film industry. Whether the blood of the O2O model can be truly opened up may only wait for time to give the answer.

Alibaba Pictures: Relying on Taobao and Yueke, Alibaba Pictures integrates virtual theaters

compared with Wanda. Although it does not have physical theaters as support, it relies on the company's own data and information advantages to include small and medium-sized theaters into the combat team.

Taobao Movies and Entertainment Treasures were injected into Alibaba Pictures to create a full-industry-chain film company.

In April this year, Taobao Movies and Entertainment Treasures were injected into Alibaba Pictures. Taobao Movies is positioned internally as a virtual theater line, and its role initially stayed on the box office sales network and the film marketing window; according to Tiger Smell's earlier report, the entertainment treasure business was launched in the form of entertainment crowdfunding in early 2014. It was enthusiastically sought after by the media and users. In 2014, the entertainment treasure platform invested a total of 12 major movies, with a total investment of more than 330 million yuan, and the overall box office of investment projects was nearly 3 billion yuan.

Wei Huan, an analyst at Art Media, believes that the injection of the above two core capital types has turned Alibaba Pictures into a completely different industrial platform from traditional content companies. That is, based on Alibaba Group's 100-billion-level user base, its own content product development, production and production capabilities, the integration of online and offline parallel distribution channels for Taobao movies, and the Internet-based financial investment and financing capabilities brought by Entertainment Bao. "In the current cultural industry in China, there are very few 'Internet +' cultural and entertainment companies with such market radiation capabilities and product operation capabilities."

Acquisition of Yueke to create a "Taobao" in the film industry.

In April this year, Alibaba Pictures announced the acquisition of Yueke Software for 830 million yuan. At the end of August, it jointly launched a "movie cloud" product with Yueke Software, integrating Alibaba's big data and cloud computing capabilities to help theaters establish online ticketing channels and membership management systems, change theater operations from offline to online, and combine Taobao's efforts to gradually embed the sales of movie peripheral products on the movie cloud platform.

Yueke Software's technical stickiness attracts various downstream manufacturers in the theater industry, thereby building a physical virtual theater line, turning e-commerce into scattered small and medium-sized theaters to generate revenue. While increasing their revenue, it integrates its numerous resources with informatization and incorporates them under the command of Ali Virtual Theater.

It seems that whether it is like Wanda that operates offline independent theaters and expands the pace of online e-commerce, or like Ali, that relies on the advantages of online big data and integrates offline small and medium-sized theaters to join the army, the sphere of influence of both online and offline is expanding at the same time, and the time when the short soldiers meet each other may be soon.

Editor: yvonne