Lin Ning, CEO of lithography: The difficulty in integrating the third and fourth tier markets lies in "integration"

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Relying on 438 million monthly active users (June data) and 25% of users willing to buy WeChat movie tickets, this "rookie" in the online ticketing market is growing at an alarming rate-80 million paying users without independent websites and apps. In the case of close to 5% of the box office.

WeChat and Circle of Friends have now become indispensable interactive applications."I can not talk or do anything, but I can't not swipe the Circle of Friends." Relying on 438 million monthly active users (June data) and 25% of users willing to buy WeChat movie tickets, this "rookie" in the online ticketing market is growing at an alarming rate-80 million paying users without independent websites and apps. In the case of close to 5% of the box office. At the beginning of the interview, Microfilm Era CEO Lin Ninglin always revealed that in August, the box office revenue of WeChat movie tickets exceeded 800 million yuan.

During this summer, the market share of online ticket sales exceeded 30%. As of the third quarter, the total box office of the mainland film market exceeded the total of 21.7 billion yuan in 2013. It is expected that the annual box office revenue will reach 30 billion yuan, and the online ticket sales business will reach 50%. WeChat movie tickets will use its unique "Ripple spread" to vibrate the entire online ticket sales market and dig deep into the 3-4 line market. Against the background of hot integration and mergers and acquisitions, President Lin responded that "no one can integrate me, and I will not accept integration."

Is "WeChat movie ticket" one word or two words?

Open the WeChat "wallet", and the WeChat wallet becomes the only movie ticketing entrance, realizing a closed-loop payment movie ticket service. WeChat movie tickets are listed on this secondary page along with many other services. As President Lin said, the "movie ticket" service is only a tiny part of the entire WeChat commercialization process. But when the reporter asked if he would consider making it more prominent, Manager Lin replied "No." In the service process, WeChat movie tickets value not touch, but user initiative, and more user experience and comfort.

WeChat and movie ticket services will be a way to integrate each other, namely what President Lin called "movie tickets in WeChat" and "WeChat in movie tickets." "In the first stage, we positioned ourselves as movie tickets in WeChat. It is obvious that everyone uses WeChat. There are 400 million active users and 80 million Weixin Pay users. They can be redeemed at any time, covering 300 cities. 2000 theaters book online, and cooperation with 3000 theaters will be completed this year; and in the second stage, WeChat in movie tickets will extend more social attributes. WeChat movie tickets have strong social attributes: red envelopes, crowdfunding, scheduled viewing, pre-sales, derivatives, etc., which will connect all links of the industry chain, so that everyone can watch them all the time they are using them." Lin Ning said.

Holding the "sword"  to nugget the "third and fourth" line market

In May 2014, WeChat movie ticket cooperation theaters exceeded 2000, becoming the number one online movie ticketing platform with the number of cooperative theaters and audience coverage;2014 In June, WeChat movie tickets won the "Best E-commerce Service Company" award at the Yi En Film Industry Award; in July 2014, the average daily ticket volume of WeChat movie tickets reached 200,000; In August 2014, the WeChat movie ticket cloud service platform was launched, reshaping the relationship between the film industry. theaters and theaters can directly maintain users through the open platform.

The movie ticket cloud service platform is a sword in the hands of Microfilm. Currently, lithography has two platforms, one for itself and the other for cinemas. Different from the official website of theaters, the cloud service platform will use its own advantages to optimize diversion for theaters."We don't force and use this unified entrance of WeChat, but we will provide more optimized services for theaters and audiences. During the service process, we only extract a certain percentage. At present, more and more theaters are seeking to cooperate with the WeChat movie ticket cloud service, and it will be an inevitable trend for viewers to choose mobile."

Among the nearly 4500 new screens in China in 2013, more than half of the screens were built in second-and third-tier and county-level cities. The growth rate of screens in second-and third-tier cities is much higher than that in first-tier cities. This is the fundamental reason for the rapid growth of box office in second-and third-tier cities. In addition, the advancement of urbanization has continuously improved the cultural identity of third-and fourth-tier cities and county-level cities, and the gradual formation and maturity of movie-watching habits will also be an important factor in the soaring box office in the future.

President Lin said that lithography will accelerate investment in the user market in the near future, make coverage of 3-4 lines larger, and catch up with scale in the user market. For these areas where networking habits are not very mature, WeChat and mobile applications will be better than PC and other platforms. Microfilm is a smart marketing platform based on ticketing. It can better serve the film industry and better market movies by opening up the WeChat circle of friends.

Unmanned theaters need time to integrate the most difficult

online ticketing business. The explosion of online ticketing services is due to the rapid development of the mainland film market and the integrated development of the Internet and the film industry. "The emergence of online seat selection services has, on the one hand, reduced the cost of viewing movies for viewers, saved the time and cost of queuing to buy tickets, and expanded the audience. On the other hand, the average ticket price of movies has continued to decline. The development trend of online seat selection will undoubtedly be community and interactive." Lin Ning said. However, in response to the industry's rapid online ticket sales and the emergence of "unmanned cinemas", President Lin said that this will take a certain amount of time to transition. At present, the entire environment is not mature. The imperfect theater equipment and the quality of Chinese people are not suitable for the operation of unmanned theaters. Moreover, good services in theaters still need people to promote them.

Currently, four types of entities in the market are doing online seat selection: one is theaters and movie theaters themselves, such as Wanda; the second is professional ticketing websites; the third is platforms such as Tencent, Jingdong, and Taobao; The fourth category is an open mobile ticketing platform with social attributes, such as WeChat movie tickets. Integration has also emerged in this market with the tide of the film industry. This year Huayi took control of Bookbox. com, and Bona is also interested in acquiring an online ticketing company. To this phenomenon, President Lin's response was,"No one can integrate me, and I do not accept integration." Backed by such a powerful and advantageous platform as WeChat, President Lin's words are absolutely reasonable, but for other small platforms with unclear development prospects, integration may also be a way out. Independent third-party online ticketing platforms face difficulties after being acquired by anyone. In one sentence, General Manager Lin pointed out the difficulties faced by integration in various industries,"easy integration, difficult integration." Regarding the entire market, Mr. Lin said that professional ticketing websites and mobile ticketing platforms will become the mainstream in the online seat selection market.