LeTV enters the United States without following the old path of copyright procurement and wants to replicate the domestic "ecological model" route

On October 19, LeEco held an extremely grand press conference in San Francisco, USA, gathering more than 350 media from all over the world to officially release new super TVs and new super mobile phones for the U.S. market, displaying new products such as Super Bicycles and LeEco VR, and also announced that the LeEco ecosystem will be fully implemented in the United States.

Original title: LeTV is marching into the United States and not following the old path of copyright procurement. How should we play the "open content strategy"?

YT Jia, this is the new name of LeEco founder Jia Yueting. His American friends are used to calling him YT.

Jia Yueting's new office is located in San Jose, San Francisco, the core of Silicon Valley, next door to Cisco and Samsung's North American headquarters.

Unlike most domestic Internet companies that set up offices and branches in the United States, LeEco's layout in the United States shows strong ambitions-they want to sell a large number of smart TVs, smartphones and other products in the United States, and also bring a complete set of domestic products."Ecological model" all brought to the United States.

Today, the staff in this LeEco building has increased from dozens a few months ago to more than 500 people, and it has gathered former executives from Huawei, Samsung, Qualcomm and other companies.

LeEco Building

On October 19, LeEco held an extremely grand press conference in San Francisco, USA, gathering more than 350 media from all over the world to officially release new super TVs and new super mobile phones for the U.S. market, showcase new products such as super bicycles and LeEco VR, and also announced that the LeEco ecosystem has been fully implemented in the United States.

A series of "big moves" before the press conference made LeEco's "big plan" for globalization seem to be serious:

1. In June this year, it spent 1.6 billion RMB to buy Yahoo's piece of land in Santa Clara County, California;

2. In July this year, it spent US$2 billion to buy VIZIO, the TV manufacturer with the second largest market share in the United States, giving LeEco 10 million users in North America;

3. Before these acquisitions, LeEco Cloud had completed the "underlying layout". The number of global CDN nodes of LeEco Cloud has reached 750, covering more than 60 countries, making it the world's largest video CDN commercial platform.

The next step is top-level terminal sales and the most core, content layout.

"In the United States, the cost of content is indeed too high, which is an important reason why many people question LeTV's success in entering the United States." In September this year, Jia Yueting said in an interview in the United States: "Many people believe that if China companies purchase content in the United States, they will have no chance of success."

In China, LeTV started out with a large number of copyright procurement and copyright distribution. In the United States, if LeTV did not "purchase copyright on a large scale", could it build a huge content platform? How is LeTV going to play?

"If you purchase content in the United States, there will be no possibility of success."

As LeEco founder Jia Yueting said, LeEco's content strategy in the United States will definitely be open rather than traditional content procurement; Secondly, in terms of content self-control, I hope to integrate global content resources to achieve self-control.

At the press conference on October 19, Jeff Briller, general manager of LeTV's North American content business, officially stated that he would implement an "open content strategy" in the United States-very different from building the largest film and television content library in China in many years. LeTV hopes to cooperate with the best content providers in the United States.

In the United States, consumption of high-quality content is mainly carried out through subscription models such as Netflix, Hulu, and HBO GO, as well as subscription services for cable TV. Existing smart TV products and smartphone products do not open up channels for content providers. Users need to download different apps, pay for each service, and purchase their own members.

What LeEco hopes to do is actually to build its own content platform through LeEco Cloud and EUI systems to provide a better content experience for American users.

In other words, this is consistent with the domestic LeTV experience. When you turn on LeTV, you can directly see a large amount of video content without having to log in to accounts on video platforms such as iQiyi, Youku, and Mango TV; on LeTV's mobile phone, as long as you swipe to the right, you can directly see various popular video content provided by LeTV Video Integration.

However, the reason why the U.S. video content market appears in this seemingly "channel fragmentation" situation is actually related to the relative strength of its content side and service side. Content providers often only provide content for one platform.

Now, LeTV hopes to get these advantageous video content without purchasing it through copyright. Is it possible?

Jeff Briller said that in order to gain a foothold in a highly competitive and saturated market like North America, LeEco is implementing a series of plans and establishing new standards for open content cooperation.

Partners include both channel parties such as Netflix and content parties such as Vice

Ben Dietz, senior vice president of VICE

. If you carefully study LeEco's content strategy in the United States, you will find that LeEco's partners actually include two different groups:

one is video content service providers such as Netflix, Hulu, Showtime (a paid cable network affiliated with CBS), and Sling TV (an Internet set-top box manufacturer), or "channel parties"; the other is a pure CP, including Lionsgate Pictures, VICE, etc.

The reporter noticed that the new LeTV TV released at this North American press conference has Netflix and Sling TV icons on the homepage. After clicking to log in, you will be able to see the video content owned by these channel vendors.

In contrast, LeEco's cooperation with many content parties (CPs) in North America is much more integrated. The reporter learned that the current cooperation strategy with CP includes advertising sharing, membership payment sharing, etc. LeTV also proposed to help the Internet of CP in the United States, trying to skip existing existing channels and directly face users.

In this kind of cooperation, LeEco did not start with the Hollywood Sixth Six, but first found Lionsgate Films, which had cooperated with many times.

"The first time I met YT (Jia Yueting) and ZZ (Zhang Zhao) was at a dinner party in Beijing." Jon Feltheimer, CEO of Lionsgate Films, said: "Since then, Lionsgate Films '" The Expendables "and other films have been handed over to LeTV Pictures for distribution, and have achieved very good box office sales. Some films even sell better in China than in the United States. Now, Lionsgate also hopes to help its former partners."

Jon Feltheimer Jon, CEO of Lionsgate Films

, said that Lionsgate and LeTV North America are about to sign an agreement to place a large amount of Lionsgate Films 'content on the leEco Live platform.

The reporter learned that the cooperation between Lionsgate Pictures and LeTV North America is not a method of copyright procurement, but based on an advertising sharing cooperation.

In contrast, the cooperation between "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" and LeTV North America is a fee-sharing model for members.

At the press conference that day, Ben Dietz, Vice's senior vice president, also came to the press conference for LeEco.

He said: "LeTV connects content on different screens to represent the next generation of sounds and experiences. VICE's mission is to break the boundary between culture and geography, which coincides with LeEco's philosophy." According to his introduction, LeEco's content cooperation with VICE starts with content on Broadly, Motherboard, Noisey and Munchies and is expected to extend to more aspects in the future.

According to LeEco's official announcement, the current content partners of the content open platform have covered these content parties:

MGM, LIONSGATE, A&ENETWORKS, TASTEMADE (video platform for food lovers), AWESOMENESSTV (the channel with the largest number of youth subscriptions on YouTube, DreamWorks Animation Holdings, Hearst shares), Magnolia Pictures, MACHINIMA (mainly develops game videos on YouTube),

SEESO (NBC launches Internet video service), COSMPOLITAN (Fashion Magazine), ESUIREMAGAZINE, DESH (Food Video Content), etc.

Jeff Briller, general manager of LeEco's North American content business, said: "This content open platform strategy will liberate content providers from becoming obsolete operating and distribution models, maximize the value of their content and reduce operating expenses."

A staff member of Le America told reporters that the first batch of content collaborations are basically for the younger generation of content parties, which is also related to the audience that Le America hopes to win.

VIZIO's tens of millions of users and LeEco's self-control capabilities are important bargaining

chips. Whether it is for the channel side or the content side, LeEco's important bargaining chip in negotiations is undoubtedly the users. VIZIO, which just announced its wholly-owned acquisition in July this year, has given LeTV tens of millions of smart TV users and has become an important guarantee for rapid entry into the U.S. market.

At 2 a.m. on July 27 this year, LeTV announced in Los Angeles, USA that it would acquire American TV manufacturer VIZIO for US$2 billion. This is considered by the industry to be the largest acquisition plan in the history of the global TV industry. The acquisition will be carried out on an all-cash basis and the transaction is expected to be completed within 6 months.

As of now, VIZIO is the second largest TV brand in the United States after Samsung. It has sold more than 22 million smart TVs, produced 100 billion TV viewing big data every day, and the cumulative viewing time of users exceeds 5 billion hours.

By acquiring VIZIO, LeEco already has a very favorable user base in the United States. In the future, LeEco will carry out a comprehensive ecological transformation of VIZIO's existing smart TVs that meet hardware requirements and VIZIO that will be produced and sold in the future, giving them the ultimate ecological experience through the LeEco cloud platform and EUI system.

In addition to the user base provided by VIZIO, LeEco's self-control ability in film and television content has also become an important breakthrough point in LeEco's North American content field.

The trailer for the Sino-US co-production film "The Great Wall", which is about to be released globally, was shown at the press conference on the 19th. When the leading actor Matt Damon appeared, some Americans present were a little impatient. The film is co-produced by LeTV Pictures, Universal Pictures, Legendary Pictures and China Film Group, directed by Zhang Yimou, and co-starred by Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Andy Lau, Zhang Hanyu and other Chinese and American stars, with an investment of up to 150 million US dollars.

In September this year, LeEco announced the establishment of Le Vision Entertainment (LeVE), a sister company of Le Vision Pictures, appointing Adam Goodman, former president of Paramount Pictures, as president. LeVE will produce original English content for LeTV's domestic and global TV, digital and VR users.

Zhang Zhao, president of LeEco's Film and Television Internet Business Group, told reporters that in the future, we will still make good use of LeEco's home court in China to bring strategic support to global content partners; on the other hand, we will also provide partners with content ecosystems such as smart TVs, smartphones, smart cars, and VR in North America.

In fact, in LeEco's understanding, content is not only the core of user consumption, but also the best marketing method for mobile phones, TVs, cars and other products.

Currently, LeSEE Pro, an upgraded version of LeSEE, is participating in the filming of "Transformers 5" directed by Michael Bay in the UK. Zhang Zhao told reporters that in the future, there will be more and more cross-border interactions between different business lines.

Editor: Nancy