Li Ruigang: Integrating foreign industrial operation concepts and systems into China elements to plan for the global market

In recent years, Li Ruigang's Chinese Culture has invested in dozens of influential projects in the industry such as Star Media, Canxing Productions, Oriental Dream Factory, IMAX China, and Noon Sunshine. These investments are seen by the outside world as Li Ruigang is creating a new media landscape that spans entertainment, film, television and news.

Original title Li Ruigang talks about the global layout of the cultural industry: How to introduce content into channels to stimulate commercial value

Many industry insiders compare Li Ruigang, founder of the Chinese Cultural Industry Investment Fund and former chairman of Shanghai Media SMG Group, to Murdoch in China's entertainment industry.

In recent years, Li Ruigang's Chinese Culture has invested in dozens of influential projects in the industry such as Star Media, Canxing Productions, Oriental Dream Factory, IMAX China, and Noon Sunshine. These investments are seen by the outside world as Li Ruigang is creating a new media landscape that spans entertainment, film, television and news.

"To realize a media empire, a lot of capital support is needed." According to informed sources, the second phase of the Chinese Cultural Industry Investment Fund has begun to raise funds. Among them, RMB funds have raised approximately 2 - 2.5 billion yuan, have been subscribed by leading domestic private equity parent funds and investors in other financial institutions, and have cooperated with Noah Wealth to raise funds; the second phase of the US dollar fund plans to raise funds of 500 - 600 million yuan, and have been subscribed by internationally renowned parent funds, pensions, family funds, sovereign wealth funds and other institutions.

"Frankly, Murdoch does not exist in China." Li Ruigang said frankly in an exclusive interview with reporters.

Li Ruigang said that what he did, in summary, was to carry out systematic production in the fields of film and television, games, financial information, Internet content and other fields with content production as the core. At the same time, media distribution platforms and social networks will be deployed to realize the realization and value-added of content, and then promote the online and offline theme entertainment field, thereby allowing content IP to generate greater market value.

In the eyes of some industry insiders, Li Ruigang's move is more like building China's Hollywood and Disney.

However, in view of the high risks of investment in the cultural industry, how to avoid them, Li Ruigang must make a trade-off between cultural map construction and project investment safety.

"When selecting an investment project, I require myself and every member of the team to remain calm enough. Because the entertainment industry has always been in the spotlight, it is easy to dazzle people and generate high expectations, which will affect the investment in the project. judgment." He spoke bluntly.

Not only financial investor

Li Ruigang recalled that before leaving SMG to create the Chinese Cultural Industry Investment Fund, he had been thinking about the impact of the Internet era on the development of the domestic entertainment industry.

In the era of mobile Internet, communication channels have transformed into a form of community sharing, such as WeChat circle of friends forwarding, self-media interactive communication, Mobile Live Video Broadcasting, etc. Information disseminators directly face the audience point-to-point within the community, allowing the disseminators and the audience to interact at the same time, jointly create content and scenes, and directly generate content consumption.

"This will bring about a series of changes in content producers, channel communication, content forms, business models, user habits, etc., and even affect the public's lifestyle." He said.

After launching the Chinese Cultural Industry Investment Fund, he deeply felt the innovative changes brought by the industrialized production method and industrial operation of content to China's entertainment industry.

"Taking" The Voice of China "as an example, in addition to high-quality music presentation, the important key point lies in the narrative logic and skills of the story. Each program edits the best pictures and scenes during the recording process of the program and presents them to the audience in a narrative form, arousing strong resonance and interaction among the audience." he said.

Behind this, in addition to introducing a series of process and industrial operation concepts in the program creation process, integrating advertising and program content, it also reflects the factory operation of the production chain of cultural and entertainment projects.

"This is also a major weak link in the development of the domestic entertainment industry." Li Ruigang said that at present, domestic entertainment programs have not yet achieved industrialization or factory production lines. Whether it is content originality, program distribution, promotion and publicity, program derivative development, etc., many are still dominated by individual companies.

"Currently, the Chinese Cultural Industry Investment Fund mainly focuses on equity investment in three major fields: media entertainment, Internet and mobile and lifestyle." Li Ruigang said that simply speaking, these investment areas can be simplified into eight words, namely content, channels, and lifestyle.

Li Ruigang himself does not want to become a pure financial investor, but hopes to deeply participate in the business development and resource integration of investment projects, including team formation, product establishment, operation promotion, etc.

His industrial layout is currently facing considerable challenges. For example, the influx of capital has led to a skyrocketing rise in IP copyright valuations, and the rise of the Internet celebrity economy has led to changes in new communication channels.

"I haven't invested in an Internet celebrity yet." In his view, before investing in Internet celebrities, it is necessary to make clear whether there is a mature content production system and team behind Internet celebrities that can form a sustainable eye effect and a long-term content commercial operation model, rather than relying on so-called short-term hype. Recently, Chinese Culture announced that it has invested in VS Media, an integrated platform for Internet celebrity content.

The same is true for IP copyright investment. Some IPs with high clicks more represent Internet users 'attention and goodwill towards this content. However, to transform this goodwill and interest into commercial products, a complete set of content, users, and derivatives development and operation systems are needed.

"This is also the original intention of the Chinese Cultural Industry Investment Fund to build a system so that participants in every link of the entertainment industry chain can tap greater integration value of the industrial chain." He spoke bluntly.

While the Chinese Cultural Holding Group's grand strategy

has attracted industry attention from the Chinese Cultural Industry Investment Fund to make frequent large-scale investments, Li Ruigang's other capital operation platform-Chinese Cultural Holding Group is also rapidly deploying. Behind this group, there are domestic giants in the Internet and venture capital fields, and Alibaba, Tencent, and Yuanhe Holdings are all shareholders.

The most well-known and large-scale investment of Chinese Culture Holding Group so far is that it joined forces with CITIC Capital Holdings Co., Ltd. to invest US$400 million to acquire a 13% stake in City Football Group, the parent company of Manchester City Club. As a result, Li Ruigang became the board of directors of City Football Group. One of the seven members.

"Now every time I go to the UK to attend the Manchester City Club Board of Directors, I will bring a team there to conduct on-site inspections to understand the operating model of Premier League football." Li Ruigang told reporters.

Some people think that Li Ruigang's move has other profound meanings. Previously, Sports Sports Power, a subsidiary of Chinese Culture, bought the TV rights of the Chinese Super League for five years at a "sky-high price" of 8 billion yuan. Li Ruigang hopes to introduce the advanced operation and management concepts of Premier League football, so that Sports Sports Power can also benefit from it.

"We have introduced foreign industrial operation concepts and systems to China in specific fields, built local teams, and then integrated China cultural elements to create mature cultural and entertainment products that are pushed back to the global market. "He emphasized. Oriental DreamWorks, which is currently invested by Chinese culture, is an example.

Oriental DreamWorks has gathered nearly 150 animators and in China refers to the structure and processes of the entire industry chain operation such as Disney and DreamWorks, the world's highest level animation content creation, production, distribution, promotion, and derivative development.

"Kung Fu Panda 3 is one of the movies, and I hope there will be more in the future." Li Ruigang spoke bluntly. However, this may take a relatively long time to incubate, and it also faces considerable investment and risks in commercial operations, which may not be met by a standard equity investment fund.

This is also one of the main reasons that prompted Li Ruigang to launch the Chinese Culture Holding Group platform. Chinese Culture Holding Group's positioning is to carry out long-term strategic layout for some large-scale greenfield projects and start-ups, including construction, investment, acquisition and operation.

Long-term projects of Chinese culture also include some cultural real estate development projects. Take the Shanghai Dream Center project as an example. This project is located on the bank of the Huangpu River in Xuhui District, Shanghai. It is in an excellent location and was jointly built by Chinese Culture, Hong Kong Lan Kwai Fong Group and American Dream Factory.

"We don't do general commercial real estate development, but focus on cultural IP content operations and develop real estate projects related to the theme of consumption upgrades." Li Ruigang explained that the central location of the Shanghai Dream Center is a musical performance venue, surrounded by supporting cultural and entertainment facilities, which can enrich people's lifestyles.

Some people think that this may be one of the biggest reasons why Li Ruigang previously acquired Broadway Global Ventures (BGV), a Broadway musical production company. Its investment logic is to introduce the operating model of Western musicals and create a new business model and development space in China.

Li Ruigang said that this is a new challenge for himself, because there is no precedent for this matter before and he is more like a pioneer.

Editor: yvette