Are there many people willing to pay to watch football in China[SUCHUNFEI]

The news has not been officially confirmed, but over the years, Migu's dominant trend in the Chinese sports copyright market has gradually formed, and if the exclusive rights of the new media of the Premier League are settled, this trend will get a strong boost.

When it comes to the development of the English Premier League broadcast in China, it is not only a history of the evolution of sports copyright marketing, but also a history of changes in the way many fans watch football.

Around 1995, a handful of domestic TV stations began broadcasting the English Premier League. They bought the rights from a British company called CSI, which held the exclusive rights to the league in Asia (1992-2000), and distributed them in China for hundreds of thousands of dollars, with many local TV stations paying out of pocket.

Old fans in the Beijing area will still remember the pair of English Premier League commentator Song Jiansheng and guest Zhou Feng from Beijing TV Sports Channel at that time... He had Rowan, an Englishman, as a consultant.

Now, the copyright of the Premier League at that time is really cheap, and it can even be said that the price of cabbage, which is just like the NBA in the 1980s when it just entered the Chinese mainland, Stern gave CCTV free signal trial broadcast, mainly in order to cultivate fans and cultivate the market.

By the late 1990s, the Premier League's fan base in China had grown slightly, and distribution of broadcasting rights had soared, at one point reaching $800,000.

In 2001, when the rights to broadcast the English Premier League in Asia changed, ESPN saw the value in it and took the peach from CSI.

At that time, many domestic TV stations obtained the broadcasting rights of the English Premier League from ESPN, mainly in two ways, one is to cooperate to open up a new satellite sports channel, broadcasting ESPN content all day; The other is to buy the broadcast rights, but also buy the ESPN advertising bundle.

This can be said to be the representative stage of the English Premier League in China's TV broadcasting era, Zhan Jun, Su Dong and other commentators, basically started in ESPN, their voices are also spread through many domestic local TV stations, began to be familiar to many fans.

It is also at this time, the advent of the network era, some new forces began to try to change the way the Premier League in the domestic broadcast, such as Tiansheng.

Now when it comes to the name of Tiansheng, old fans must not have a good impression. 

Tiansheng era, want to see the Premier League from the "formal" channel, there are only two ways, one is to pay to open Tiansheng's "European football channel", but the cost is not cheap, 188 yuan a month, 1880 yuan a year, basically can not sell.

Later, Tiansheng had no choice but to distribute the online broadcast rights to Sina and Tencent, but even this could not recoup the cost.

Why did Tiansheng finally fail and get the blame? It has something to do with being in the right place at the right time.

At the time, Chinese viewers generally did not have the habit of paying to watch live broadcasts, and for them, watching games for free was justified, and Tiansheng's approach was seen as blocking the way. Also, it was easy to find pirated channels online, and paying to watch wasn't the only option.

In 2010, New English sports entered the game, three years of 30 million US dollars, price cut to take over, you can see that the domestic Premier League broadcast rights want to convert into revenue, the prospect is not optimistic.

But the new English sports later caught up with the good times.

On the one hand, during this period, the number of English Premier League fans in China exploded, and under the coverage of many portal sports channels for many years, the popularity of English Premier League surpassed Italian Serie A and became the most popular European league.

On the other hand, the network broadcast platform competition is hot, Sina, Tencent, letv, PPTV each eager to buy the English Premier League broadcast rights, New England in the sale of distribution rights to earn a lot of money.

When New England renewed its contract with the Premier League in 2012, the fee rose to $30 million a year, and it signed until 2019, apparently taking the copyright as a good business.

In 2014, with the introduction of "Document 46 of The State Council", the State drew a grand blueprint of "5 trillion market scale of the sports industry in 2025", attracting a large amount of capital, and an era of crazy money burning is coming.

Leeco and Suning are representative players. In 2015, letV Sports held the rights and interests of Serie A, Bundesliga, and Ligue 1, while Suning held the exclusive copyright of La Liga, the most popular English Premier League copyright (2019-2022), which was signed by Suning in 2016, and the cost reached an astonishing 721 million US dollars, 240 million US dollars per year, compared with 30 million per year in the New English era, soaring eight times!

At this time, the copyright competition has reached an irrational degree. Copyright operation, user growth and retention, commercial development and transformation, all can not keep up with the crazy surge of copyright purchase price, funds and resources are wasted in the abnormal competition, LeEco did not last a few years, Suning also finally failed in the sports industry.

By the time Tencent took over the English Premier League copyright in 2020, the purchase price had fallen to $10 million a year. When iQiyi took over in 2021, it was $40 million over four years and the price had not changed much.

This time Migu took the English Premier League copyright from iQiyi, it is said that the average annual price is nearly 60 million US dollars, the total price is nearly 170 million US dollars in three years, and then the price has increased six times.

However, the rise in prices, it is difficult to say is a reflection of the rebound of the industry and the market, more or the result of state-owned capital alone, which has multiple factors such as term leadership, its own strategy, and the overall goal at work, and the first consideration may not be return and profit.

From the perspective of the entire sports market and industry prospects, it is still too unrealistic to make money by buying Copyrights and engaging in live events.

The document of "5 trillion market size" is based on the basis of having a large enough sports population, but this is somewhat of a castle in the air, because the base of fans and sports fans in China is still too small.

Take the marketing situation of the English Premier League copyright for many years, for example, there are still a few people willing to spend money to watch the football, even if it is the new English era to earn money, the profit is not paid to watch live membership fees, on-demand fee income, and mainly rely on copyright distribution, looking for capital to enter the second round.

Now affected by the economic environment, the capital players in the sports industry are either less or in the contraction front, and the money is withdrawing, like the tide receding, exposed, is the weak foundation of China's sports population.

The key question is the same old one: How many real fans and sports fans are there in China?

By sports fans, we mean people whose sports have become an essential part of life and a fixed way of life.

For example, in the United Kingdom, many families of three or four generations may be fans of a certain team, not necessarily a big club, and even similar to Millwall, Luton such as League One and League Two teams, there will be a fixed hardcore fan base. Buying season tickets is an annual expense and going to the stadium every week is a natural part of life.

China's sports audience seems huge, but it has to be said that the onlookers are mostly spectators, and there are too few people who really regard sports as a way of life and are willing to invest in it.

Every time the Olympic Games, the World Cup, China's sports audience seems to be hot, but in fact, it is the Olympic gold medal view with patriotic enthusiasm, more like hot marketing, event marketing, emotional marketing, which is not a stable basis for the sports industry.

Say a hypothetical, if the Olympic Games, World Cup games, no free broadcast, need to pay to watch, do you think the number of viewers and popularity will fall off a cliff?

After all, China's soccer and even sports population is still too small, and even fewer people are willing to pay to watch games and participate in sports.

In today's economic environment, such "optional" consumption as sports must give way to investment in basic livelihood, health care, education, housing and other aspects.

Therefore, for most people, watching football and sports are just a higher level of spiritual consumption outside of life, but they are not necessities, which can be interrupted or abandoned at any time. The platform wants to even out costs and even profits by taking copyright, and the sports industry needs to achieve the 5 trillion market scale described in the document, with a weak foundation, and it is still more difficult. (J. Ripley)