There are only two giants left on the online platform to sell movie tickets. Cat's Eye turns to the left and Amoy tickets to the right.

Maoyan is integrating the whole industry chain, while Taobaopiao is going to be a movie publicity platform.

three years ago, on September 22nd, Meituan CEO Wang Xing personally announced that the Cat's Eye film will become the co-producer of "Love in Love" and the only online pre-sale platform for the film. In a week, 1 million tickets were sold for cat's eye movies.

"Cat's Eye movies want to subvert the traditional film industry." At that time, both the media and people in the industry were intuitively aware of the changes brought about by the Internet. Eight months later, Wang Xing specifically said that we do not subvert the film, but we are indeed changing the film, and "this change is a huge fact."

< strong > at that time, Cat's Eye accounted for 70% of online ticketing < / strong >

but another year later, Maoyan split from Meituan, and the controlling party became a traditional film company, Light. Just two months ago, Cat's Eye and Weiying announced a merger, and the office changed from Meituan's location to near the light, which meant that Cat's Eye was getting closer to the traditional film studio.

Taobaopiao continues its Internet path. President Li Jie said in an interview that the Internet level of the film industry is still very low. "there is a lot of digital work that has not been done, which is what we need to do. So we think we still have a lot to do in this area in the future."

No matter Cat's Eye or Taobaopiao, they no longer tell the story of "subverting traditional movies". They are more and more like movie service providers, but the way of service has changed when there is only a competition between the two powers in the market.

< strong > Taobao is losing money, and it will lose money for a long time. < / strong >

on the night of August 30th, 2017, Alibaba Pictures released its 2017 semi-annual report. In the first half of this year, Alibaba Pictures had a revenue of 1.062 billion yuan, an increase of 312.8% over the same period last year, and a loss of 485 million yuan, an increase of 4.11% over the same period last year. Among them, Internet publicity-- where ticket hunting is concentrated-- lost 363.8 million yuan.

Ali's cultural and entertainment executives have stated many times that there is no upper limit on the investment in ticket hunting, and this strategy will continue. Li Jie confirmed that there is still no upper limit on the subsidy for Taobao tickets, and they will continue to compete for the first place in the scale of users.

in the first half of this year, ticket panning dominated the work of "the Mission of one Dog", the promotion of "Wolf Warriors 2" or ticketing. "Mission of a Dog" has become a dark horse, and Wolf Warriors 2 has grossed 5.6 billion at the box office, about 1/10 of this year's total. It was with the help of "Wolf Warriors 2" that Taopaipiao once became the number one market share until the merger of Maoyan and Weiying was surpassed.

the means of "unlimited" subsidies for Taobaopiao have also rekindled the flames of the war of ticket subsidies. During the National Day holiday, there were a large number of movie tickets worth 9.9 yuan and 19.9 yuan again, and Maoyan's "Shame Iron fist" grossed more than 2.2 billion yuan at the box office, making it the second highest-grossing film of the year, making a good start for the new company after the merger.

with the dual support of Light and Tencent, Maoyan is already preparing for its listing next year, and it is necessary to continue to consolidate the market first at this time.

< strong > but the growth of the online ticketing market has come to an end < / strong >

2015, the entire online ticketing market is growing at a high speed. The proportion of online ticket purchases was about 30% in 2014, compared with 54.8% in 2015, and 83% on the first day of the Lunar New year in 2016.

but the growth has come to an end. According to statistics, in the second quarter of 2017, the number of online votes issued by Chinese films accounted for 84.8% of the total number of movie tickets, which has almost reached saturation, and it is difficult to continue to grow. At this time, the ticketing platform can only compete for share from opponents, while keeping its own share. The integration of the whole industry is also basically completed, there is almost no possibility of merging Maoyan and Taobaopiao, and a 50 billion movie ticket market is enough to accommodate two ticketing platforms.

< strong > therefore, building higher market barriers has become a coincidental choice. < / strong >

the brick that sets up the barrier to the film market is naturally the film itself. In the first half of this year, Maoyan and Taobaopiao continued to increase their influence in the upper reaches of the industry. Cat's Eye has participated in the promotion of almost all the film projects, and has also controlled the promotion of "Iron fist of Shame". Taobaopiao has also appeared in all important periods, from the Spring Festival to the summer edition of Wolf Warriors 2. The success of these films not only makes Taopaopiao occupy more market share, but also attracts more film resources.

New Cat's Eye continues to integrate the whole industry chain, trying to break through the chain from film production to distribution, publicity to ticket sales to derivatives sales. But Taobaopiao and Alibaba Pictures took a step back. at the Shanghai Film Festival, they said that they would only produce a small amount of content in the future, not to compete with the upstream content parties, and more in the middle and lower reaches, such as big data's advantage through the e-commerce platform, to help the film public. and focus on derivative, licensing work.

in other words, Taobaopiao is still willing to continue to do Internet business compared to movies. After all, film is a small business, and it is a small business that is unpredictable. Alibaba started from e-commerce retail, which is a trillion yuan business, by comparison, the 50 billion movie ticket market really looks shabby. Xiaoyaozi's requirements for Taobao tickets are just to have an impact in the industry, not to mention profit requirements.

"I think over 100 billion is the industry that Ali finds interesting." Li Jie said.

100 billion, which is twice as much as it is now. In Li Jie's view, the number of cinemas now exceeds that of North America, and the growth space is limited, but the attendance rate is only half that of North America. As long as the attendance is doubled, then this is a market of hundreds of billions of dollars.

according to this math problem, Taobaopiao first uses Internet tools to expand the movie market to 100 billion, so that everyone can make money, and then make money again-just like Taobao. During this period, it is necessary to sacrifice "immediate profits". When the film market "becomes a huge market, the early investment will be the biggest beneficiary."

the problem to be solved in Taobaopiao is to improve the efficiency of film publicity. Since September this year, ticket hunting has launched activities such as getting rid of single cinemas and small gatherings, giving audiences a new reason to come to the cinema-for example, to get out of order, or to customize classic movies. After that, Amoy tickets will also launch 3-5 movie Internet marketing platform tools every year, which are open to film makers and studios to use, so that non-standardized film marketing becomes standardized and digital, so as to improve the efficiency of selling movie tickets.

< strong > but this does not seem to directly improve the efficiency of making a good film. < / strong >

Why is the attendance of movies so low? The big reason is that the content of many movies is not enough to attract and impress users. Li Jie also admits, "Movie-watching users have grown up, and popcorn flakes don't necessarily become popular. People want to see'22','77 days' and 'Gang Rinpozi.' but our film is still stuck in the third-and fourth-tier farce and comedy of five or four years ago, and this type hasn't come out yet."

the content is not good, especially the low reputation of films that have the ability to detonate the market, which is the main reason why the market is getting colder. In the face of such a market, "9.9 yuan to see a blockbuster" a little more or less, in fact, it almost does not matter.

this is not a problem that can be solved by cat's eye, ticket shopping, or any single company. Li Jie says Hollywood can no longer be a benchmark in the industry-although most studios still want to be Disney-because their Internet access is too low. However, Hollywood's lead in film technology is not years, but generations.

if the film market is seen as a relatively stable system, then the possible external forces to change the market include technology, new markets and capital. Ticketing websites once wanted to "subvert", the strength is to rely on the new technology of the Internet, can bring a new market for the film industry-this is almost the same as the idea of Taobaopiao, except that they talk more about "cooperation".

the technology of ticketing platform, whether it is big data or artificial intelligence, only discovers the potential market faster, without expanding new consumer market or producing new content. Content doesn't live up to expectations, and even Hollywood has a dwindling stock market, whether it's 50 billion or 100 billion.

whether it is the integration of the whole industry chain or the provision of Internet promotion tools, it is improving the efficiency of the industry, but for the film market as a whole, this is just the beginning.

Edit: mary