The market value of Super Huayi and the light is known as the first performance of Chinese performing arts. How do you play the ultimate IP in the Song Dynasty performing arts?

What is the most performing show in the world and the most audiences?

It is not the "Moulin Rouge" in France, nor the "O Show" in Las Vegas, but the "Song City Eternal Love" created by Songcheng Performing Arts Company. It has performed more than 20,000 performances since its inception in 1997, and has received more than 60 million viewers, equivalent to the population of two Australians. Its chairman, Huang Qiaoling, is both a businessman and a director, often used by the media to compare with Wang Chaoge and Zhang Yimou.

In December 2010, Songcheng Performing Arts was successfully listed on the A-share market with the first share of domestic performing arts. So far, in its 7 annual reports, the operating income and the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies have never fallen. Broken double digits.

In 2016, Songcheng Performing Arts made a big profit of nearly 900 million yuan. As of yesterday, the market value of Songcheng Performing Arts was 31 billion, surpassing the Huayi Brothers with a market value of 22.3 billion and the light media with a market value of 23.8 billion.

In the market dilemma of the homogenization of tourism performances and the intensification of capital in China, the performance of Songcheng led by Huang Qiaoling has been leaping forward. What is the DNA of its success?

20 years to create "Song City" IP

In 1958, Huang Qiaoling was born into a peasant family in Lishui County, Zhejiang Province. At the age of 17, he joined the army with the Book of Changes and "Dream of Red Mansions". Later he was promoted as a reporter for the military newspaper, published dozens of short stories and papers, and broke into the "Red Learning" world. The military career did not ruin Huang Qiaoling's "literati temperament", but also forged his goal of "resolutely completing the task."

In 1981, the 23-year-old Huang Qiaoling changed his career from the army and traveled around most of China. He once took 2,000 yuan to start a business in Hainan and developed the first beach in Tianya Haijiao. It was the first investor in Cape Tianya Scenic Spot.

In 1994, Huang Qiaoling was inspired by a model of Qingming Shanghe Tu, and conceived to build an antique Song City. In 1996, Huang Qiaoling came to Hangzhou to invest 180 million yuan to develop Songcheng, and Songcheng Scenic Spot became China's largest Song Culture Theme Park.

In 1997, Huang Qiaoling emulated the American Disney and introduced the original cultural performance into Songcheng. Huang Qiaoling, who has a profound cultural background, started the cross-border and personally introduced the "Song City Eternal Love". In order to get the audience's most realistic evaluation of the performance, Huang Qiaoling often even "undercover" theater bathroom. Jin Ge Tie Ma, the eternal singer of the ages, "Song City Eternal Love" shows the regional culture of silk, tea and Yanyu Jiangnan. This performance has been a long-lasting performance for 20 years, creating the miracle of national cultural performance income first, profit first, audience number one, and number one.

With the help of Songcheng Eternal Love, the Songcheng Theme Park will recover all the investment after three years of establishment. Songcheng Performing Arts also successfully listed in 2010 with this performance, and became the first share of Chinese tourism performing arts. Huang Qiaoling was also praised by the industry as “the first person in China's tourism performing arts director”, which was twice rated as Fengyun Zheshang. Became the second Zhejiang businessman to be on the cover of Forbes.

After the listing, relying on a large amount of super-raised funds raised by the GEM, Songcheng Performing Arts began to replicate the successful experience in Hangzhou in the popular tourist destinations in China.

In September 2013, Songcheng’s first copy of the “Sanya Eternal Love” scenic spot was unveiled. Subsequently, the Lijiang Songcheng Tourist Area also landed in 2014.

"Song City" became famous for a moment, and local governments wishing to revitalize cultural tourism came here. Huang Qiaoling said in an interview with the media: "The leaders of many cities want us to go there and say that they will give 5 billion and 6 billion, but we have no choice but to resist many temptations."

Huang Qiaoling has his own set of collections of “Emperor”. This collection consists of nearly 1,000 elements, including tourist groups, radiation areas, regional economy, cultural heritage and other categories and performance standards. Huang Qiaoling said that when the site is copied, if the local conditions can meet more than 700 articles in the book, it can basically land.

Throughout the 20 years of development of Songcheng, as the leader of the tourism performing arts industry, the success of Songcheng performing arts is in line with the general trend of the rise of leisure travel, but the determinant of its success lies in the superiority of its business model: different from the traditional play style. Theme parks, Songcheng performing arts have their cultural connotations - the performances of the ancient scenes have unique originality, which is difficult to be copied, forming a differentiated core competitiveness, and also improving pricing power and profitability; unlike scenic tourist enterprises The business model of Songcheng Performing Arts can be highly reproducible—the traditional scenic spot-type listed company has a certain monopoly, but lacks reproducibility. The carrying capacity of the scenic spot determines the scale of the business, so the scenic spot with a market value of 10 billion yuan. Listed companies are rare; unlike film companies, Songcheng’s reliance on stars is very low – you don’t have to go to hundreds of millions to ask for a star, Songcheng’s eternal love series depends on creativity, planning, design, scriptwriting, etc. .

Relying on this entity expansion mode of “Entity Park + Tourism Performing Arts”, Songcheng Performing Arts quickly occupied several first-line tourist attractions in China. Since 2015, Songcheng's "Eternal Love" series has officially surpassed Zhang Yimou's "Impression" series, becoming the first domestic travel show event at the box office. Huang Qiaoling said: "Zhang Yimou's "Impression Lijiang" is a splash of ink, and my "Lijiang Eternal Love" is a meticulous work."

Heavy asset model encounters challenges

In the process of copying in different places, Songcheng Group quickly accumulated brand effects in the industry and society. At present, Songcheng Performing Arts has ten major tourist areas such as Hangzhou Songcheng Tourist Area, Sanya Songcheng Tourist Area, Lijiang Songcheng Tourist Area, Jiuzhai Songcheng Tourist Area, and 30 major theme parks, hundreds of old-fashioned and performing arts shows. It is the world's largest performing theater company with the largest number of seats and the largest number of seats.

However, the commodity brands with the core of tourism performing arts have their own “introduction period”, “growth period”, “healing period” and “decline period”, and Songcheng performing arts is no exception. At present, the natural growth of its single scenic spot mainly depends on the growth of tourists, price increase and market share in the area where the performances are performed. Even as an old-fashioned tourism performing arts program, the market competition environment encountered by “Eternal Love” is becoming more and more severe. In the case of Yunnan, there are more than 20 large-scale local plays that have been or are about to be put into operation.

Wang Jianlin once said that the current development of China's cultural industry is too small, too scattered, too chaotic, and there is no need for large-scale entry of strong capital. Huang Qiaoling also knows the power of capital. "The cultural industry is indeed an industry without ceilings. It is inevitable that capital will enter this field. The cultural industry also needs strong capital to enter."

However, in the previous off-site replication, the Songcheng performing arts mainly adopted the heavy asset model. According to public information, although “Taishan Ancient Love” has successfully landed, it seems that the prospects are unclear in the financial report: In July 2015, it decided to adjust the promotion method, clearing and canceling the Taian fundraising project, and raising the investment after the liquidation. Jin has nearly 350 million yuan to supplement working capital; in August 2015, Yunnan Shilin fundraising project was liquidated and cancelled; in April 2016, Wuyishan Municipal Government officially approved the Wuyishan project land recovery plan.

From these unsuccessful expansion projects, it can be seen that the Songcheng performing arts expanded to the whole country with the heavy asset model and encountered no small challenges.

Turn on light asset management output mode

It is not difficult to sort out the investment layout of Songcheng Performing Arts in the past two years. Songcheng Performing Arts is shifting from a heavy asset model to a rapid expansion of “resource integration + light asset output”.

Specifically, it is no longer a huge investment in self-built theme parks, but collects certain service fees from partners, and expands market share through brand authorization and creative output. Including sharing the brand and professional advantages of Songcheng with the partners, tailor-made unique solutions and turnkey projects for the government, enterprises, tourism, scenic spots, theme parks, performing arts, helping local governments to create local cultural landmarks.

At this point, Wang Jianlin's transformation of Wanda Plaza into a light asset model can be said to be a precedent. Previously, Wanda Plaza adopted heavy assets. After its completion, it held its own operations and all the rental income was returned to Wanda. Now all the funds are from others. Wanda is responsible for site selection, design, construction, investment and management, using Wanda Plaza brand and commercial informationization. In the management system, the rental income generated by Wanda is divided into a certain proportion by the investors. Songcheng’s light asset model is no different from Wanda.

On May 31, 2017, Songcheng Performing Arts Company announced the announcement. The company and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Huocheng Songcheng Tourism Development Co., Ltd. won the bid to introduce the tourism performing arts project in the listening lake section of Xiqiao Town, Foshan. The total project service cost is 260 million yuan, including package service fees such as brand authorization, repertoire creation, planning and design, and opening preparation. This is the second single landing of the company's light asset export business since the announcement of the Ningxiang charcoal project in June 2016.

In the “Ningxiang Charcoal Project”, Songcheng also received a construction service fee of 260 million yuan, and 20% of the annual operating income including the theater. At present, the Ningxiang project has confirmed 120 million income in 2016.

However, at present, it is not only Songcheng Performing Arts that has been or is preparing to achieve expansion through the light asset operation mode. In recent years, including Haichang Ocean Park, Huaqiang Fant, and OCT have also deployed light assets to expand and transform.

Under the general trend of consumption upgrading and leisure tourism continuing to attract capital, the competition in Songcheng performing arts is very fierce. To stand out from these well-known brands, Songcheng performing arts also needs its own “killer”.

Layout pan-entertainment industry

Huang Qiaoling has a "100 billion dreams", but it seems difficult to realize the dream of hundreds of billions by acting expansion alone.

From 2010 to the first half of 2016, the growth rate of Hangzhou Songcheng Tourist Area's revenue declined rapidly. In 2015, due to the variety of “Running Brothers” and other variety shows recorded in the scenic spot, it brought a certain flow of visitors to the scenic spot in a short time. However, the growth rate in the first half of 2016 has dropped again.

"Song City Eternal Love" as the first performance of the "Eternal Love" series, played for nearly 20 years, until now it has occupied more than 10% of the Songcheng performing arts revenue. However, the freshness of this kind of performance will attract many consumers in the early stage, and will face the dilemma of uniformity, serious homogenization and lack of overall innovation. The performance mode of the single drama directly reflects the growth of the ticket sales in the Songcheng tourist area. .

In addition, with the increase in OTA market share, the size of individual customers has begun to expand, and the age structure has become younger. It is also a challenge for Songcheng, which implements high fares and a single fixed performance mode.

Song City, who realized this dilemma, made a lot of self-help attempts, such as starting from the marketing side, trying a lot of creative content and event planning for C-side young people, such as Huazai Festival, 90-year-old naked wedding ceremony, Hanfu adult ceremony, beauty Activities such as beasts. Sanya's love for the ages and the love of the Song Dynasty are still implanted in the head variety "Temporary Challenge" and "Twenty-four Hours".

At the same time, Songcheng performing arts is not limited to the real-life performing arts market, but has already quietly strategically placed the film market. On January 21, 2014, Songcheng Co., Ltd. and Shenzhen Dasheng International Media Co., Ltd. signed a strategic investment cooperation framework agreement, obtained 35% equity of Dasheng International, and officially entered the film and television culture industry.

Dasheng International is a film and television media company founded and controlled by the famous film producer An Xiaofen. Since its establishment in 2010, it has successively released film works such as "Jin Yi Wei", "Ye Wen 2", "Li Xian Ji Adventures", "Fei Yue Nursing Home" and "Little Times". Among them, "Jin Yi Wei", "Ye Wen 2", "Little Times", etc. all entered the top 10 domestic box-office films.

Based on its own theme park, extending to the upstream and downstream industries of cultural performing arts, arranging growth areas such as film and television production, and moving towards the ultimate goal of cultural aircraft carriers, this is the strategic deployment of Huang Qiaoling.

At the same time, with the great heat of the net red economy, Songcheng performing arts are laid out in this field. In March 2015, Songcheng performed 2.6 billion yuan to acquire six rooms in the country's largest social video site. At present, the six rooms are the largest Internet entertainment platform websites in China. They are the main online platform for grassroots stars, and they are broadcast live in real time, incorporating the concept of “social”. With more than 220,000 contracted anchors, its monthly active users have climbed to nearly 43.5 million, with a daily live broadcast of 50,000 hours and an average monthly pageview of 660 million.

According to the 2016 annual report disclosed by Songcheng Performing Arts, in the three main business segments of live performance, Internet performing arts and tourism service industry, Internet performing arts achieved a total revenue of 1.09 billion yuan last year, accounting for a proportion of total revenue. 41.23%, an increase of 195.37% over the same period of the previous year, accounting for 26.05% of the net profit of Songcheng Performing Arts. And this revenue of more than 10 billion, all by the "six rooms" one. This is also the six rooms in the Songcheng performance after the income pocket, within two years to exceed the performance of the gambling. (Previously, the six-room senior management team promised to the listed company that the net profit of gambling in 2015-2018 was 151 million yuan, 211 million yuan, 275 million yuan and 357 million yuan respectively, and the growth rate in the next three years reached 40. %, 30% and 30%.)

In addition, Songcheng Performing Arts established in May and July 2015 with a scale of 1 billion yuan of live entertainment investment funds and 3 billion yuan of Internet entertainment funds, which have invested in hip hop bags, warm games, Buka animation, etc. Home businesses, accelerating the layout of IP content sections.

Thanks to the successful experience of domestic operations, Songcheng Performing Arts is still expanding overseas. At the end of 2016, Songcheng Performing Arts announced that it will invest 2 billion yuan to build a “legendary kingdom” theme park on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia, and open the road to internationalization. In Las Vegas, USA, an "Eternal Love" show that shows "American Dream" has also entered the stage of script creation.

In 2017, Songcheng Performing Arts also established a subsidiary company with the US technology company Spaces to develop VR/AR/MR business. The two founders of Spaces are the VR project leaders at DreamWorks in the United States, with top-notch VR/AR/MR production experience, including VR movies, VR games, 360-degree movie illusions, and VR attraction theme parks. The six rooms are expected to continue to make breakthroughs in the research and development of VR and AR, and are expected to present creative products and models at the end of the year.

In the past few years, Songcheng Performing Arts has extended the industry chain by acquiring content companies and online internet platform companies that can generate good synergies with them, forming a pan-entertainment of “IP+ live entertainment + Internet entertainment + tourism and leisure”. Ecosphere. Among them, the “Songcheng” IP created by Huang Qiaoling in 20 years has become the source of the ecosystem.

Deeply mine IP value

Disney has provided a successful sample for all theme parks and even entertainment groups. Its deep exploration of the value of IP value has made many companies and consumers amazed. The IPs under its industrial ecology have evolved and merged like species evolution. It is at the forefront of the times.

What Song City expects is to combine online performing arts with live performances to form an ecology. For Songcheng performing arts, the IP value of the "Eternal Love" series has been reflected. Through acquisition and transformation, Songcheng Performing Arts has expanded from the output of the original theme park + live performance mode, and gradually expanded its development field to Internet entertainment, technology entertainment, and developed into a pan-entertainment IP empire with creativity as its core competitiveness. IP's “creation-cultivation-realization” full-closed chain live performance is still the main source of income for Songcheng's interpretation. In 2016, it contributed revenue of 1.37 billion yuan, accounting for 52% of its total revenue.

The IP realization of Songcheng Performing Arts is also reflected in the field of digital entertainment. The newly created women's day group "Tree House Girl" operates through a professional broker, using popular movies, online dramas and music albums to foster popularity, while the company's existing live performance space and six-room live broadcast platform become IP. The final place to be realized. In addition, the mobile game developers recently acquired by Songcheng Performing Arts can also become the platform for creating or realizing IP.

However, the fact that can not be ignored is that the content of "Eternal Love" needs to be upgraded, and relying too much on this single IP is the biggest problem facing Songcheng Performing Arts.

Because the Songcheng performing arts will face the audience in the Internet age: their interests are becoming more and more differentiated, and their products and services are becoming more and more critical; consumption upgrading is paying more and more attention to quality; it is both a beneficiary of the information age and a huge amount of information. But the Internet people are at a loss.

Faced with these growing new generations of consumers, the aesthetic needs and consumption patterns of the audience are constantly changing. Can Songcheng perform in the future with new technologies and new models, and continuously integrate high-quality content and new products by integrating online and offline resources. Sustained success is a key factor in determining how far it can go.

Conclusion

The first show of Chinese performing arts has gone through 20 years, how should we move forward in the next 20 years? In 2017, Huang Qiaoling will position the future strategy as “six Songcheng”—Songcheng Song, Performing Arts Songcheng, International Songcheng, IP Songcheng, Science and Technology Songcheng, and Net Songsong City, and continue to open the road of expansion.

Then, under the rapid development, how to adhere to the brand soul and seek a balance between culture and business? Let the product have both cultural and artistic value and market recognition. It is not only a problem in front of Huang Qiaoling and his Songcheng, but also a common test in front of the tourism performance industry.