Text | "Chinese Entrepreneur" reporter Tao Tao
editor | Li Wei
header image source | Visual China
After four years of absence, the variety show "Singer" broadcast live on the dual platforms of Hunan Satellite TV and Mango TV returns. After the first episode was broadcast on May 10, "Singer Live Broadcast", "Han Hong's Challenge", "Na Ying's Adventures"... have successively become hot topics on major social platforms. According to Maoyan Professional Edition data, as of 11:00 on May 15, "Singer 2024" has received a total of 569 hot searches on the entire network, and has reached the top of the hot search list 75 times.
Amidst the heat wave, the stock price of Mango Super Media, the producer behind "Singer", once again took advantage of the east wind. As of the close of trading on May 13, Mango Super Media's share price soared 11.69%, with a turnover of 2.088 billion yuan, a total market value of 47.011 billion yuan, and a market value soaring by nearly 5 billion yuan overnight.
For Mango Super Media, the launch of top variety shows has driven up the stock price, which has already formed a cyclical practice: at the end of May 2022, due to the popularity of "Lang Jie 3" Wang Xinling, Mango Super Media's stock price rose by 10% for two consecutive days, and was It is nicknamed the "Cyndi" concept stock; its stock price also rose when the topic became popular after the broadcast of "Hong Kong Philharmonic Season" and "Brother Overcoming Troubles".
The success of variety shows such as "Singer" is due to the content transfusion of Hunan Radio and Television behind in the ten years since the establishment of Mango TV, as well as the content moat that Mango TV has gradually built by itself.
Mango Super Media’s business is mainly divided into three parts: Mango TV Internet video, new media interactive entertainment content production and operation, and content e-commerce. Among them, Mango TV has always been the backbone of Mango Super Media. In 2023, this business will account for more than 70% of the revenue.
From 2016 to 2017, Mango TV, the core business of Mango Super Media, began to accelerate, starting from a pure online channel publisher to self-made content. Since then, "Star Detective", "Wife's Romantic Travel", "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves", etc. have been launched successively, and investment and membership income have fed back to Hunan Radio and Television.
Mango TV inherited Hunan Satellite TV’s long-term advantages in the variety show sector, making Mango Super Media the first profitable long video concept stock. In 2023, Mango Super Media’s total operating revenue was 14.628 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.66%; excluding non-net profit was 1.695 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.70%.
However, behind the glamor, Mango Super Media also faces hidden worries. The core income of the
long video platform is advertising and membership income. Unlike iQiyi, Tencent Video, and Youku, which mainly focus on film and television drama business and membership income as the pillar, Mango TV mainly focuses on variety show business, and their "cash cow" is advertising. However, starting in 2022, Mango TV’s advertising advantage has been weakened, and membership growth has not been satisfactory.
According to Mango Super Media’s financial report, in 2022 and 2023, the company’s advertising revenue was 3.994 billion yuan and 3.532 billion yuan respectively, declining year-on-year. fell by 26.77% and 11.57% year-on-year respectively; in comparison with , in 2022 love Qiyi's advertising revenue was 5.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 25%, but its advertising revenue in 2023 was 6.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17%.
For many film and television media companies, advertising revenue will be under pressure due to the impact of the external environment in 2022. Although it will gradually recover in 2023, Mango TV has not been able to recover simultaneously. In terms of
members, due to film and television copyright limitations, as of the end of 2023, the number of paying members of iQiyi, Tencent Video and Mango TV were 101.1 million, 117 million and 66.53 million respectively (Youku has not released public data), Mango TV Clearly lagging behind the other two.
For the current Mango Super Media, the top priority is to re-enhance its advertising investment capabilities and make up for the shortcomings of the "barrel" - membership income. For Mango TV, which leads variety shows but lacks film and television drama copyrights, the core factor in expanding its membership is to expand its film and television library. In addition, in addition to Mango TV, new media interactive entertainment and e-commerce business also carry the hope of Mango Super Media’s future.
After losing the cake, it took a curve to overtake
Since Mango TV joined Mango Super Media in 2014, Mango Super Media has been integrating development of satellite TV and its own content platform for 10 years. This media giant that went public in 2015, achieved profitability in 2017 and has maintained it to this day.
All of this can be traced back to 10 years ago. After Hunan Radio and Television lost the variety show cake, it pioneered the integration of Taiwan and the Internet and worked hard to catch up with the story of "Aiyouteng".
Before the launch of the Internet platform business, Hunan Satellite TV had already occupied the top spot in the field of satellite TV ratings and variety show ratings for many years. Hunan Radio and Television has also been known as the contemporary "Hunan Army" for many years.
In 2013, the first season of "Where Are We Going, Dad" and the first season of "I Am a Singer" broadcast by Hunan Satellite TV achieved high ratings. Among them, the finals of the first season of "I Am a Singer" won the highest ratings on the entire network. and Central City Network (a total of 71 first-, second- and third-tier cities) ranked first in ratings during the same period.
However, at the end of 2013, Hunan Satellite TV faced an unexpected dimensionality reduction attack. iQiyi, a new generation of the Internet, spent 200 million yuan to buy the exclusive online copyright of six programs including "Where Are We Going, Dad 2"; LeTV also acquired the exclusive online copyright of "I Am a Singer 2" for over 100 million yuan .
This kind of operation quickly "grows other people's ambitions." After obtained the exclusive copyright, the online title of "Where Are We Going, Dad 2" quickly earned iQiyi 66 million yuan, which does not include pre-roll advertising, membership income, etc. "I Am a Singer 2" is less than halfway through, and LeTV has earned 200 million yuan in revenue.
This is closely related to the rapid growth of Internet users at that time - according to the 33rd "Statistical Report on China's Internet Development" released by the China Internet Center (cnnic), in February 2013, the number of online video users in China reached 428 million people, the growth rate is 15.2%. Among them, there were 247 million mobile video users, an increase of 83.8% compared with the end of 2012.
Against this background, according to Huashang Taolue, in 2014, an internal document of Hunan Radio and Television left an assertion that would influence the Chinese media industry in the next ten years:
"Currently, the content we have is actually The highest quality and most core resources, so we must not feed the tiger to the trouble. must give up the immediate benefits brought by copyright fees and create an own, independent and self-controlled Internet media platform. "
In April 2014, Mango TV was born. was born and became a business under "Happy Gou Co., Ltd." (hereinafter referred to as "Happy Gou"), and soon became the mainstay of Happy Gou's income.
Happy Gou was founded in 2005 by joint investment from Hunan Radio, Film and Television Group (hereinafter referred to as Hunan Radio and Television) and Hunan Satellite TV. It was originally positioned as TV shopping and film and television variety show online copyright distribution. Since the addition of Mango TV, its main business has gradually shifted to film and television content production, artist management, etc., so it was renamed "Mango Super Media" in 2018.
For Mango Super Media, which is backed by Hunan Radio and Television, it is no less than another decision to build its own Internet platform. is to do "exclusive broadcast of content" - Hunan Satellite TV's copyrighted content is exclusively licensed to Mango TV.
Unlike at that time, iQiyi, Tencent Video, LeTV, and Youku had just entered the "first year of self-made Internet", and their survival still mainly relied on purchasing copyrighted content from satellite TV. Mango TV originated from the content reserves of Hunan Satellite TV, which can be said to be far behind the previous ones. Or a few streets.
Facts have proved that Hunan Radio and Television’s two decisions were accurate bets. Thanks to Hunan Satellite TV's more than ten years of accumulation of film and television dramas and variety shows, Mango TV's advertising revenue has skyrocketed. After joining Mango Super Media for three years, it helped the latter achieve a turnaround, which is better than iQiyi, which built a content moat from scratch. It was realized five years earlier.
Variety shows are king, advertising is booming
There is no doubt that Mango Super Media’s content reserves provide it with an advantage in catching up from behind. Internet content platforms will find it difficult to survive in the long term without their own content.
Just as Disney launched its own streaming media disney+ in November 2019, after focusing on Disney classic film and television works, it still vigorously creates new IPs such as "The Mandalorian" and "Stranger Things" to compete with Netflix, Mango TV earlier Realized the importance of one's own hematopoiesis.
At the same time, when media is integrated, the same content "eating more than one fish" seems "efficient", but in fact there is a problem of mismatch between the content and the platform's tonality. is just like a company's content displayed on different social platforms that will be adjusted according to the characteristics of the platform. As early as 10 years ago, Hunan Radio and Television believed that Mango TV needed to target online audiences and create programs different from those for TV audiences.
Therefore, in the same year that Mango TV was established, it built its own core production team and enhanced the platform's own hematopoietic capabilities. This prevents it from competing with other long-form video platforms for high-priced content copyrights from other satellite TV stations to a certain extent.
Under the decisive decision of the "Hunan Army", in 2014, Mango TV launched its first self-made variety show "Idol is Broken", which subverted the traditional talk show format, and the total number of views exceeded 20 million within one year of its launch. This test of the waters has built up confidence for Mango TV to make big strides forward in the field of self-produced content.
Since then, Mango TV has successively launched variety shows such as "Star Detective", "Wife's Romantic Travel", "My Favorite Women", "Daughters' Love", "Star Detective", and "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves". Among them, "Celebrity Detective" pioneered the domestic variety show reasoning and became a phenomenon-level program after it was launched on Mango TV. It is now in its ninth season; "Daughters' Love" is the first purely online cross-generational emotional observation program; "Sisters Riding the Wind and Waves" is the first "older girl group" talent show in China. The innovative nature of
Mango TV has inherited the variety show influence of Hunan Satellite TV. The investment trend is also directly proportional to the popularity of the program. For example, the first season of 's "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves" had as many as 13 sponsors, bringing more than 1 billion yuan in advertising revenue to Mango Super Media.
From 2019 to 2022, Mango Super Media’s advertising revenue was 3.35 billion yuan, 4.14 billion yuan, 5.453 billion yuan, and 3.994 billion yuan respectively, achieving growth against the trend during the special period.
This is due to the strong variety show team behind Mango TV.
Currently, the controlling shareholder of Mango Super Media is Mango Media Co., Ltd., with a shareholding of 56.09%. In 2023, Mango Super Media wholly acquired Hunan Golden Eagle Cartoon Media Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Golden Eagle Cartoon"), another subsidiary of Hunan Radio and Television, which is mainly engaged in the research and development of cartoon animation content.
In November of the same year, Mango Super Media also proposed a new strategic deployment of integrated media development. Under the linkage of the resources of the original Mango TV, Xiaomang E-commerce (an e-commerce platform of Mango Super Media) and Hunan Satellite TV, plus Golden Eagle Cartoon strives to create a four-platform business synergy model. Today, there are a total of 56 variety show teams on these "four platforms".
With the support of Hunan Radio and Television, Mango Super Media is playing an increasingly important role in the field of variety show production. Therefore, compared with film and television dramas where product placement can easily interrupt the plot and have poor conversion effects, the natural fit between variety shows and product placement has brought considerable advertising revenue to Mango Super Media over the years.
Film and television are lame, and it is difficult to increase members.
The advertising business has always been the revenue engine of Mango Super Media. However, after this business hit the peak of revenue in 2021, it faced growth difficulties.
On the one hand, this is related to the impact of the general environment on the advertising industry. On the other hand, Mango Super Media is also facing its own shortcomings.
According to the 2023 National Radio and Television Industry Statistical Bulletin released by the State Administration of Radio and Television, Internet advertising revenue last year was 269.834 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.09%. In addition, judging from the performance of peers, iQiyi and Bilibili will both see growth in advertising revenue in 2023. Both mentioned optimization of advertising and innovation in advertising models in their financial reports.
But compared to other long-form video platforms that mainly focus on film, television and UGC content, Mango TV’s advertising conversion mainly relies on variety shows. Moreover, looking at the entire variety show landscape, Mango TV’s “Variety N Generation” dominates the screen, and investment income has weakened in the later seasons.
According to Guduo data in 2023, Mango accounts for 4 of the top 10 variety shows on the entire network, including "Chengfeng 2023", "Beat the Wind Season 3", "Eternal Sound·Treasure Island Season" and "All Members Accelerate 2023", but all It is a "comprehensive n generation".
Audience fatigue has led to a decline in the popularity of relevant programs, and the same is true for investment promotion. For example, in the first issue of the first season of "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves", Mango TV attracted 13 financial sponsors, but this number dropped to 6 in the first issue of the second season.
For Mango TV, on the one hand, it needs to step out of its comfort zone and develop new variety shows; on the other hand, it needs to make up for the shortcomings of film and television content.
In the first half of 2023, according to Yunhe data, among the effective broadcast statistics of feature films on the entire network, Mango TV has 3.8 billion, while other Tencent Video, iQiyi, and Youku have reached 60 billion, 40 billion, and 30 billion+. Each platform The volume is ten times that of Mango TV.
According to the popularity data of Maoyan Professional Edition, among the top 10 popular web dramas in 2023, "Aiyouteng" alone occupies two seats each, and the remaining four seats are co-broadcasted by multiple platforms or TV networks, none of which have Mango. tv figure.
The long video platform has a broad business model logic: "Members rely on drama series, and advertising relies on variety shows." This puts Mango TV’s paid user growth in a double bottleneck.
As of the end of 2023, Mango TV has 66.53 million paying members. Although it has increased by 10.23% compared with the same period in 2022, this is in the context of joining Taobao 88vip package membership in the same period (buying Taobao 88vip membership can give you a full-year long video membership , Youku or Mango TV, choose one).
Therefore, the proportion of Mango TV’s non-bundled membership payments is unknown, while the revenue share from bundled members is limited, and its arm (per capita monthly payment value) is low. Judging from the annual reports of iQiyi and Mango TV, the arm prices of the two are about 15.5 yuan and 5.5 yuan respectively. Mango TV is obviously at a disadvantage.
Mango Super Media is also aware of its shortcomings and has focused on laying out film and television content in the past two years. In addition to 56 variety show teams, as of now, Mango TV's content team also includes 22 film and television production teams and 36 "New Mang Plan" strategic studios. Among them, the "Xinmang Project" focuses on the creation of film and television literary content, aiming to expand film and television IP production to the upstream end.
In 2023, Mango Super Media has laid out 128 dramas of various types including the "Damang Project" micro-short dramas. However, investment in film and television works has the characteristics of long cycle and high risks. For Mango TV's long-form drama business, there is still a long way to go to catch up with "Aiyouteng".
In addition to Mango TV, Mango Super Media is also trying to expand the second growth curve.
In 2023, Mango Super Media’s financial report shows that Mango TV’s revenue accounted for 72.56%, a year-on-year decrease of 1.88%; content e-commerce business revenue was 19.30%, a year-on-year increase of 32.14%. For Mango Super Media, Xiaomang e-commerce relies on Mango ecological high-quality content IP and artist resources to continue to maintain rapid growth, with annual GMV exceeding 10 billion yuan.
This brings greater room for imagination to the future of Mango Super Media.
