Station B continues to buy copyrights and signs a three-year cooperation with Jinjiang

Reporter | She Xiaochen

Entering the new year, Station B has launched a new round of “buy, buy, buy”.

Recently, Station B issued an announcement on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, announcing that it has reached a cooperation with Jinjiang Original and entered into a comprehensive cooperation framework agreement. According to this, the group and Jinjiang Original agreed to cooperate on intellectual property rights, including but not limited to the purchase of multiple works (including literary works) and use the copyright for designated purposes (including but not limited to adaptation, information network dissemination, publicity and distribution), and Bilibili agrees to pay Jinjiang Original the relevant transaction amount, including but not limited to authorization fees, purchase fees and any proceeds from any profit-sharing arrangement.

Regarding this cooperation, Station B stated in the announcement that Jinjiang Original provides an interactive communication and creation platform for authors, publishing houses and film and television companies through the popular female to original literature website Jinjiang Literature City.

Station B believes that certain high-quality intellectual property rights originally created by Jinjiang have great commercial potential, and believes that the comprehensive cooperation framework agreement will enable the Company to access and utilize such high-quality intellectual property rights to develop and create more high-quality works, thereby further increasing the Company’s income and enhance the interests of shareholders.

Jinjiang Literature City, which has a large number of IP works, is the youth memory of many young users. According to public information, the audience of Jinjiang Literature City is mainly young people aged 18-29, which matches the user portraits of the current station B. In fact, Station B reached a cooperation with Jinjiang Literature City in 2018, and the first batch of signed works reached 5, including “Blessings of Heavenly Officials”, “Poyun”, “Defective Products”, and “You are in the depths of the stars” , “The Antidote”. Among them, the cumulative broadcast volume of the first season of “Heavenly Official’s Blessing” animation exceeded 300 million, becoming the blockbuster work of Bilibili.

With such a foundation, it is logical for Station B to continue the previous cooperation. The announcement pointed out that Tencent is the main shareholder of Bilibili, and Jinjiang Original is held 50% by Shanghai Hongwen and is an associate of Tencent. Therefore, according to the listing rules, Jinjiang Original is a connected person of Bilibili.

Especially in the past two years, even though the company’s overall goal is to “reduce costs and increase efficiency”, the direction of Bilibili’s efforts is to reduce internal expenses, and the investment in content procurement will only increase. Part of the reason is that the value-added service business, which includes membership subscription fees, has become the most important business of Bilibili at this stage. The latest financial report shows that in the first three quarters of 2022, the value-added service business accounted for the largest proportion of total revenue, at 40.4%. %. IP adaptation works are a sharp weapon to promote membership subscriptions.

When station B returned to Hong Kong for the second listing in March 2021, the company revealed its determination to increase investment in content. In the prospectus, Bilibili stated that 50%, 20%, 20% and 10% of the listing in Hong Kong will be used for content, research and development, sales and marketing, as well as general corporate purposes and operating capital needs. Li Ni, vice chairman and COO of Station B, said at the time that the fundraising expenses were mainly used for content ecology, including OGV (content produced by professional institutions) and self-made content.

For the “IP Factory” Jinjiang Literature City, cooperation with Station B is also a win-win situation. According to the research report of the China Economic Information Service, in the “Top 50 Comprehensive List of IP Values ​​in the Cultural Industry”, 52% of the IPs are originally literature, and more than 80% of them are network literature. Under the predicament of the homogenization of online texts and the impact of free reading websites, authorized adaptation can maximize the commercial value of works.

However, the announcement has not disclosed the specific way of cooperation between the two parties. There is a point of view that how the head content of Jinjiang Literature City and the community of station B “run in” is still a big problem. Previously, Jinjiang Literature City had been interviewed many times due to content issues. On October 21, 2021, Jinjiang announced the launch of an age-based reading system.

Station B disclosed in this announcement that in 2020, 2021 and the first three quarters of 2022, the total cost-related transaction amounts generated by Station B are RMB 51.3 million, 28.2 million and 37.7 million respectively. According to the announcement, the term of the comprehensive cooperation framework agreement is three years, and the annual cap as of December 31, 2023, 2024 and 2025 is 40 million yuan.