Horizons Newsletter – week 18 // 2021
Horizons is a bi-monthly Dasym Research initiative to show you how the Dasym themes have been in the news. We publish the Horizons on our website and as an email newsletter. If you wish to receive the email, please contact Investor Relations.
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Chinese content grows up
The Chinese content market has evolved rapidly in the last decade. The market’s hunger for international content and formats has subsided. Instead, it is localizing rapidly and is creating its own types of content. At the box office, Chinese productions dominate and in the fast-growing online video market, the focus is shifting to domestically produced series. Moreover, the short (up to 1 minute) and medium (1-30 minutes) video sector is blooming, characterized by new blends of ecommerce and live-streamed video. While most Western internet users still associate live streaming with gaming and entertainment, in China it has become a ubiquitous shopping channel that can be likened to a more modern, mobile and interactive form of TV shopping. Hosts give their fans discount coupons and flash deals in real time, while viewers send their favorite stars virtual “gifts.” With the short video market in the West also starting to take off – indicated by the growing popularity of TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Triller and Dubsmash – influencers, producers and marketers might want to look to the East for inspiration and future opportunities.
Broaden your horizon?
In this section we share content that may be of interest to you:
- This Variety longroad breaks down 15 innovations, transformations, modifications and other ways in which Spotify has changed how people consume music and how it brought new functionalities to its platform.
- China is establishing a new supply chain connected to Europe by going through the continent’s industrial backwaters. Goods are arriving in Europe through a new trade corridor consisting of railroads, airport hubs and ports built with Chinese support.
- The E.U. recently agreed to cut its net greenhouse gas emissions at least 55% by 2030 against 1990 levels. To make the target a reality it is considering creating an additional system of pollution-cutting incentives known as emissions trading (ETS) for buildings and road transport.
China pushes its sports strategy
In 2014 president Xi Jinping – a fervent fan of soccer – announced his intention to transform China’s national team into a soccer superpower. As a result, between 2015 and 2017 Chinese investors poured money into European soccer to learn their best practices for building successful teams. The strategy, however, was unsuccessful and today the number of Chinese-owned clubs is in decline, from more than twenty in 2017 to less than ten today. The reason for the reverse of fortune in Chinese soccer investments is a change in strategy at the government level. China still wants to become a soccer nation, but instead of outbound investments in international soccer, they now want to achieve that goal with inbound investments that support domestic and grassroots efforts. The country successfully enlisted this strategy with snooker, where a growing number of elite players is coming from China and (online) viewership numbers are dwarfing those of most European countries. Nevertheless, building a snooker or soccer nation from the ground up takes years and China is willing to invest that time.
