Acquiring Baidu Nuomi Pictures for US$200 million? iQiyi: It will vigorously develop the film ticket business

On May 14, according to media reports, Baidu Nuomi Pictures, which was valued at its peak at 6 billion yuan, sold it to iQiyi for US$200 million, and the relevant team of Baidu Nuomi Pictures will be adjusted in the near future.

In response to this, on May 15, iQiyi responded to the reporter of The Paper that iQiyi will vigorously develop the film ticket business. At present, iQiyi and Baidu's film ticket business have traffic and technical cooperation.

It should be pointed out that iQiyi's response did not positively explain whether it had completed the acquisition of Baidu Nuomi Pictures.

However, judging from the prospectus disclosed by iQiyi in March this year, on February 12, iQiyi and Baidu signed a share purchase agreement and will issue 36.86 million Class B common shares to Baidu. Baidu promised: online movie tickets, ticket booking and other fields to fulfill its responsibilities of not competing with iQiyi, direct user traffic to iQiyi's ticketing business, provide iQiyi's technical support in ticketing business, authorize part of the intellectual property rights to iQiyi, and reach ticketing business cooperation with iQiyi. Therefore, it seems reasonable for iQiyi to cooperate with Baidu Nuomi Pictures to conduct business cooperation and even integrate.

Baidu Nuomi was originally the main body of Baidu's O2O business, and it was strategically invested by Baidu in Nuomi.com in 2013. In January 2015, Baidu Nuomi Film Business established an independent business unit. In June of the same year, Baidu Chairman Robin Li announced an additional investment of 20 billion yuan in its group buying website Baidu Nuomi within three years. According to reports at the time, the two key categories of Baidu Nuomi were catering and movies.

In the movie ticket market, Baidu Nuomi also occupied a good market share. However, with the merger of Maoyan and Weiying Times to call Maoyan Weiying, Alibaba Pictures continued to increase its investment in Taopiaopiao, and the two showed a dominant trend in the movie ticketing market. Data provided by data analysis company iResearch's "2017 Summer Film Market Observation" shows that in the 2017 summer season, Alibaba's Taopiaopiao led the Chinese movie online ticketing market with a share of 30.94%, with Maoyan, Yupiaoer and Baidu Nuomi, a subsidiary of Weiying Times, ranked behind, with market shares of 29.72%, 21.84% and 9.71% respectively.

Baidu Nuomi Pictures also attempts to enter the production and distribution of film and television.

In June 2016, Nuomi Pictures officially announced the establishment of a content investment fund of up to 2 billion yuan, and stated that it would invest in at least 30 movies in the next two years. In addition, Baidu Nuomi Pictures also announced that it would establish an equity investment fund to invest in high-quality companies in the IP and film production fields. According to the information of Taopiaopiao Professional Edition, Baidu Nuomi participated in the release of the movies "Save Mr. Wu" and "Assassin Nie Yinniang", and Baidu Nuomi Film participated in the release of works including "Ace Cat" and "Born Hunter".

It is worth mentioning that in January 2017, it was in the mainlandWhen Qi Zuo immediately took office as the president and chief operating officer of Baidu Group, Baidu Nuomi Pictures held a marketing conference and released a marketing strategy with theaters and business districts as the core. Baidu Nuomi General Manager Zeng Liang and Baidu Nuomi Pictures General Manager Xu Yongming both appeared at the press conference.

But two months later, on March 16, 2017, Baidu announced through an internal email that Baidu's senior vice president and Baidu search company president Xiang Hailong will personally serve as the general manager of Baidu Nuomi, while former Baidu's vice president and Baidu Nuomi general manager Zeng Liang was terminated by Baidu for serious violations of discipline during his previous post.

After that, Lu Qi continued to adjust Baidu's business system, and businesses such as artificial intelligence and driverless driving became the focus of Baidu's betting. Baidu's medical business unit was revoked, Baidu Takeout was swallowed up by Ele.me, Baidu Finance was spun off... Tieba, Nuomi and other businesses gradually became the edge.

Baidu's video website iQiyi officially landed on Nasdaq in March this year. After its listing, Baidu is still the controlling shareholder of iQiyi.

iQiyi is not only a video website now. During roadshows, iQiyi CEO Gong Yu described to investors that iQiyi's model is Netflix Plus. That is, in addition to Netflix's preferred content and subscription revenue, iQiyi has more types of business models, such as advertising and information flow. iQiyi's animation, literature, and games cultivated may also become new driving forces in the future. In an interview before ringing the bell on the listing, Gong Yu introduced that iQiyi's future goal is to establish an online entertainment kingdom. "In terms of basic business model logic, this entertainment kingdom has many similarities with Disney."

The movie ticket business launched in 2014 is also one of the emerging businesses supported by iQiyi. On the iQiyi mobile app, the ticket purchase entrance for its movie tickets can be seen. A reporter from The Paper saw from the "iQiyi Movie Ticket User Service Agreement" that the operator of iQiyi Movie Ticket is iQiyi Pictures (Beijing) Co., Ltd.

Although this time, no positive response was made to the acquisition of Baidu Nuomi Pictures, iQiyi also publicly stated that it would vigorously develop the ticket business.

However, the iQiyi movie ticket business that has been in operation for 4 years has always been difficult to compare with Taopiaopiao and Maoyan movies. If it can be integrated with Baidu Nuomi Pictures, it may be a good choice for both parties. Recently, due to the ticket refund storm, the film's producer and distributor, and the seller of the movie ticket, Maoyan, was pushed to the forefront, and the brand reputation was in the test. If iQiyi chooses to integrate with Baidu Nuomi Pictures at this moment and vigorously develop the movie ticket business, it may stir up the industry structure.