With the limited number of screens in China, many films with low production costs are unable to be shown in cinemas, which mean that television rights have become an effective way for low-budget films to see a return on their investment. There is a huge difference in the price that movie channels will pay for digital and film copies of movies. According to "China Film Industry Report 2011" issued by EntGroup, the price of television rights averages around 700,000 RMB, which is a no small number for low-budget films. Movie channels regularly buy up 70% of the year’s digital films and 90% of film copy movies. In 2010, conservative estimates are that combined purchases of movie rights by movie channels totaled 500 million RMB.
In some developed western film markets like the UK, revenue from television screenings of films make up 30% of revenue, but in China, movies still rely on box office sales for revenue and have yet to develop industry ROI models that use different platforms or re-screenings through multiple portals.
In 2010, Chinese video websites have gradually moved toward legalizing with mainstream video websites allocating funds to purchase movie and television rights. The price of the online rights to these has also increased along with this and the rights to premier a hot movie is regularly upwards of 1.5 million RMB or more. In 2010, new media copyright revenue may reach 150 million RMB.
The ad-based business model used by domestic video websites is gradually being perfected and online movie watching is gradually becoming a second choice to going to a movie theater. Internet copyrights have gradually replaced AV copyrights to become another large source of revenue for production companies. Meanwhile, in the future, with the fight for ‘premier’ and ‘exclusive broadcasting’ rights among online video websites as well as increased investment through public listings, the price of online movie rights will continue to rise.
Compared with the rapid growth of new media copyrights, DVD and Blu-ray video copyrights continue to fare poorly. In recent years, sales of domestic audio/video products have fallen at a rate of 40% per year on average. Currently, the price of audio/video copyrights is around 700,000 RMB or even less.
EntGroup is China’s leading entertainment research service center, focusing on Chinese film and animation industry. We provide consulting services through comprehensive industry reports, customized research as well as enbase to meet the requests concerning Chinese entertainment business. EntGroup also operate online platform for entertainment industry at http://english.entgroup.cn/index.aspx
Enbase , database of EntGroup, it includes information of over 300,000 films and television productions, data of Chinese cinemas and films (e.g. Box-office Records, Weekly attendance, Theatre revenue, etc) http://english.entgroup.com.cn/enbase.html
For more information, please contact with Leon (President) Tel: 86-10-85899985-813 E-mail: leon@entgroup.cn; Amy (Business Director) Tel: 86-10-85899985-847 E-mail: Amy@entgroup.cn
