In order to preoccupy the booming’bangguseok performance’ platform market due to the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19), a joint venture between IT and entertainment companies is taking place quickly.
Last year, Naver, a leading Korean internet company, invested 100 billion won each in YG Entertainment and SM Entertainment, two-top entertainment agencies in the industry, and NCsoft, the eldest in the game industry, joined CJ ENM, a’traditional entertainer’ and a joint venture (JV) within this year. And announced that it would develop a content business.
According to industry sources on the 5th, NCsoft and CJ ENM plan to establish a joint venture within this year by signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for business cooperation in the fields of content and digital platforms.
The core business of the joint venture is a content business that combines NCsoft’s IT technology and CJ ENM’s entertainment business know-how, and music content business including non-face-to-face performances is expected to be the priority.
First, it is highly likely that a joint venture will participate in a way that CJ ENM’s management know-how combines with the K-pop entertainment platform’Universe’, which NCsoft announced earlier this year.
An NCsoft official said, “The specific business direction has not been decided yet,” but said, “We saw that if the two companies cooperate, we can create high-quality entertainment content, and as a result, it is a dimension to secure competitiveness as a global content company.”
As the performance industry was hit by Corona 19 last year, the industry is turning to a non-face-to-face performance platform.
CJ ENM, a dominant company in the entertainment field, has already held’K Contact’ and ‘2020 MAMA’, which a large number of K-pop artists participated in last year, non-face-to-face, and provides ICT technologies such as realistic reality (XR) and volumetrics with broadcasting contents. Combined.
In’Once Again’, which aired last month, the stage of the late Turtleman and late Kim Hyun-sik was recreated using artificial intelligence (AI) voice restoration technology to attract a topic.
NCsoft, which is pushing to advance into new industries such as finance using its own AI technology beyond games, is also starting a full-fledged start in the entertainment business.
NCsoft is planning to release an entertainment platform’Universe’, in which artists such as Kang Daniel, The Boys, Monsta X, IZone, and ATEZ participate in the near future. NCsoft also revealed its investment plan for content that combines entertainment content with IT technology such as AI, motion capture, and character scan.
The cooperation between NCsoft and CJ ENM is in line with Naver’s large-scale investment in SM Entertainment in August last year following YG Entertainment, a representative domestic entertainment agency in 2018.
By investing a total of 100 billion won in SM Entertainment’s affiliates’SMEJ Plus’ and’Mystic Story’, Naver’s video platform’Vlive’ will strengthen the capabilities of’Fanship’, a global community membership platform, and expand the next-generation video business. Revealed.
As a result, SM Entertainment has a strategy to unify the fan club service it has operated so far into fanship, strengthening its global membership platform capabilities, and Naver’s strategy to increase competitiveness in discovering and producing digital contents such as performances, music, and videos.
At that time, the investment was interpreted by Naver’s willingness not only to invest in entertainment content, but also to actively advance into the’non-face-to-face entertainment service’ business such as fan meetings through’star marketing’ and online concerts.
The platform market with Hallyu content is a sector that can shed a mouth-watering experience as Naver, which is highly dependent on sales of’shopping search advertisements’ while rapidly absorbing online shopping and payment demand with portal users as a foothold.
In fact, it was estimated that the first paid exclusive live broadcast by Naver’s VLive in June 2019, the performance of BTS at Wembley Stadium in London, UK, earned at least 4.6 billion won. The audience fee for the performance was 33,000 won, and the number of concurrent users reached 140,000.
However, BTS’ agency Big Hit Entertainment tied the existing BTS concerts and performances in April of last year and released them on YouTube, and in June of the same year, held’Bang Bang Con The Live’ through its own global fan community platform’Weverse’.75 It is estimated that it has generated at least 25 billion won in ticket revenue by attracting 6600 viewers.
Naver also decided to combine Naver’s intellectual property rights (IP) platform with CJ ENM and Studio Dragon’s production capabilities by exchanging mutual shares of 150 billion won each with CJ ENM and Studio Dragon in October last year.
Last year,’Performance Live’ that was watched online on Naver recorded 600 cases, up 7.5 times from the previous year. The number of cumulative views reached 15 million, an increase of 12.5 times from the previous year.
The non-face-to-face performance business is expected to become a’new food’ while being combined with Naver’s existing business.
Naver supports the full amount of fees incurred when sponsoring’Sponsored Live’, which allows users who have sponsored a certain amount to enjoy performances, while free viewing or discount tickets for users of’Naver Plus Membership’, a paid membership service. Provided. Naver is also planning to discuss with the industry in future digital goods sales or joint discovery of online-only content.
Reporter Kim Hyun-joo [email protected]
Photo = provided by NCsoft
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