Naver, invested 4118 billion won in BNX… BNX took over the VLive division
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(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Hong Ji-in and Kim Hyo-jung = Naver and Big Hit Entertainment join hands to unite their fan community platforms into one.
It is the birth of a’one-top’ K-pop platform that encompasses major K-pop artists, starting with the BTS under Big Hit.
On the 27th, Naver and Big Hit announced that they will create a new global fan community platform that integrates users, contents and services of’VLive’ and’Weverse’.
To this end, Naver invested KRW 411.8 billion in BNX, a subsidiary of Big Hit, to acquire a 49% stake, and BNX will take over the Naver VLive business unit.
The two companies explained that “Big Hit, which has accumulated experience and know-how in the entertainment market for a long time, leads the business as the largest shareholder, and Naver is a strategy to maximize synergy by focusing on the technology capabilities that will firmly support the service and business.”
The new platform has laid out a blueprint that combines Naver’s content delivery and live streaming, community platform technology with Big Hit’s business capabilities.
Big Hit also announced plans to collaborate with YG Entertainment to which Black Pink and others belong. In addition to the existing Big Hit artists using Weverse such as BTS, K-pop groups using VLive’s membership community’Fanship’ can also enter the integrated platform.
It is also a strategy to join overseas artists to this platform in the future.
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The platform integration work is expected to proceed for about a year, and the two services will operate separately during this period.
CEO Kim Joo-gwan, who leads’Group & CIC’, a group community specialized organization such as VLive, cafes and bands at Naver, will lead the integration work and oversee the entire technology in the future as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of BNX. .
BNX, which has operated Weverse, changes its name to’WEVERSE COMPANY Inc.’.
As the K-pop fandom expands globally, the importance of the platform to unite them increases, so collaboration between IT companies and the entertainment industry is becoming more active.
After launching Weverse as its own fan community platform in 2019, Big Hit has expanded its scale by entering not only affiliated labels, but also external agencies and overseas artists.
Naver is also continuing to strengthen its investment and cooperation relationship with large entertainment companies. In 2017, YG Entertainment and last year SM Entertainment each invested 100 billion won to form a strategic alliance. Snow, a Naver subsidiary that operates an augmented reality (AR) avatar app’ZEPETO’, has also received investment from Big Hit, YG, and JYP.
Naver CEO Han Seong-suk said, “To expand our influence in the global market, we need close collaboration between competitive platforms that can create synergies beyond competition between domestic platforms. We will add K-content to global entertainment. “It will be a unique player in the market.”
Park Ji-won, CEO of Big Hit HQ, said, “We are looking forward to the synergy between Weverse and V Live through full collaboration with Naver. Based on this, we will become a dominant position in the global market with an evolved fan community platform.” Said.
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2021/01/27 19:02 sent