US studios selling TV shows are beginning to find success again in the Chinese TV market after experiencing several years of challenging distribution caused in part by ongoing trade disputes between the two nations.
Show Tracker reveals that WarnerMedia has managed to maintain a lead on television shows sold into China over the past few years, with other sales historically coming from distributors outside the US.
Most UK distributor activity is lead by BBC and ITV, but a growing number of smaller distributors are finding success in the market. These include Rainmaker Content which sold their debut lockdown produced TV show, ‘Staged’, to Huanxi. China is a growing source of value for UK TV content exports, with revenue increasing by 25% in the 19/20 financial year.
This TV season Sony Pictures has accelerated their sales activity and pushed themselves to the number two spot with ‘Quiz’ selling to Huanxi and ‘The Boys’, an Amazon Original in all other markets outside of China, selling to iQIYI. Alongside these sales they have successfully sold ‘Alex Rider’ to four separate SVOD services in a simultaneous non-exclusive window.
All services acquiring recent scripted TV shows in China are SVOD services and exclusivity is seemingly not a concern when the right TV show is made available. The three most prominent services in China (iQIYI, Tencent and Youku) acquired ‘Alex Rider’ with a simultaneous release date, alongside Bilibili which until recently focused solely on short form. More services that were once limited to short form and social media content are branching out with acquisitions of full length scripted TV shows, including Xigua video, owned by ByteDance, most commonly known as the owners of TikTok.
These non-exclusive deals aren’t only sold by US studios, Fremantle has done the same with ‘My Brilliant Friend’.
While its first season originally was exclusive to iQIYI, the second season of ‘My Brilliant Friend’ was sold to the big three SVOD services with a simultaneous release. In the run up to the release of the second season, a co-exclusive second window of the first season was sold to both Tencent and Youku.
Looking at the latest season of TV show acquisitions in China shows that Tencent Video is once again the top buyer of TV shows, a position previously held by its main rival and potential buyout target, iQIYI. Strict policy preventing direct investment into TV or VOD from companies outside China means that there is no avenue for US studios to engage in vertical integration with their TV shows, unlike other markets such as those in Europe where this activity is on the rise.
In a trend not exclusive to China, most TV show acquisitions so far this season have been of older titles from previous seasons, with only three of the latest TV shows from the 2020/21 season finding homes on Chinese services so far: ‘The Undoing’ from Warner on Tencent Video, ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ from All3 on Huanxi and ‘The Watch’ from BBC on Bilibili.
A delayed release of older TV shows only benefits the general strategy of Chinese SVOD services which favour boxsetting whole seasons and granting limited, timed access to individual episodes to users on an AVOD tier. Services in markets outside China are also taking advantage of the opportunities the delayed acquisition of TV shows can provide, with 45% of delayed acquisitions being premiered as boxsets.
While China is acquiring more of the latest TV shows than it has in recent years, this activity is still nascent enough that there is little risk of an over-saturation of overseas content on its services anytime soon. Clearly distributors of all sizes, whether long established US studios or newcomers from the UK, are finding success in a market with massive revenue potential. Tencent Video alone has 125 million paid subscribers (as of May 2021) and iQIYI is not much further behind with 105 million (as of May 2021). Between these powerhouses and other services branching out into scripted TV series acquisition, as well as the potential to maximise value with non-exclusive windowing, distributors are able to find more sales opportunities in China than ever by utilising Show Tracker data.
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