As we all know, the much-anticipated 2018 World Cup has started, the quadrennial event, is undoubtedly the focus of the world. In the process of 32 teams fighting round, although Messi, Ronaldo and other stars have faded out, but more and more intense and wonderful games, so that fans once again feel the charm of the World Cup football.

Of course, the World Cup was not the only fierce competition. The live broadcast rights of the event also attracted many video platforms to fight for them. Finally, with the support of Ali Entertainment, Youku won the last. May 29, youku official Weibo officially announced to become the official new media partner of THE 2018 Russia World Cup designated by CCTV, and to get the 2018 Russia World Cup, including live matches, video on demand, match featuresand other rights and interests.

This means that during the World Cup (June 14 — July 15), you can directly watch all 64 World Cup matches live in HD on youku mobile client and PC, and you can also watch the World Cup matches live in HD through CIBN Cool Cat Movie, Tmall Magic Box, Tmall Magic screen.

Who can beat Migu video or Youku?

It is worth mentioning that CCTV is not the exclusive partner in the copyright distribution of the World Cup. Before Youku announced to win the right to broadcast the World Cup, Migu Video, a subsidiary of China Mobile, was the first to get the right to broadcast the World Cup. Youku and Migu, as the two largest traffic portals during the World Cup, are the biggest winners. However, Youku and Migu, also become competitors, in order to attract audiences to watch the World Cup, the two are also showing skills, a World Cup as the theme of the live broadcast platform war is starting.

First of all, from both sides of the commentary lineup. Migu invited zhan Jun, Li Yuankui, Ding Weijie and other football commentary celebrities. In terms of professionalism, these people are the most powerful and experienced football experts in China, and their understanding of the game is the most profound among the two platforms, even worse than the commentary tiantuan of CCTV. Such a professional commentary lineup, quickly attracted a large number of fans to watch.

On the other hand, youku seems not to take the ordinary road, in addition to Han Qiaosheng, Liu Jiayuan and other professional commentary, but also invited the e-sports anchor, two yuan and entertainment and other fields of celebrity. The combination of professional and entertaining commentary aims not only to attract the attention of loyal fans, but also to use the flow effect of popular stars to attract the attention of “mass fans”, so that watching the World Cup will become popular. However, this combination also caused the lack of professional youku commentary team short board. Relative comparison, Migu is playing a hand of technology card, Youku is to show the platform essence, entertainment to the end.

Second, from the two sides of the video content. Migu includes professional videos such as match highlights, highlights, World Cup alerts, football encyclopedia, and training sessions of various teams. In addition to acquiring the rights to some CCTV programs, Youku has also produced hot topics, behind-the-scenes soccer stars, entertainment rankings and World Cup variety shows. It can be seen that, in the same way as the commentary invited by both sides, Migu is more inclined to professional fan groups, while Youku focuses on attracting “pan-fans”.

Finally, from both sides of the online activities. To make it easier for users to watch the World Cup live anytime and anywhere, youku and Migu have launched targeted free data packages. In interactive play, Youku will be in the World Cup when the goal comes to a wave of “red rain” and user interaction. Especially in the match between Portugal and Spain 3:3, Youku “bloodletting”, six waves of red envelope rain, which greatly improved the user’s participation, enhanced the interaction between the platform and users, and made the atmosphere of watching the match become extremely enthusiastic.

For users, whether to use Migu to watch the World Cup or use Youku to watch it is really quite tangled things. Both China Mobile behind Migu and Alibaba behind Youku are giants with hundreds of millions of users, and their viewing numbers are not small. Youku and Migu have their own advantages, but objectively speaking, Migu video has a slight gap in user base compared with youku, an old video platform. Migu’s main goal is to use the IP of the World Cup to expand its popularity, expand traffic users, and lay a good foundation for future strategic development, while Youku is trying to increase its differentiated competitiveness with other platforms through the live broadcast of the World Cup.

Do the World Cup live, Youku momentum in the win?

In fact, no matter who wins or loses youku and Migu, the ultimate beneficiary is the user group. Users can not only enjoy the various benefits of the platform, but also keep abreast of surrounding news, entertainment information and current events. And in order to better serve the audience, do the World Cup live, Youku also made adequate preparations.

1. Aliyun helps live broadcast of the World Cup

Because Russia is close to China, the time difference is only about five hours, so the time to watch the World Cup is also relatively friendly for us, the number of viewing compared to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil significantly increased. Statistics show that the number of Chinese viewers watching the 2018 World Cup is expected to exceed 1 billion.

Faced with the impact of such a huge number of people, Youku will, through its own research and development of super-large-scale digital media infrastructure and resource scheduling technology, combine the large-scale support of Internet-level users with the effect of professional broadcast and on-demand broadcasting, and redefine the way of experiencing and watching the World Cup. And youku live broadcast 64 World Cup matches, will be provided by Ali Cloud technical support.

Ali Cloud has more than 1500 CCDN nodes and 120T bandwidth reserve in the world. Using these advantages, Ali Cloud can flexibly expand tens of thousands of cloud servers in a short period of time, and provide Internet 8K live broadcasting, narrowband HD and other capabilities; At the same time, Ali Cloud has accumulated mature experience and strong stability after years of “Double 11” test. With the support of these technologies and practical experience, users will be able to watch the World Cup live in higher definition and smoother on Youku.

Ali ecology all-out attack

It is understood that Alibaba is going all out for the World Cup, almost all out. Alibaba’s alipay, Taobao, UC, Ele. me, Hema Xiansheng, Tao Piao, Xianyu, Flying Pig and other nearly 30 projects simultaneously launched a series of interaction about the World Cup in collaboration with Youku, providing users with a new World Cup experience from online to offline, covering People’s Daily necessities.

Ma Yun made extraordinary efforts this time. The combination of “content + e-commerce” mode combined Ali e-commerce and Ali Entertainment with two hundred million users to create a men’s shopping festival. After testing the waters of variety shows such as This Is Street Dance and This is Real Armor, Youku and other alieco businesses such as Taobao, Tmall, Ele. me and Hema have gradually explored the feasibility of “content + e-commerce”. This World Cup ali Ecological attack, not only to help Youku, but also to improve the market competitiveness of ali ecological.

3. Deepen sports content and carry out sports to the end

As Mr. Yang Weidong, rotating President of Ali Entertainment Group, President of Great Youku and CEO of Ali Music said, “We have been thinking about Youku’s entry into sports content for a long time, and this World Cup is not just a fever to buy the World Cup copyright!” Youku has made sufficient preparations for the World Cup.

From last year’s star-studded kung fu film Gong Shou Dao to this year’s online variety shows This Is Street Dance and This is Armor, youku’s content focus has shifted to sports. Although Youku, as a latecomer, does not occupy an advantage compared with Tencent, PPTV and other sports giants, this win of the World Cup live broadcast rights is the key for Youku to seek a breakthrough. With its huge flow and commercial value, Youku took advantage of the situation to fly, laying a solid foundation for the future sports layout and competition. With youku’s high transfer bureau, sports content will become the new battlefield of each big video platform.

According to Yang Weidong, the opening game of the World Cup boosted the number of new users on Youku’s mobile app by nearly 160% on a month-on-month basis, and the overall number of daily active users increased by about 20% on a month-on-month basis. The number of live viewers of the World Cup exceeded 12 million, setting a new record. With the help of the World Cup, youku limelight.

Two tigers block the way, “one brother” difficult

However, although youku seems to be in the ascendance at present, there are still some opinions that although youku is supported by Alibaba, neither Youku nor Alibaba has enough experience in large-scale sports live broadcast. Whether youku can take the World Cup live broadcast as a springboard to help youku take off remains to be discussed. At the same time, the World Cup can indeed increase youku’s popularity, but the end of the World Cup will be accompanied by the gradual disappearance of Youku’s market hot spots, popularity will be like the tide of withdrawal. At that time, Youku will again face iQiyi and Tencent video summer war “pincer attack”, Youku’s life is not easy.

Love is not love

Interestingly, since the beginning of this year, youku and IQiyi have been competing with each other on the same theme variety shows. Youku aired hip-hop reality show “This is Hip-hop” on Feb 24, followed by IQiyi’s “Hot Blood Street Dance Troupe”.

Although the same hip-hop variety, but there are some differences. In terms of style, this Is Street Dance is more Chinese style as a whole, with professional comments from contestants and judges, while Hot Blood Dance Troupe is more scientific and technological, giving people a breath of youth and vitality. From the competition mode, “This is Street Dance” focuses on individual assessment and finally selects a champion, while “Hot Blood Street Dance Troupe” is on the contrary, it focuses on team assessment and intends to build a super dance troupe.

On Douban, “Hot Blood Street Dance troupe” scored 4.7 points, while “This is Street Dance” scored 8.5 points. But in terms of the number of views so far, this is Street Dance has 1.59 billion, while Hot Blood Dance Troupe has more than 1.7 billion. Statistically speaking, IQiyi has the edge.

On March 29, IQiyi preemptive launched “Robot Battle”, and Youku broadcast “This is Armor” half a month later. Compared to robot, which is a big blockbuster, Real Armor is more entertaining and humorous. Although these two variety shows have their own subdivisions, they are still hard to get rid of the problem of homogenization of content. Perhaps it is the lack of entertainment of Robot. In terms of traffic flow, up to now, the play volume of Iron Shield has reached 1.8 billion, while robot failed to break through 1 billion, and Youku pulled back.

However, this is not the end of the summer, in the second half of this year, there will be a new round of war between Youku’s “This is Dunk” and IQiyi’s “Hot Blood”, youku and IQiyi are very fierce in the summer competition.

Uteng hurts a little

While Youku and IQiyi are engaged in a fierce war, Tencent is not in a hurry to launch creative 101, a popular variety show. Even in the midst of the World Cup, it is frequently popular with constant traffic. And “Tomorrow’s Child”, which dominated the topic last year, also returned recently. It is not difficult to see that Tencent’s video variety shows focus on cultivating popular youth idols and attracting young audiences.

In the summer season, Tencent will soon broadcast “Fight the Sky” adapted from a classic novel, which happens to clash with Youku’s “The Universe”. These two works are also adapted from popular writers tiancantudou, and their IP popularity is self-evident. In terms of the leading roles of the two TV series, Yang Yang plays The leading role of Lin Dong in “The Universe” and Wu Lei plays the leading role of Xiao Yan in “Fight against the Sky”. Both of them are good-looking and popular actors. Compared with Yang Yang, Wu Lei’s acting skills are a little immature. Whether he can handle xiao Yan’s role well remains to be seen. However, judging from the popularity of the novel alone, The popularity of “Doubo” is higher. At present, the outcome of the two TV dramas is uncertain.

From this, it can be seen that youku has two obstacles in the way of variety shows and dramas, iQiyi and Tencent. It is still very difficult for Youku to become the “First brother”, and it is difficult to change the pattern of three-way competition in a short time. Of course, in the World Cup is hot tuyere, Youku is worthy of the leading role, this World Cup will really increase youku certain popularity. However, when the World Cup is over, youku must consider how to keep these new users who just watch the game and turn the traffic into loyal fans.

Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110