At the beginning, the "concert economy" capital bureau saw pre-sales of "instant light", ticket sales of "high speculation", and popularity of "explosive table" empty. In the past six months | concerts | economy

At 10:55 am on August 11th, the Chengdu Station of Mayday's "I Really Want to See You" concert opened ticket pre-sales, and tickets for three concerts were sold out in about 30 seconds. At the same time, the "Jacky Cheung 60+Tour Concert" Chengdu Station has also been officially announced.

Tickets are being sold out in seconds, ticket prices are being inflated, and the popularity of the scene is exploding Since the beginning of this year, the revival of the offline large-scale performance market has received great attention from the market and capital. The performances of a group of popular stars have also created a concert economy that is highly contested by various regions. Data shows that in the first half of 2023, the number of commercial performances nationwide reached 193300, a year-on-year increase of 400.86%. How was a concert born? What is the industry chain and "capital bureau" behind it?

Under the hype of the performance, is it "prosperous but not prosperous"?

This summer, the concert market is hotter than the dog days. In the past six months, multiple popular concerts have been staged in multiple locations, causing waves of heat. A seemingly simple concert lasting only 2-3 hours, but behind it lies a huge upstream and downstream industry chain.

Specifically, the upstream industries of concerts include the organizers, actors, and concert venues. The midstream industry is directly related to concerts in areas such as sound, lighting, stage, stage design, choreography, and directing. Downstream are promotion, artist management, ticket management, security, and so on.

Wang Xin has been engaged in the investment and hosting of concerts for nearly 20 years, and has invested in hosting concerts of several well-known top tier celebrities. He introduced the general process of a concert from planning to final presentation to reporters. "After having the idea of holding a concert, the artist, the agency, or the artist's personal studio will negotiate with some interested tour organizers who are willing to undertake the entire event. They will then act as the first level general agent and then coordinate and subcontract the concert," said Wang Xin.

Wang Xin introduced that in the past, artist studios or agency companies were purely "selling", while primary agency performers were mostly purely "buying" and then reselling to local performers. However, this year's performance market is relatively hot, so many performance companies, including agency companies themselves, may invest and participate in a concert to obtain corresponding profits.

Previously, there were rumors that tickets to TFBOYS concerts had been hyped up to over 2 million, and ticket prices for several celebrity concerts had also been hyped up. In response, Wang Xin told local audiences that with one concert after another, could performers really make a fortune? "In the past few years, due to the impact of the epidemic, most performance companies have been in a semi shutdown state, and now it can only be said that they are recovering the lost three years." Wang Xin said. Therefore, for most performance companies, taking on as many orders and starting production as possible is the top priority this year.

However, although the venue is not sufficient, tickets are sold out in seconds, and ticket prices have slightly increased compared to before, Wang Xin admits that the profit effect is not very strong. "The costs of venue, production, labor, airfare, hotels, and other aspects are all skyrocketing, and the increase is greater than the premium on the ticket price. Therefore, even if the ticket price slightly increases, there may not be much profit, let alone some celebrities' ticket prices have not increased much. Therefore, for many performing companies, concert" Wangding "nowadays is not necessarily" prosperous ".".

There is capital lurking behind multiple performance companies

Reporters have found that as important "operators" behind concerts, many performance companies have hidden capital behind them. According to incomplete statistics, behind the 40 concerts held this summer, as many as 25 performance and agency companies were involved. Moreover, the performances of the same artist in different cities and venues may be managed by different companies.

For example, the main operator behind the recently popular TFBOYS Ten Year Promise concert is Beijing Times Fengjun Cultural and Art Development Co., Ltd. According to Tianyancha, the major shareholders behind Times Fengjun are Wen Sufen and Li Wen, holding 80% and 20% respectively. The company has successfully registered multiple trademarks such as "TFBOYS" and "TF Family". Times Fengjun has almost developed with the growth of the TFBOYS group, and its success lies in creating the TFBOYS star group. After TFBOYS became popular, the second and third generations that Times Fengjun attempted to create have also become popular. But none of them have reached the height of TFBOYS. Therefore, whether Time Fengjun can continue to replicate the cultivation and construction model of this traffic entity, and obtain good commercial transformation and application scenarios, has become a focus of attention for domestic enterprises and capital.

Previously, the organizer of the Mayday concert tour was Shanghai Chinese Culture and Performing Arts Co., Ltd., with a registered capital of over 160 million yuan, and the legal representative was Li Ruigang. It is worth noting that Li Ruigang is also the founder of CMC Capital. In addition, the company also has the presence of equity investment funds from various regions such as Ningbo, Shanghai, Jiaxing, and Suzhou, among which Ningbo Zanjia Venture Capital Partnership holds a 20% stake. Ningbo Xinming Venture Capital Partnership holds a 12.9% stake. Shanghai Chinese Culture and Performing Arts Co., Ltd. has invested in 27 companies, including Beijing Huale Fantastic Culture Communication Co., Ltd., which hosts the Mayday Tour Beijing Station, and Shenzhen Daocao Chinese Culture Communication Co., Ltd., which is responsible for the Shenzhen Station of the concert. In addition, Shanghai Minghui Cultural Development Co., Ltd., affiliated with the "Fun Island App", one of the ticketing platforms for Mayday concerts, is 100% owned by the company.

It is worth noting that there were also the figures of listed companies behind several previous concerts. The 2023 Lehua Family Concert held in July is backed by Hong Kong listed company Lehua Entertainment. The concert lineup includes artists such as Wang Yibo, Li Wenhan, and Zhou Yixuan. This news may have affected the company's stock price, which also saw a certain increase in the period before the concert.

Some companies have attempted to enter the concert business, but have failed to successfully penetrate the capital market. For example, Teyi Culture Entertainment and Production Co., Ltd. has submitted multiple applications for listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Main Board. This concert service provider has hosted over 600 concert projects for over 400 artists and bands, such as BIGBANG, Jay Chou, Mayday, etc. It is one of the top ten concert organizers in Hong Kong, China.

With the booming performance of this year's concerts, LiveHouse, a venue for small concerts for bands or independent singers, has gradually resumed performances. It is understood that currently in the entire LiveHouse market, established venues such as MAO LiveHouse, Music House, and Xinjiang Jinjiu OMNI SPACE have accumulated considerable market influence. Among them, the company behind MAO LiveHouse, Century Dream Culture Media Co., Ltd., has completed the Pre-A round with a transaction amount of tens of millions of yuan. The investors are Taihe Music Group and Junlian Capital, with Junlian Capital holding a 10% stake as its major shareholder. After the capital entered, the company's director Chi Yongqiang once stated that the financing will mainly be used for the chain expansion of the brand across the country.

The City Plays a Battle for Concerts

A new round of urban war has also started due to a series of popular concerts.

Against the backdrop of vigorously boosting consumption across the country, concerts, as a fan economy, have more power to drive the economy than many forms of consumption. Taking the TFBOYS concert as an example, "Xi'an Release" posted that according to third-party sampling statistics, the pre booking volume of Xi'an accommodation online increased significantly before and after the performance compared to the same period last year, especially the total travel order volume from August 6th to 7th increased by 738% year-on-year; The ticket revenue was 35.76 million yuan, directly driving tourism revenue of 416 million yuan.

In the earlier March, Jacky Xue's concert held in Quzhou received about 100000 tourists in total. In two days, the total tourism consumption reached about 124 million yuan, driving the consumption of related industries to about 690 million yuan. The Midi Music Festival held in Haikou in April, which lasted for three days, boosted tourism, accommodation, catering, shopping and consumption in Hainan by approximately 100 million yuan.

More and more cities are seeing the tremendous energy behind concerts and are starting to throw olive branches at them. For example, in February, Hainan issued an article stating that it would increase the supply of cultural exhibitions, sports events, and exhibition products, and set up a special cultural and sports award fund with a total scale of 110 million yuan, providing subsidies to enterprises based on the number of spectators. Shandong explicitly regards music festivals as the main cultural products for the prosperous development of night tourism. The "ten-year agreement" signed between Zibo and Maitian Music Festival promises that the government will invest in the first five years of activities.

In this round of urban concert competition, the ancient city of Xi'an has emerged from the spotlight. According to statistics, there are performances such as TFBOYS concert, Liu Ruoying concert, and Qinmahu Horseshoe Music Festival that made their debut in Xi'an in August alone. It is expected that by the end of 2023, 17 large-scale concert tours with 13 groups of singers will be held in Xi'an.

According to monitoring data from the China Performance Industry Association, the number of commercial performances nationwide reached 193300 in the first half of 2023, a year-on-year increase of 400.86%; The box office revenue of the performance reached 16.793 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 673.49%; The number of viewers increased to 62.2366 million, a year-on-year increase of more than 10 times.