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source | deepblue finance

written by | wu ruixin

the chinese national football team suffered a crushing defeat to japan 0-7!

since last night, my friends' circle and social media have been flooded with the news of the chinese national football team's disastrous defeat in the first match of the world cup asian 18 qualifiers. we knew that there was a high probability of losing, but the fact that they lost so badly and played so poorly still made everyone feel sad.

however, netizens are not only criticizing the chinese national football team, but also iqiyi, which has the exclusive broadcasting rights.iqiyi's second quarter performance also exploded。

1

iqiyi failed to catch the "overwhelming wealth"

netizens spent money but didn’t see the game, and angrily demanded their money back!

on the evening of september 5, china played against japan in the 2026 world cup asian qualifiers. what is rare is that cctv did not broadcast this match. according to a statement issued by cctv, this was because the asian football group (afg), the agent of the afc, the copyright holder of the event,the price is extremely highcctv resolutely resistsdomestic and foreign capitalactions that disrupt the sports copyright market.

cctv did not get the broadcasting rights, but iqiyi did, becoming the only broadcasting platform in china. it is conceivable that iqiyi must have spent a lot of money.

this was undoubtedly a huge fortune. but unfortunately, not only did the chinese national football team fail to play well in this game, but iqiyi itself also failed to catch this huge fortune.

it is understood that iqiyi's match is not free to watch, but is paid for. non-members need to pay 9 yuan per match to redeem a ticket, while members pay 8 yuan.

however, many netizens found that they were unable to watch the live broadcast after exchanging their tickets, and some netizens also reported that they were "charged multiple times."

some netizens were so angry that they started to complain on weibo, saying that iqiyi should not take on jobs that are beyond their reach. the live streaming service is already "ugly". they paid to watch the national team's games, but ended up spending money and not being able to watch because the system crashed. finally, they called on iqiyi to return the money.

in response, iqiyi sports apologized on weibo, saying: "the enthusiasm of the fans caused excessive instantaneous traffic. our technical service resource allocation exceeded the limit, causing a bad viewing experience for some users."

the apology was well-written and sincere, but it did not mention how to compensate consumers for their losses. netizens were even more angry."just an apology without a refund, what kind of apology is that?"all of a sudden, more netizens flocked to the comment section of iqiyi sports’ apology on weibo, demanding a refund.not only did iqiyi sports not respond to this, it also quietly opened the comment selection.

this further angered netizens, and the topic #i spent money but couldn't watch it on iqiyi# also became the number one hot search on weibo.

in fact, this is not the first time this year that netizens have expressed their dissatisfaction with iqiyi.

in july this year, iqiyi also became a hot search on weibo because "basic members cannot skip the 120-second advertisement at the beginning of the film." it is understood that the monthly subscription price of iqiyi basic members is 15 yuan/month, and they can watch vip content, but only support single device use, and cannot skip the opening and ending advertisements. if you don't want to watch ads, you can only choose the gold vip with a monthly subscription of 25 yuan/month, or the higher-level platinum vip and star diamond vip.

regarding iqiyi's outrageous operations, many netizens complained that it was a "commercial genius" and "ugly eating habits."

2

missing out on hot products and losing members

net profit plunged 81% in the second quarter

while iqiyi has been frequently criticized and has been on hot searches for its membership fee practices, its membership service revenue has also continued to decline.

data shows that in the first half of this year, iqiyi achieved revenue of 15.366 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 4.86%; net profit attributable to the parent company was 724 million yuan, a year-on-year decline of 26.37%.

in the second quarter, iqiyi achieved revenue of 7.439 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 5%, and net profit of 68.69 million yuan, a year-on-year decline of 81%. this once made the outside world begin to worry about the stability of iqiyi's profitability.

amid declining performance,there is also a significant loss of iqiyi members.in the second quarter of 2024, iqiyi's membership service revenue was 4.5 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 9%; it also declined from 4.8 billion in the first quarter of this year.

this means that iqiyi members' willingness to pay is continuously weakening, which is directly related to the lack of hit content on iqiyi in the first half of this year.

last year, iqiyi achieved outstanding performance thanks to the hit drama "kuang bi". but this year, iqiyi has missed out on many hits.

according to yunhe data, the top three effective broadcast lists of feature films on the entire network in the first quarter of this year were "joy of life season 2", "a journey of phoenixes", and "mo yu yun jian", and the corresponding broadcast platforms were tencent video exclusive broadcast, tencent and mango tv dual broadcast, and youku video exclusive broadcast.

among the top ten dramas on the list, only three are exclusively broadcast on iqiyi.they are "coming from south to north" ranked fifth, "storm chasers" ranked eighth, and "city within a city" ranked tenth.the rankings are relatively low.

the reason why iqiyi missed out on the hit drama was not because of its poor vision, but because it wanted to save money.

on the other hand, in terms of variety shows, miwei media, which has been deeply tied to iqiyi for many years and has launched the "u can u bibi" series, "summer of the band" and "annual comedy competition", suddenly turned to tencent video and cooperated with tencent to launch "a pleasant night".

according to wenyu chunqiu, citing industry insiders, the reason is also because of money:“no agreement on money”。

the financial report shows thatiqiyi's investment in content continues to decline.from 2020 to 2023, iqiyi's content expenditures will be 20.9 billion yuan, 20.7 billion yuan, 16.5 billion yuan and 16.2 billion yuan respectively. content expenditures in the first half of 2024 will be 8.1 billion yuan, the same as last year.

in addition, under the impact of pan-entertainment formats such as short dramas and games, advertisers have shifted more budgets to emerging platforms, and the advertising revenue of long video platforms has been greatly impacted. in the second quarter of this year, iqiyi's online advertising revenue fell 2% year-on-year to 1.461 billion.