Visual China.
Text: Beluga whale goes out to sea.In 2023, the live broadcast of card splitting suddenly became popular on Douyin, and the originally niche industry of collectible cards has entered the public eye.
In the Douyin live broadcast room in the middle of the night, a beautiful young lady sat in front of the camera, according to the order of the user's order, skillfully opened the corresponding card packs with scissors, and then quickly inspected the colorful cards, if you see a rare model, you will shout: "Congratulations to the xxx boss (the user who placed the order) for mentioning xxx (rare card name)", and even, with a more sense of ceremony, at this time the gong will be struck to set off the atmosphere. After unpacking all the card packs purchased by the user, the streamer will skillfully sort the cards into plastic sleeves and send the whole package to the user who placed the order. In the domestic live broadcast room, Disney, Sanrio and other anime-themed cards are the favorite of users.
What is in sync with God is that on the overseas live broadcast platforms Fanatics Live and Whatnot, there is also a card splitting drama, but the sales logic is different.
Different from the form of domestic live broadcast room users buying cards in whole packages and watching the anchor "open the blind box", overseas anchors also open cards one by one, but they will take out the card sheets with higher value to display, and after introducing the collection value, the audience can bid on the cards selected by the anchor in the live broadcast, similar to auctions, and sports-themed cards on overseas platforms are the most popular.
The starting price of the cards generally ranges from a few dollars to a dozen dollars, and in the end, depending on the rarity, they will be sold for more than a dozen dollars or hundreds of dollars, and the audience who wins the auction can directly enter their bank card information to pay. For cards whose value is not enough for auction, the audience can also pick their favorite cards and buy them to directly get the single card they want.
is also a live broadcast of collectible cards, but there are two ways to play at home and abroad.
What makes the countryand the "two faces" of overseas live broadcasts?
The author has been soaking in the live broadcast rooms at home and abroad in the past few days, and the feelings are very different.
The domestic live broadcast of card splitting, focusing on interactivity and participation, attracted many card fans to wait in the live broadcast room late at nightThe purchase behavior is that the user places an order to buy the whole pack of cards, and opens the blind box together under the witness of the "friends" gathered in the live broadcast room, for the sentence "Congratulations to the boss". In addition to the act of dismantling the card in this process, the anchor is mainly responsible for the atmosphere.
And overseas, according to the author's observations,It should be the streamer who buys the whole pack of cards firstAfter the card is opened, the rarity is used to confirm which card or order, and the consumer buys a single card through the bidding model, and the price difference becomes income.
If the domestic live broadcast room is hot, behind it is the unknown and excitement brought by the "randomness of opening the blind box", and overseas users are anchoring their inner valuation and paying costs in exchange for products, and in the process of bidding, they are inevitably affected by adrenaline.
Although it is very exciting, behind the different sales models, there are different starting points and development stages of domestic and overseas collectible cards, as well as the differences in each node in the chain derived from it, such as IP licensing, publishers, distributors, consumer behavior, etc., which combine to present the live broadcast room of the above two faces.
Overseas, collectible cards first appeared in the 1880s, initially when tobacco companies printed sports stars on pieces of paper as a gift to buy cigarettes, and as more and more people were willing to collect cards, by the 50s of the last century, cards gradually changed the sales model attached to other products and became an independent industry. As the starting point of collectible cards, with the rapid development of the American sports industry, the star card has been the largest segment of the collectible card market.
Sports Collectible Card Market Size 2022 and 2030 **Verifed Market Research
According to Verifed Market Research data,In 2022, the sports-related collectible card market alone reached $12.6 billion. The scale of non-sports-themed collectible cards is relatively small, among them, trading card games (trading card games) account for the majority of non-sports-themed collectible cards, and consumers can also play against other players through cards while collecting, which has stronger social attributes, and representative products include "Pokémon", "Yu-Gi-Oh", "Magic", etcIn 2022, the global market size of trading game cards is around $6 billion.
These two largest markets plus some collectible cards of other themes, the global collectible card market size is about 20 billion+ US dollars, with a compound annual growth rate of less than 10%, which is a very long-developed, very mature and steadily expanding industry.
In this context, China's collectible card market appears to have more potential. China's collectible card market started very late, and has only begun to grow rapidly in recent years, according to iResearch's "2023 China Collectible Card Market Research Report", the size of China's collectible card market will reach 113 in 2022100 million yuan,That's almost $1.6 billion, which is small, but the year-over-year growth is 421%。In 2020, the market size was only 5 billion, and the market size doubled in 2 years, and it is expected to maintain a growth rate of 30%+ in the next few years, which is a rare incremental track in recent years.
In China, the development of collectible cards is relatively late, and buying instant noodle collection cards in the 90s of the last century is the starting point we can recall. In addition, China's local sports industry and entertainment industry are much weaker than those of foreign countries, and almost all of the entertainment and sports IPs with higher value come from abroad. Therefore, almost all of the products circulating in China's star card market are products from overseas publishers, and the audience is basically fans or fans, which is relatively niche.
Therefore, in terms of composition, the sports card that accounts for the largest proportion overseas is no longer a sweet spot in the domestic market, and the scale of sports cards is only one-third of that of IP cards with games or animation themes.
iResearch.
Ranking of card sales of card club and card game Tmall***IP, note: The IP in the red box is a domestic IP, and the manual sorting is for reference only.
It is also based on this difference in subject matter, the entire domestic second-hand trading market is relatively weakAlthough the GMV growth rate of Katao, the leading second-hand card trading platform in China, has increased by 70-80% in the past two years, it is still dominated by star cards made overseas. Young people, who account for the majority of domestic card consumers, prefer IP cards with animation and game themes, but their value is not high, and the second-hand circulation is not strong. The financial attributes of domestic cards are insufficient, so in the card live broadcast room, it presents an entertainment form of opening blind boxes.
Contrary to the domestic first-hand market, the trading products in the domestic second-hand trading card market are still mainly overseas star cards.
In contrast, overseas started with the baseball star card in the 19th century, and with the rapid development of the sports industry, the whole market is very matureFrom IP licensing, issuance, distribution, to third-party rating, and second-hand market circulation, it has fully matured, and its entire industry is driven by value, which has formed a bidding and purchase model for overseas live broadcast rooms.
Introduction to the elements of the collection card, Note: The richness of the card elements, rarity, rating and certification, and the IP itself will affect the ** network of the collection card.
The difference between overseas financial attributes can be seen in the scale of the primary and secondary markets, which are much larger than those in the primary market (issuers to consumers), with a gap of about 5 times. The main cards that can circulate in the secondary market are relatively rare, including some out-of-print card packs. Along with the second-hand trade, there are also derivative markets such as card rating, pricing and information services, which are "escorting" the value-driven card industry.
PWCC100 vs. S&P 500 Index, Note: Data as of August 30, 2022, 100 refers to 100 cards **PWCC Marketplace
Even after a long period of circulation, the rarity of some single cards has been increasing, and sky-high cards often appear in overseas markets, and the most expensive ones can be sold for tens of millions of dollars. The overseas second-hand trading platform PWCC has also launched an index for collectible cards, and the return rate of the PWCC100 index is 7 times that of the S&P 500 index, which can be blindly invested by American users (domestic leeks cast envious eyes.
iResearch.
However, even if the IP cards that are mainly consumed in the first-hand market have little circulation value in the domestic second-hand trading market, the survey results of iResearch still show that the most valuable cards are the biggest driving force for heavy collectible card users to buy. The entertainment and excitement in the live broadcast room are still behind the user's "thirst" for value.
Whether it is opening the blind box or bidding, the heat of the live broadcast room makes people smell the smell of money.
According to data from live streaming platforms,The monthly sales of the top card-splitting anchors on Douyin are more than one million, the repurchase rate in the live broadcast room can reach 40-60%, and the profit margin of each box of cards can reach 15-25%.
But in this industry chain, the live broadcast room is not the place that generates the most profits.
Whether at home or abroad, publishers are the central axis of the entire industry chainThey get authorization from the IP owner upward, produce products themselves through design, production and other processes, and sell to users through distribution channels, and the live broadcast room is also part of the sales channel.
Disney Lorcana Collection Cards Probability of Getting **Amazon
And IP, naturally, will become a very large piece of cost. So in the form of sale,Publishers use the form of a mystery box when selling cards, users need to buy a large number of blind boxes to draw rarer cards. In the case of Disney's Lorcana series, for example, the rarest cards take an average of 72 packs to obtain. And the domestic Ultraman card is not far behind, there is ** tested, the probability of opening a rare card is 08%, and the probability of the rarest card is only 005%。
The use of blind boxes can be used to sell rare cards and regular cards**, users will buy a large number of card packs in order to open the rare cards they want, and the publisher can increase sales and dilute costs. Whether it is a domestic dismantling or a foreign single card sale, it is actually rooted in the sales form of the card package.
Sloth Bear Sports.
In recent years, collector's card issuers at home and abroad are experiencing a capital carnival. Abroad, Fanatics, which only entered the card market in 2021, raised $700 million at the end of last year and was valued at $30 billionFanatics' collectible card subsidiary, Fanatics Trading Cards, is also valued at $10.4 billion alone.
Domestically, Sequoia China was valued at $1 billion in 2011 when it invested in China's top publisher, Cardgame, which is rumored to be listed on the Hong Kong stock market next year, while other domestic publishers have also taken a lot of money. Capital values the profitability of these head companies, with the net profit margin of the card game reported by 36 Krypton being about 40%, which dwarfs the profit margin of live broadcast in the face of this data.
Copyright reserves of well-known overseas collector's card issuers **iResearch Consulting, Northeast**.
In foreign countries, the IP of mainstream sports events is basically concentrated in the hands of a few leading publishers, and the unit price is very high. Therefore, although it does not own IP, the issuance of collectible cards is a chain that requires money to leverage, and this kind of ** threshold also provides a certain barrier for publishers. In particular, some companies with IP will also invest in publishers, such as miHoYo and Pop Mart, and then weight.
The basic situation of several major card publishers in China.
However, compared with foreign countries, domestic IP copyrights are much more scattered, and there are multiple IP authorizations, but on the other hand, the authorization ** is not as exaggerated as foreign sports leagues.
There are two types of IPs that Chinese publishers compete forOne is foreign traditional IPs, such as Ultraman, Disney series, etc. The second is the domestic IP that has been popular recently, including online articles, Chinese comics, games, movies, TV series, etc. At present, foreign IPs are still the absolute top stream, but the upward trend of domestic IPs is very obvious, and it has become the focus of "IP involution" of major card publishers.
Taking China Literature Group as an example, the company has long licensed its top online text IP to publishers such as card games and card collector societies to produce collectible cards, and China Literature revealed that the sales of IP-related products will reach 100 million yuan in 2022, of which cards account for a high proportion.
However, in fact, compared with foreign IPs, local IPs are not very able to stand the test and have a limited life cycle. Almost all collectible cards with domestic IP will have a situation where product sales decline with the decline in IP popularity, and it is difficult to make stable profits. In order to catch up with the hot spots, from the IP to the card launch, publishers can control the time within a few months.
According to the dialogue between the second set of punctual financial columns and the person in charge of a card publisher, the cost of IP procurement accounts for about 40% of the operating cost, plus the sales form of the card package, the natural adaptation of the medium of live broadcast and card splitting, have driven sales, and many publishers can get out of good profit margins.
According to 36Kr data, China's top card publisher Card Game has a revenue of 3 billion yuan in 2020, a net profit of 1.2-1.5 billion, and a net profit margin of 40%-50%. While publishers in the mid-waist may not be able to achieve such high profit margins, overall card publishers are still very profitable.
For the channel side that mainly focuses on live card splitting, the profit is not so high, and the profit margin is only 15-25%. However, thanks to the relatively high number of buyers and repurchase rate, the anchors who mainly go through the volume can still drink soup.
Domestic top card-splitting anchors generally cooperate directly with publishers to sell cards and earn commissions for themselves. The middle-waist anchor generally "takes" the dealer at a discounted price, sells at a higher price in the live broadcast room, and earns the difference. Most of the identities of overseas anchors are small dealers, in view of the bidding mode, if you draw a value card, you can earn the difference in price by several times, or even dozens of times, while the rest of the cards will be sold at the original price or at a low price, and those that cannot be sold will become sunk costs.
iResearch.
For both domestic and overseas at the same time, young people like to open cards in the live broadcast room, which is a very interesting phenomenon. Although overseas, especially in the U.S. market, the acceptance of live streaming is low, but the excitement brought by card dismantling and bidding has made the live broadcast room of collectible cards in the United States extremely hot.
The different faces presented in the domestic and overseas live broadcast rooms are due to the history of industrial development, the maturity of the cultural and sports industry, and then the preferences of users, etc., all of which remind practitioners of the importance of in-depth understanding of local culture and user preferences for different markets.