Photo[weibo.com/buyoushang]

China's Ci Wen Media (002343, SZ) has granted the spreading right on the internet of a set of TV series to Shanghai PPTV Juli Media Group in an agreement worth no less than 760 million Chinese yuan (about 113.8 million U.S. dollars), according to an announcement released by Ci Wen on Wednesday morning.

The contemporary urban romantic TV series captioned "Liang Sheng, shall we beat the blues", is co-filmed by Ci Wen's holding company Mitao Media and Ci Wen's wholly-owned subsidiary Khorgos Dingkun Film and Television Communication Co. Ltd. Driven by the boon, the shares of Ci Wen Media jumped 6.08% on Wednesday.

NBD learned that the TV series' initial exclusive right of broadcasting had been sold to Hunan TV for 384 million Chinese yuan (about 57.5 million U.S. dollars) by November 2016. An anonymous insider from Ci Wen Media explained that "according to the agreement signed with PPTV Juli Media Group, Juli would pay 800 million Chinese yuan (about 119.8 million U.S. dollars) if the show was initially on Hunan TV. But if the show was initially on Zhejiang TV or Shanghai Dragon TV, Juli would pay 760 million Chinese yuan (about 113.8 million U.S. dollars)."

Altogether, the prices of the exclusive broadcasting rights of the TV soap opera both sold to TV station and streaming video site totaled 1.18 billion Chinese yuan (about 176.7 million U.S. dollars), virtually accounting for 64.5% of Ci Wen Media's 2016 total income of 1.83 billion Chinese yuan (274.1 million U.S. dollars).

According to Ci Wen Media, "Liang Sheng, shall we beat the blues" was tentatively designated for 80 episodes, that is to say, the broadcasting right for TV station stands at 4.8 million Chinese yuan (about 718,885.7 U.S. dollars) per episode, while streaming video site spends 10 million Chinese yuan (about 1.5 million U.S. dollars) on each episode. An industry veteran told NBD that for the initial broadcasting right, the prices the streaming video sites paid had fully eclipsed the ones that the TV stations paid. "By now, 'Liang Sheng, shall we beat the blues' tops the list of copy right paid for TV series on contemporary urban topics," the insider added.

The Chinese streaming video sites such as iQiyi, Tencent and Youku are competing fiercely. Figures released by China International Capital Corporation Limited show that the Chinese top 4 streaming video sites are expected to spend 28.5 billion Chinese yuan (about 4.3 billion U.S. dollars) on copy rights in 2017, a year-over-year increase of 55%.

Email: lijia@nbd.com.cn