TikTok, Kuaishou to ride the wave of the Olympics

Author | Liu Baodan

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

The first Olympics after the end of the epidemic attracted worldwide attention, from the opening ceremony to popular events, trending topics emerged one after another.

On July 31st local time in France, in the women's synchronized 10-meter platform diving event at the Paris Olympics, the Chinese duo Chen Yuxi and Quan Hongchan won the gold medal, and topics related to Quan Hongchan continued to trend. By the fifth day of competition, the Chinese team had already won 9 Olympic gold medals, currently ranking first on the Olympic gold medal tally.

Behind each round of trending topics, platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou are capturing the traffic.

Over a month ago, Douyin and Kuaishou simultaneously announced that they would be the exclusive broadcasters for the 2024 Paris Olympics, gaining on-demand and short video rights, officially obtaining the content rights for the Olympics.

This is the first time Douyin has obtained the exclusive broadcasting rights for the Olympics, and the platform has put a lot of effort into content planning. In addition to event replays and full game coverage, there are over 300 Chinese delegation athletes sharing training preparations, competition life, and Olympic messages on Douyin.

Douyin has also planned several exclusive programs, including "Special Programs of the Paris Olympics," "Champion Arrives," "SU Speed Battle," etc. Dong Yuhui recently appeared in Paris, where he launched the interview program "Traveling with Yuhui · Athletes Speak" on Douyin. The first two episodes have been released, with guests Yang Qian and Lang Ping.

Sports itself is a key content focus for short video platforms. In recent years, Douyin and Kuaishou have also been continuously introducing top domestic and international sports events.

In 2022, Douyin broadcasted the Qatar World Cup. Subsequently, Douyin became the exclusive broadcaster for the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou. Douyin data shows that the Qatar World Cup brought 10.6 billion views to Douyin, with a total of 1.3 billion user interactions in live broadcasts.

Kuaishou has reached copyright and content cooperation agreements with over 50 international events such as the NBA, UEFA Champions League, NFL, MLB, etc. The company has also become the broadcaster for the Tokyo Olympics, Beijing Winter Olympics, and Hangzhou Asian Games. In 2023, there are over 17 million creators on Kuaishou who have published sports-related content, with nearly 200 million core sports interest users.

The prices for top event broadcasting rights are not cheap. Referring to past industry cases, NBC paid $3.5 billion for the broadcasting rights of the Olympics from 2000 to 2008, and spent $2.2 billion for the TV broadcasting rights of the 2010 Winter Olympics and the 2012 Olympics.

Although Douyin and Kuaishou have video rights, they do not have "live" broadcasting rights, so the rights prices are lower than real-time broadcasting, but this is still a considerable expense.

Douyin and Kuaishou's enthusiasm for Olympic events is precisely because they see the business opportunities in traffic. From traffic to commercialization, this is the business model that short video platforms excel at.

Firstly, the Olympics are a good opportunity for user acquisition, bringing in new users, and traffic itself is the commodity of short video platforms. Douyin and Kuaishou both have mature mechanisms for selling traffic.

The Olympics can also bring in advertising revenue and brand partnerships. Observing the cooperative brands on the Douyin Olympics special section, there are 8 brands including Mengniu, P&G China, Yili, and Kuaishou has over ten brands including JD, Meituan, and Hongqi, all of which are major sponsors In addition, based on the scenario of consumers watching the Olympics, platforms can also provide more lifestyle services. In this regard, KUAISHOU has provided a complete commercial ecosystem.

During the Olympics, KUAISHOU integrated e-commerce, local, commercialization, and other commercial ecosystem resources on the platform, creating a new super consumption scenario, providing a one-stop shopping experience and local life services for 700 million users. For example, in 2023, KUAISHOU had 520 million monthly active users consuming sports content.

To a large extent, based on the monetization ability and efficiency of traffic, Douyin and KUAISHOU have achieved rapid growth in the past few years.

In 2023, ByteDance's total revenue increased by 30% to a total of 110 billion USD, surpassing Tencent to become the new king of the Internet. KUAISHOU also turned losses around, with e-commerce GMV exceeding one trillion for the first time, becoming the fifth largest e-commerce platform after Alibaba, Pinduoduo, JD.com, and Douyin.

The Olympics is not just about sports, but also a huge business opportunity, which Douyin and KUAISHOU have already seized