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China’s YouTube wants to be its Netflix—and more
中国版油管想成为中国版网飞——而且还不止如此
The mission statement of Bilibili, often dubbed “China’s YouTube”, stands out for its modesty. Instead of promising to change the world, the firm aspires merely to “enrich the everyday life of young generations in China”. If user figures are a guide, the Chinese young feel enriched. In the last quarter of 2020 the number of people who used the service at least once a month shot up by half from a year earlier, to 202m. Nearly nine in ten were under the age of 35. Videos on the platform, which range from sports highlights to self-help lectures and everything in between, attract an average of 1.2bn daily views.
B站常被称为“中国版油管”，而其企业宣言却以谦逊低调而备受瞩目。B站从未放出豪言要改变世界，只希望“丰富中国年轻一代的日程生活”。但从用户数据来看，中国年轻人的确因此而充实。在2020年的最后一个季度，B站的月活跃用户量相比一年前猛增50%，达到了2.02亿。将近90%的用户年龄在35岁以下。B站平台上的视频类型应有尽有，从体育赛事集锦到有关自救的讲座，日均观看量达到12亿次。
Launched in 2009 as a website for fans of Japanese anime, Bilibili has evolved into a diversified entertainment group. In recent months even Western musicians (such as Jessie J and Charlie Puth) and Hollywood stars (including Dwayne Johnson) have rushed to set up Bilibili accounts. Investors, too, have taken notice. Between March 2018, when the firm listed in New York, and February this year its market capitalisation rose more than tenfold, to $41bn. On March 23rd it raised $2.6bn in a secondary listing in Hong Kong.
2009年推出的B站当时只是一个面向日本动漫迷的网站，现已发展成为多元化的娱乐集团。近几个月来，甚至连西方音乐家（如婕西和查理·普思）和好莱坞明星（包括道恩·强森）都争先恐后地开设了B站账户。投资者也注意到了这一点。从2018年3月在纽约上市到今年2月，B站市值增长了10倍多，达到410亿美元。3月23日，B站在香港的二次上市中筹集了26亿美元。
Unlike YouTube, Bilibili refuses to clutter usergenerated videos with adverts. That way, the thinking goes, it can attract new users put off by such interruptions, and convince them to spend more time on the platform. The central aim, as described by executives, is to “convert” this “sticky community” into “paying users”.
与油管不同的是，B站拒绝在用户发布的视频中添加广告。这样做的理念是，可以吸引对干扰广告反感的新用户，并说服他们在B站上花更多的时间。正如高管们所言，B站的核心目标是将“粘性群体”转化为“付费用户”。
Bilibili does so in two main ways: by offering games where players purchase virtual items to advance to the next level, and access to original and licensed films and series. This Netflix-like business, launched in 2018, now has 14.5m paying subscribers.
B站主要通过两种方式实现转化这一目标：一种是向玩家提供需要氪金购买虚拟物品才能升级的游戏，另一种是提供原版和授权的电影及电视剧。这项类似网飞的业务于2018年推出，目前拥有1450万付费用户。
The share of users who pay for things like in-game accessories and subscriptions has risen from 3.9% in 2018 to 8.0% in 2020. Receipts from these sources helped Bilibili nearly to double its revenues in each of the past three years, to 12bn yuan ($1.7bn) in 2020. It also sells adverts on parts of its platform, but they made up less than fifth of its sales (compared with the vast majority of YouTube’s).
游戏内购和付费订阅等的用户比例从2018年的3.9%上升到2020年的8.0%。这些渠道的收入帮助B站在过去三年中的年收入都近乎翻了一番，到2020年达到120亿元人民币（合17亿美元）。B站也在其平台的部分页面销售广告位，但广告收入只占其销售额的不到五分之一（相比之下，油管的绝大多数销售额都来自广告）。
All this has yet to make any money. Last year Bilibili reported an operating loss of 3bn yuan, double the shortfall in 2019. Profits may remain elusive; the company must invest to maintain a pipeline of addictive games and pays top dollar to outbid big streamers like iQiyi for the rights to popular movies and shows its nascent subscription business needs.
所有这些都还没有让B站赚到钱。去年，B站公布了30亿元的经营亏损，是2019年亏损额的两倍。B站的盈利仍是未知数；该公司必须靠投资来维持令人沉迷的游戏不断上新，并要以高于爱奇艺等大型流媒体的巨额价格竞争热门电影的版权，从而满足其新生的订阅业务需求。
Bilibili’s executives are sanguine. “As our net revenues continue to grow, we do not expect our total content costs as a percentage of total revenue to substantially increase,” they wrote in the prospectus for the firm's Hong Kong listing. Its share price, down by a third since its February peak, suggests investors want finally to see some proof.
B站的高管们非常乐观。B站在香港上市时，他们在招股书中写道，“随着净收入持续增长，我们预计总内容成本占总收入的比例不会大幅增加。”该公司的股价自2月份达到峰值后下跌了三分之一，这表明投资者最终希望能看到一些实质证据。
来源：经济学人
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