Alibaba, DMG Entertainment and Hunan Satellite Television Sign a Deal
Alibaba has strike a deal with DMG Entertainment and Hunan Satellite for bringing the first bundled service to China.
Latest Alibaba news surrounds the entertainment deal that the Chinese e-commerce giant has signed recently. The deal has been signed between DMG Entertainment, Alibaba Group Holding and Hunan Satellite Television, all of them being Chinese giants of the entertainment, internet and telecom sector giants. This deal has happened in order to expand the cable, internet via subscription and mobile entertainment to consumers in the country.
These three giants shall offer an initial service of TV and film content and gaming to six million consumers of cable TV coming under the umbrella of Hunan TV. The educational content, in addition with the extra gaming shall be made available with the additional fees and will be rolled out. This deal has been declared as the first bundled mobile, cable TV and Internet entertainment service in China. The service can be seek through TMall platform which belongs to Alibaba. However, the financial details have not been disclosed pertaining to the deal and also there has been no news as of now, when the companies are going to launch this service.
Alibaba news and Hunan TV did not respond to requests asking for details regarding the deal. DMG’s spokesperson confirmed the deal but did not disclose the details. This deal is considered to be the boarder push by the Chinese e-commerce giant to expand the potential entertainment services in the country which is, by revenue, the second largest market for movie in the world. The competitors, Alibaba and Tencent Holdings, among other companies have begun working in large amount with the entertainment and film companies as the users wish to watch more and more videos and movies online in China.
Last month, it had been announced by Alibaba that it will begin TBO, a service for video subscription which will be made available from September. This service has followed investments of billions of dollars over the past 18 months in the entertainment industry.
There is a movie ticketing site owned by Alibaba, considered to be the crowdfunding service for the films and also, Alibaba Pictures, its film studio. The founder, Jack Ma has some shares in the Huayi Brothers Media Corp. which is a big film studio in China.
In the past few years, there have been new avenues offered by the providers of set-top box, online streaming sites and satellite broadcasters to reach out to the audience in China since they have appetite for such entertainment which is not limited to their TV sets. There have been $3.3 billion of tickets to the movie that have been sold in China only in this half year of 2015. It has seen 49% increment as compared to the last year.
