‘No hits today, but no hits when I get off work’… Two perspectives on the merger of TVING and Wave

‘I had no hits today, but it’s time to go home, so I’ll give Park Hae-min a hit after work.’

On TVing, which broadcast the Korea Professional Baseball (KBO) game between the LG Twins and KT Wiz on the 9th of last month, subtitles like this were broadcast when Park Hae-min of the LG Twins hit a timely hit. There was criticism among fans that it was an inappropriate subtitle that mocked a player that only appears in entertainment shows. That’s not all. From video quality to poor text messaging service, there are still doubts about TVING, which is broadcasting the KBO for the first time.

Currently, TVING is preparing to merge with Wave. The industry is expecting rosy hope after an analysis showed that the app user share of TVing and Wave is larger than that of Netflix and Disney Plus combined. However, actual performance differs greatly from this forecast. Teabing, which is suffering greatly from cut-throat competition, has taken measures such as raising subscription fees and paying KBO broadcasts. Will Teabing and Wave’s experiment succeed?

According to IGA Works Marketing Cloud on the 25th, as of last month, the domestic OTT app user share was 57%, including Tving 21%, Coupang Play 23%, and Wave 13%, including Netflix (35%) and Disney Plus (8%), 43%. passed.

As a result of analyzing the trend of weekly users of OTT apps, as of the fourth week of last month, Netflix had approximately 6.85 million users, TVing had 4.35 million users, Coupang Play had 3.7 million users, Wave had 2.52 million users, and Disney Plus had 1.15 million users. In other words, looking at the numbers alone, the total number of app users for TVing and Wave is 6.87 million, which is 20,000 more than Netflix.

However, Teaving has continued to record annual losses since its spin-off from CJ ENM in 2020. Starting with 6.1 billion won in 2020, it increased to 76.2 billion won in 2021, 119.1 billion won in 2022, and 142 billion won last year. This means that the company is recording a deficit of around 140 billion won per year. Here, as mentioned earlier, doubts arose about the ability to manage content.

In the end, Teabing decided to raise prices. Starting May 1, TVING will increase the price of its annual subscription by about 20%. Accordingly, the basic subscription price, previously 94,800 won, will increase to 114,000 won, the standard price of 130,800 won will increase to 162,000 won, and the premium price of 166,800 won will increase to 204,000 won.

Professional baseball broadcasts have also been converted to a paid subscription of 5,500 won per month. TVING invested a total of 135 billion won and signed a contract with the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) for the KBO League wired and wireless broadcasting rights business from 2024 to 2026. Accordingly, we acquired domestic wired and wireless live broadcasting, highlights, video on demand (VOD), streaming rights and resale business rights for major KBO events.

Although it was converted to a paid broadcast, TVING made numerous errors during the game and in highlight scenes. During the broadcast of an exhibition game, the name of the player on base was written incorrectly, or subtitles such as ‘Batter number 22’ and ‘SAVE at third base’ were shown. Baseball fans complain that an official who does not even know the rules of baseball is in charge of broadcasting.

Teabing, which acquired KBO broadcasting rights by paying 45 billion won per year (a total of 135 billion won), bowed its head and apologized for its poor management method during the broadcast of the exhibition game, leading to Choi Joo-hee, CEO of Teabing. CEO Choi said, “Through the pilot game, I fully sympathized and recognized the shortcomings of the broadcasting site,” and added, “I felt more responsible.”

What about waves? Although it was less than Tving, Wave also recorded a miserable loss. Last year, Wave had a loss of 78.1 billion won on sales of 247.9 billion won. Last year, the three native OTT companies, including Watcha, recorded a total loss of 240 billion won. Coupang Play and Disney Plus do not separately announce domestic performance.

In the industry, among the major OTT services provided in Korea, Netflix is ​​believed to be the only one to have actually made a profit. Netflix’s new subscribers in the fourth quarter of last year reached 13.1 million, the highest since the beginning of COVID-19. On the other hand, TVING and Wave are continuing to record losses amid fierce competition.

Attention is focused on the merger of TVING and Wave. Many in the industry view the merger of TVING and Wave as a stopgap measure to reduce cut-throat competition rather than aggressive content investment or synergy effects. In other words, it is a strategy for survival.

An industry official said, “If the two OTTs merge, we will see a temporary increase in the number of app users,” adding, “However, in a situation where we are continuing to lose money, there are controversies due to subscriber withdrawal due to subscription fee increases and insufficient management capabilities.” “There are a lot of tasks,” he predicted.

Reporter Kim Geon-ho [email protected]

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