Bilibili Obtains Three-Year Exclusive Digital Media Copyrights for FA Cup

On Friday, Chinese video streaming platform Bilibili announced it has obtained exclusive digital media copyrights for the current and upcoming seasons (2021-2024) of the Football Association Challenge Cup in the Chinese mainland, under which it will broadcast the sports events live and free of charge.

The FA Cup was first held in England in 1871, and involves all professional and non-professional league teams in England, among which Manchester United, Liverpool and other members of the Premier League will join in the third round. The occasionally outstanding performance of low-level league teams – the “dark horses” of the competition – attract much attention each year.

This year, the opening match of the second round of the FA Cup will start on December 4. Bilibili will broadcast the events exclusively on its official account “FA Cup Saishijun,” and will launch a series of video solicitation activities and rewards for watching the competition.

On November 17, Bilibili released its unaudited financial report for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021. In the period, its average MAU reached 267 million, and the MAU on mobiles reached 250 million, up 35% and 36% year-on-year, respectively. The platform’s average DAU reached 72.1 million, up 35% year-on-year.

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The financial report also indicates that revenue in Q3 amounted to 5.21 billion yuan ($818 million), up 61% year-on-year. Game business revenue increased by 9% year-on-year to 1.40 billion yuan. Taking advantage of the rapid development of live-streaming and a large member business, the revenue of Bilibili‘s value-added services business increased 95% year-on-year in Q3 to reach 1.91 billion yuan. The firm’s advertising business grew by 110% year-on-year, reaching 1.17 billion yuan. Besides, as the sales volume of its e-commerce platform soars, revenue from e-commerce and other businesses reached 730 million yuan, up 78% year-on-year.

Regarding the content categories, the financial report shows that in Q3, the top five most popular content categories are life, games, entertainment, animation and knowledge-oriented content, respectively, and diversified vertical categories such as fitness, food and tourism also developed rapidly. On the other hand, Occupationally Generated Video (OGV) offers good synergy for PUGV content, and effectively boosts and stimulates user growth and expands community influence.