Talent shows dig deep into fans' wallets
By Sunny SUN
On August 29, 2020, a piece of news that “Fans topped up 400 years of membership to the platform to send Li Xikan to debut” sparked a hot debate. Li Xikan was the first place of Youku’s We are Young and received more than 14 million fan votes in total.
As a fan of Li Xikan, Ms Wang also invested almost 1,500 yuan for the 400-year membership, but looking back on the experience, she was usually angry and shouted, "This is why I hate Youku."
She explained that this 400-year membership is a trick by Youku to squeeze money out of fans.
According to the original voting rules, ordinary users can vote seven times per day but cannot vote for the same person. Youku VIP members can get seven extra votes. If fans buy the show's sponsored products, Stride Gum, they can get 21 additional voting opportunities. And the voting channel that determines the ranking of the competition was closed the night before the finals.
“At that time, I thought the result was settled when I saw the list was closed,” she recalled.
However, at noon on the final night, Youku issued new voting rules that gave Ms Wang a head-on blow, “I was shocked. Other fans were also like ants on a hot pot.”
The new rule was to include a live-streaming interactive gift-giving event in the finals. The package price ranged from 88 yuan to 188 yuan, mainly including Youku membership monthly, seasonal and annual cards. Gift packages with different values also represented various voting opportunities.
This rule is evil. The so-called gift packs are just edge balls created by Youku to make money from fans.
“
Wang Zihan
A fan of Li Xikan with 8 years of experience in chasing stars
She expressed that fans were all aware that their purchase of the gift pack was for the opportunity to vote, not to seek its membership card.
“Youku ostensibly sells membership cards to fans, but in reality, it is just a way to embellish the essence of leading fans to spend money to vote and evade the responsibility of the platform,” she said.
Although fans were very conscious of what Youku was trying to do, they still have to spend money to ensure their idol's smooth debut.
Ms. Wang recalled that Youku also limited the mobile devices used to purchase gifts for voting that night, and only three accounts of a mobile device could be used to buy gift packs for voting on one mobile device.
“That’s why we decided to send the money to the account of the Li Xikan’s official support club,” she said.
The official account used the money of all ordinary fans to buy gift packs and accumulated membership cards of various durations, leading to a 400-year membership recharge for Youku.
Youku’s act of tying voting opportunities to other products is also widespread in different talent shows held by other platforms.
Source: Idol Producer, Produce 101, Youth With You, CHUANG 2019, Youth With You 2, CHUANG 2020, CHUANG 2021
Source: public financial statement of each fan support club, Owhat, Douban Forum, SNH48 Jz List
(These two charts encapsulate the number of votes received by the first-place winners of the major talent shows from 2018-2021 and the corresponding amount of fan funding collected. The voting rules vary from talent show to talent show, so the number of votes generated varies. For example, the reason why Curly G got over 200 million votes was that each fan had a base vote of 100 per day, while the voting rules for the final of Youth With You 2 was that each fan had a base vote of 1 for the final.)
The opportunity to vote in the Tencent-run CHUANG 2020 was tied to the yogurt from their sponsor Mengniu Dairy. Fans who want to get more voting opportunities had to buy additional Mengniu yogurt and scan the QR code on its packaging to vote for the contestants.
“My friends and I bought hundreds of cases of yogurt during the competition,” said Wendy Wei.
She is a fan of Zhao Yue, who debuted in second place in CHUANG 2020. And Zhao Yue’s fans spent nearly 9.6 million yuan on yogurt that could be for voting by the final night, according to the fan circle data organization "snh48 Jz list".
Ms Wei also revealed to us that buying related products to vote is just the direct revenue of the video platform and sponsors. And internal data personnel from video platforms rely on artificially providing system bugs to earn fans' extra money.
Since she is one of Zhao Yue's fan club organizers, she has the channel to contact the internal core data vendors.
(Here are some screenshots of transfers about buying data and accounts from data vendors provided by Zhao Yue's fan support club. The Weibo account used to increase celebrity's likes, or comments is 0.15 yuan a piece. The Tencent video's Doki account for voting is 1.2 yuan a piece. And the ordinary member account of Tencent Video is 1.5 yuan a piece. These recipients do not use their real names out of confidentiality of their identity, and the fan support club also mosaic the recipients' names.)
“They usually help us vote by machine using the website's system bug,” said Ms Wei. “Their price for this service is usually 30,000 yuan to help vote with the machine for a week.”
She also said that these data providers would hide their true identities very well, but she suspected that they were internal employees of the video platform.
“Generally speaking, video platform internal data personnel are most aware of the system bugs in these polls and ranking lists,” she said. “The most suspicious thing is that during the competition, some fans reported abnormal data and bugs in the ranking list, but the platform did not give any response.”
Ms Wei strongly suspected that the platform's non-response was tacit approval of this kind of profit-making behavior.
(This video shows two types of massive voting behavior.)
In the face of irregularities in talent show programs, as early as February 2020, the China Netcasting Service Association issued the "Detailed Rules for the Content Review of Online Variety Shows" following the National Radio and Television guidance Administration.
It put forwards, “the program shall not appear to set 'pay to buy votes' link, deliberately guide, encourage netizens to buy membership and other materialistic means for the contestants to vote.”
But apparently, this has no apparent binding effect on the talent show held afterward, whether it's Youku's We Are Young or Tencent's CHUANG series, as well as iQIYI’s Youth With You series.
Although these video platforms would issue announcements to advise fans to support their idols rationally, they still tacitly approve of fans pooling their money to vote as beneficiaries.
Yu Feng, a law professor at East China Normal University, said this is because the guidelines are developed internally by the industry association, not by the state.
“This rule is not a law, not mandatory, only advocacy,” he explained. “If any members of the association violate the rule, they will only be punished by the method of the industry association, such as being delisted.”
He said the regulation of this provision is minimal, considering the status of these video platforms within the industry.
“
For example, if this association removes Tencent's name, then whether it can
continue to exist in China is a problem.
Yu Feng
a law professor at East China Normal University, specializing in entertainment law in China
Therefore, in his opinion, the most effective way is to introduce a law prohibiting these video platforms from setting the audience to pay to vote.
In addition to video platforms stimulating fans to pool money to vote, some entertainment companies let fans compete for a limited quota of watching idol’s performances to increase profits.
“Last year, the lowest price of an admission ticket for Teens on Fire was up to 16,000 yuan,” Wang Tutu said, who was a huge fan of Teens in Times, a popular boy group in China.
Teens on Fire is a large-scale stage competitive reality show with music and dance performances specially tailored by Times Fengjun Entertainment Company for the Teens in Times. And according to its official public statement last September, only 220 admissions were opened because of the epidemic. To earn fans’ money, they chose to sell part of tickets by fan bidding.
They posted the rules in their official Weibo account, claiming that the top 100 premium members who purchased the total amount of e-portraits on the official website could directly gain admission to this show. In this rule, the words for the “unlimited sale” of electronic photo books are also specifically marked.
“This company is too good at making money from fans, and selling it this way equates to no upper limit on price,” said Ms Wang.
( This is the ranking list for the purchase amount of the e-photos. The purchase amount of the first place reached 21,314 yuan.
The 100th place also spent 16,224 yuan on e-photos. Source: Times Fengjun's official website; @Rabbit 每日爆料)
The company's disguising the price of admission places by bidding in this way was also resisted by fans. On September 10, 2020, eight fan clubs of Teens in Times jointly started to boycott the company’s ticket sales based on auctions. But Ms Wang also said that ordinary fans in the process of defending their rights encountered many difficulties.
“The company was very cunning,” she said.
She pointed out that, on the one hand, they are selling fans electronic photo books instead of asking fans to bid for the ticket price to avoid responsibility directly. On the other hand, the ticketing system would ask consumers to click on an agreement before paying, which contained many terms and conditions.
“But we would not read it carefully and directly click on the button of agree. Then the company does not need to bear any responsibility,” she added.
However, the company's ticketing practices had already violated the notice of the Ministry of Culture on regulating the order of the ticketing market for commercial performances. The regulation clearly states that commercial performances for the public need to mark the price.
The company finally canceled the show and decided to pay for the loss of hotel and airline tickets for all fans and refunded fans who bought the e-photo books.
But when it comes to the company’s squeezing of fans to vote, there are still many terrible things.
“
Wang Tutu
a fan of Teens in Times, who started to support them in 2019
She said the company's business model is that the idol's exposure in the entertainment industry is inextricably linked to the fans' monetary support, “If you want your favorite idol to have more opportunities to perform on the stage and get more resources from the company, you have to spend more money to vote for him on the company website.”
According to Times Fengjun's official website, fans who want to vote for idols need to purchase a premium member with a price of 298 yuan and then recharge “small sunflowers” to vote. The cost of a “small sunflower” is 1 yuan for ten flowers. To give their idols an extra chance to perform on the stage, some fans spent six million yuan to vote to select the best stage of Teens on Fire in October.
“What's worse, the official website will stop showing the number of votes and ranking of each stage half an hour before the termination of voting. This stimulates us to put all the money we have prepared into it and even put in more than the budgeted amount for fear of the ranking of our idols being overtaken,” Ms Wang added.
Although fans like Wang are well aware of the operation of companies and video platforms to squeeze fans‘ wallets, they have to bow down to them again and again out of their love for their idols.
“We want to give the best to our favorite idols and cannot break the rules of the market, so we have no choice,” said Ms Wang.