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We update you on the most essential news from Asia in tech, media, and business—the things you need to know that you probably haven’t heard in Western media.
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PUBG Finds Distance Away from Chinese Ownership 👋
The hugely popular video game PUBG was one of the hundreds of Chinese mobile apps banned by the Indian government last week. A few days after the ban went into effect, PUBG has removed Chinese company Tencent Games as their official game publisher and distributor. PUBG is created by a Korean company, but Tencent Games officially distributes the game in India. The hope is that this new change should allow PUBG to satisfy the Indian government enough to revoke the ban.
PUBG had 40 Million users in India before the ban, many of whom were emotionally devastated by having the game banned. If this allows PUBG to continue operating in India, maybe this is an option for other companies with tenuous connections to China. Moving forward, it’s going to be hard to figure out what level of Chinese connection a company will need to have in order to satisfy the Indian government. Most Indian tech companies have already received money from Chinese investors. On the other hand, completely native Chinese companies, headquartered in China and with majority Chinese ownership, may struggle to operate in India while political tensions are high. Since PUBG is technically Korean, they have a unique-ish loophole.
English Premier League Pulls Chinese Broadcast Deal ⚽️
The English Premier League has just cancelled their $665 Million agreement with PPTV, the company that was supposed to be their broadcast partner in China until 2022. Allegedly, Suning Holdings (the owner of PPTV) failed to make a payment of $210 Million to the Premier League that was due earlier this year and therefore this was considered a breach of contract. While that’s the official messaging, many people speculate that the increasing political tensions between the UK and China have played a role in this decision. To be clear, there was definitely disagreement between the Premier League and PPTV over whether broadcast fees should have been paid earlier this year. Considering Covid’s effect on football matches, you could argue that the value of the product of the Premier League broadcast rights has decreased. The Premier League has given $438 Million worth of rebates to broadcast partners for the three-month pause in games, but PPTV was not included.
The Premier League, like all sports leagues, has lost a lot of money due to covid and the path forward for commercial sports is unclear. What’s next? Right now, it looks like they will be looking for another Chinese partner to broadcast games in the country. Much like how Indian PUBG fans consider it a tragedy that the game was banned from their country, I’m sure Chinese football fans are upset that it’s now harder to watch games of their favourite teams. While sometimes it feels trivial, sport is an important part of culture. Surely, the rights to broadcast the Premier League are a valuable asset to many Chinese companies.
Netflix to Release Their First K-pop Documentary 🇰🇷
If you want to know one of the hottest global music trends, you need to know K-Pop. K-Pop refers to popular music coming from Korea. With K-pop group BTS currently #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100, the worldwide level of K-pop interest is at an all-time high. Streaming platform Netflix will be launching their very first K-pop documentary on October 14. The new documentary focuses on the female K-pop group Black Pink and is called ‘Black Pink: Look Up The Sky.’ Netflix, like most other Western platforms, has been increasing their investment in international content, most notably in Asia.
Earlier this year in June, Black Pink’s music video for the single ‘How You Like That’ broke the world record for number of Youtube views in 24 hours. Fittingly, their record was broken by fellow K-pop band BTS’s song ‘Dynamite,’ which was released last month. Last year, Black Pink became the very first K-Pop group to perform at Coachella, arguably the biggest music festival in America. The key takeaway is that K-Pop is a growing global phenomenon that has reached yet another pop culture milestone.
Update #69 - PUBG India, Chinese Premier League and Netflix K-Pop