Author | Liu Baodan From performance to market confidence, Meituan is walking out of a three-year low point, but Wang Xing is not stopping there - he has even bigger plans. Going overseas has become a must for Chinese companies. Meituan, which has been warming up for 8 years, has finally made up its mind to put going overseas on the agenda. Recently, Meituan began recruiting senior engineers for international silver enterprise direct connection. After the model was successful in the Hong Kong market, Meituan officially kicked off its overseas expansion, accelerated recruitment and put the first stop of the overseas expansion in Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. Going overseas is a critical turning point, which means that after more than ten years of capacity accumulation, Meituan has to export its local life capabilities to the world, which is as significant as the replication of TikTok by ByteDance. In the wave of Internet companies going overseas, Meituan went overseas later because local life patterns are more important than social, e-commerce and other industries. However, Wang Xing must make this move. Against the background of intensified domestic competition and the shrinking of community group buying, he must find a new growth story. On his entrepreneurial journey, Wang Xing is still determined to create a new business legend in this global adventure. A must-have question. Meituan has fought a beautiful takeaway battle in Hong Kong. On May 6, Measurable AI, a market research firm, released the latest data showing that by March 2024, according to the number of orders, KeeTa, the takeaway business of Meituan in Hong Kong, has a market share of 44%, rising to the largest takeaway platform in Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong is only a stopover for Meituan's overseas expansion, and Meituan has set its real meaning of going overseas in Saudi Arabia. Wall Street news learned that Meituan has been recruiting people around the direction of going overseas in the past two months. The positions include engineers, overseas human resources and operation experts, international payment and transaction product managers, mainly responsible for payments, employee management and related products in overseas markets. More importantly, the recruitment of local talents. More than a month ago, Meituan posted relevant recruitment information on LinkedIn and the Middle East recruitment platform Baye.com, with Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, as the place of work. From the city selection, Meituan did not choose the United States with a larger market space, nor did it choose Southeast Asia where culture and food are more similar, but chose Saudi Arabia. It can be seen that Meituan's overseas expansion strategy still has a heavy experimental component and is more cautious. Wang Xing is not fighting an unprepared battle. For this overseas expansion, Meituan has been planning for many years. As early as 2016, Wang Xing began to consider the issue of going overseas and visited Silicon Valley, Berlin, Israel, Jakarta and other places. In 2017, Meituan officially laid out overseas accommodation business, first connecting hotels in nearly 100 countries overseas to the Meituan application. At that time, the domestic and foreign takeaway wars were in full swing, and with Meituan's listing in Hong Kong in 2018, Wang Xing's overseas strategy was forced to be shelved. Since then, Meituan has also made a series of international investments, including Swiggy in India, Gojek in Indonesia, and Opay in Nigeria, involving food, taxis, payments and other fields, to prepare for going overseas. Along with the frequent news reports of Meituan's victory in Hong Kong, Meituan's overseas plan was finally brought to an unprecedented strategic height in 2024, and Wang Xing once again rushed to the forefront. In February, Meituan put the home business group, the in-store business group and other businesses into the core local business sector, and appointed Wang Putong as CEO, while Wang Xing personally took charge of overseas business, which ensured the landing of the overseas expansion strategy in the organizational structure. In fact, before the confirmation of the overseas expansion strategy, Wang Xing personally visited the Middle East last May and met with members of the Saudi royal family, laying the foundation for Meituan's layout in Saudi Arabia.

In today's weather is good. Today's weather is good.

The first Olympics after the epidemic ended attracted the attention of the whole world, with frequent hot searches from the opening ceremony to popular events.

On July 31, local time in France, in the women's synchronized 10-meter platform diving competition at the Paris Olympics, the Chinese team of Chen Yuxi and Quan Hongchan won the gold medal, and hot searches related to Quan Hongchan kept appearing on the list. As of the fifth day of the competition, the Chinese team has won nine Olympic gold medals, ranking first on the Olympic gold medal list.

Behind each round of hot searches, there are content platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou receiving traffic.

More than a month ago, Douyin and Kuaishou both officially announced that they will be the holding and broadcasting rights holders for the 2024 Paris Olympics, obtaining on-demand and short video rights, and officially obtaining the content copyright of the Olympics.

This is the first time that Douyin has held the broadcasting rights for the Olympics, and the platform has put a lot of effort into content planning. In addition to event on-demand and full-game replays, there are also over 300 China delegation athletes sharing their training, competition life, and Olympic sentiments on Douyin.

Douyin also planned several exclusive programs, including "Special Program of Paris Olympics", "Champion's Arrival", "Speed and Decisiveness", etc. Dong Yuhui recently appeared in Paris, launching the "With Hui on the Journey: Talk with Sports Athletes" interview program on Douyin. The first two episodes have been released, with guests Yang Qian and Lang Ping.

Sports is a key content on short video platforms. In recent years, Douyin and Kuaishou have also been continuously introducing top domestic and foreign sports events.

In 2022, Douyin broadcasted the Qatar World Cup. Subsequently, Douyin became the broadcasting rights holder for the 19th Hangzhou Asian Games. Douyin data shows that the Qatar World Cup brought in 10.6 billion views and 1.3 billion user interactions for live broadcasts.

Kuaishou has formed copyright and content partnerships with over 50 international events including the NBA, UEFA Champions League, NFL, and MLB. The company has also become the broadcaster of the Tokyo Olympics, Beijing Winter Olympics, and the Hangzhou Asian Games. In 2023, over 17 million creators published sports-related content on Kuaishou, and the core sports interest group reached nearly 200 million.

Top events copyright is expensive. Historically, NBC paid $3.5 billion for broadcasting rights during 2000-2008 Olympics, and $2.2 billion for broadcasting rights during the televised 2010 Winter Olympics and 2012 Olympics.

Although Douyin and Kuaishou have video copyrights, they do not have the "live" broadcast rights, so the copyright prices are lower than for live broadcasts, but it is still a large expense.

Douyin and Kuaishou are so enthusiastic about the Olympics because they see the business opportunity in terms of traffic, from traffic to commercialization, this is exactly what short video platforms are good at.

Firstly, the Olympics is a good opportunity to attract new users, and traffic itself is the commodity of short video platforms. Douyin and Kuaishou both have mature mechanisms for selling traffic.

The Olympics can also bring in advertising revenue and brand collaboration. Observations show that Douyin has eight partner brands on its Olympics special area, including Mengniu Dairy, Procter & Gamble China, and Yili. Kuaishou also has over ten brands, including JD.com, Meituan, and Hongqi, among others. These are all major sources of funding.

In addition, based on the scenes of consumers watching the Olympics, the platforms can also provide more life services. In this regard, Kuaishou provides a complete business ecology.

During the Olympics, Kuaishou integrated the platform's e-commerce, local, and commercialized business ecological resources to create new super-consumption scenes, providing one-stop shopping experiences and local life services for 700 million users. As of 2023, Kuaishou had monthly 520 million users who consumed sports content.

To a large extent, Douyin and Kuaishou's rapid growth in recent years is based on their ability and efficiency in monetizing traffic.

In 2023, ByteDance's revenue increased by 30% to a total of $110 billion, surpassing Tencent to become the new king of the Internet. Kuaishou also achieved profit turnaround, with e-commerce GMV surpassing one trillion yuan for the first time. It has become the fifth largest e-commerce platform following Alibaba, Pinduoduo, JD.com, and Douyin.

The Olympics is not just sports, but also a huge commercial opportunity, and Douyin and Kuaishou have already taken action.