By Chloe Lin of Martin Hu & Partners
Please see Chinese version of this article below
Award-winning Chinese movie director Feng Xiaogang hit the headlines recently when he got into an online flame war with Wang Sicong, whose father owns Wanda Cinema. Feng argued that his latest film, I am not Madame Bovary, suffered after Wanda gave it only a limited release. He complained that this was an abuse of Wanda’s dominant position in the film-projection industry.
How would we assess this accusation in the context of Chinese anti-trust law? Needless to say, Wanda Cinema can only abuse its position in the film-projection industry if it is actually dominant within that industry. To determine this, the first step is to identify the relevant market for the film-projection industry. As with other service industries, the market for film projection may be divided into services and geography.
Services
All cinemas provide the same projection services, which is to display films for an audience. However, cinemas are different in terms of features, focus and prices of their services, in addition to their different sizes. Firstly, cinemas can be classified into multiplex cinemas with multiple screening rooms and single-screen cinemas, in accordance with their sizes. Benefiting from advanced facilities, a comfortable environment and a superior audience experience, multiplex cinemas usually project the first-run of movies, especially big-budget commercial movies, while most single-screen cinemas only project small films or second runs of big movies due to their poor facilities and limited capacities. Secondly, multiplex cinemas charge much higher ticket prices compared to single-screen cinemas, even for the same film shown at the same time. Thus, when determining the dominant position in the film-projection industry, the relevant service market should be further divided into multiplex cinemas and single-screen cinemas.
Even then, a single cinema is not a player in the relevant market. The companies that own the cinema chains are the real business undertakings in the film-projection industry. As a result, it is essential to analyse the proportion of multiplex and single-screen cinemas that a business undertaking owns, for the purpose of determining the dominant position of the business undertaking more accurately.
Geography
Film-projection services are provided through cinemas at fixed locations and audiences rarely travel long distances for the sake of saving money on ticket prices. Therefore, each cinema provides its service mainly for a local audience. Moreover, the industry’s best customers are concentrated in a limited number of cities, where box office revenue varies significantly. Therefore, the relevant geographical market should be determined on a city-by-city basis, which means that determining the dominant position of a projection company needs to take into account the city where the company’s cinemas are located and the percentage of those cinemas’ box office revenues in that city.
Factor of timing
Timing plays an important role in film projection and box office revenues fluctuate widely between the peak season and slack season, which are partly in connection with the weather and holidays. Thus, the time when the film is projected is essential for the success of the film at the box office. As a result, most films prefer to be projected in the so-called movie season, such as summer and lunar new year, which enhances the market position and amplifies the bargaining power of cinemas against their trading parties, the film producers, in such seasons. Thus, when determining the dominant position of a projection company, timing is a critical factor.
Vertical integration
The return on investment of a film is uncertain. Thanks to such uncertainty, the film producers, distributors and projection companies are unable to determine the price of film rights before it reaches cinemas. Accordingly, a revenue-sharing system is used in the film industry to overcome the uncertainty, whereby the box office revenue of a film will be distributed between the film producer, the distributor and the projection company at rates that are negotiated in advance. However, the film producer or the distributor has no access to verify the box office information provided by projection companies. Therefore, to prevent projection companies from concealing actual box office and reducing transaction costs, most film producers prefer vertical mergers, through which the film producer, the distributor and the projection company become affiliates under common control. However, vertical mergers greatly raise the threshold for new entrants to the film industry, since the new entrants must compete with existing companies in both the film production market and film projection market at the same time. As such, companies that pioneered vertical mergers and projection companies with relatively dominant positions are more likely to win competitive advantage, which will increasingly enhance the market concentration of film industry. In view of this, when determining the dominant position in the film-projection industry, it is also critical to consider the impact of the industry’s vertical integration trend and to further analyse the concentration resulting from such vertical integration by assessing the difficultly for new entrants to enter both the production and projection market.
Summing up the above, when we want to determine the degree of market concentration and dominant position in the film-projection industry, we should think over the critical points discussed above based on the specialties of the film industry, in addition to traditional anti-trust analysis methodology that we always use in all other industries.
电影放映行业市场支配地位判断中应注意的特殊之处
近日，因王思聪和名导冯小刚关於万达排片的一场互掐，电影《我不是潘金莲》上了热搜榜，而一起上榜的还有冯导的那句”祝万达早日成就垄断大业”。无独有偶，就在半年前，一位影业公司的董事长，因为一部文艺片的排片惨淡，情急之下竟下跪求院线排片。这不禁引起电影业界的反思，中国电影放映行业是否已经形成寡头垄断？
要判断电影放映行业是否存在具有市场支配地位的行业寡头，首先应确定电影放映行业的相关市场。电影放映行业提供的是影片放映服务，其相关市场可以分为相关服务市场和相关地域市场。
放映行业相关服务市场的二层次性
尽管放映服务均是影院为消费者提供将影片拷贝转化为荧幕效果的服务，但是不同规模影院所提供的服务在特点、重点和价格上均有所不同。影院按照规模大小可以分为多放映厅、多功能影院与单一放映厅影院。大影院的设施齐全、环境舒适、观影体验较好，因此大影院常用来放映首轮影片，尤其是大制作的商业影片。只有单一放映厅的中小影院因其设备上以及人数容量上的限制，往往只能放映中小制作的商业影片或对大制作影片进行二轮甚至三轮放映。其次，从价格角度而言，同一部影片在同一时间上映时，在不同规模的影院观影价格差距也较大。因此，在判断市场支配地位时，应将放映行业的相关服务市场进一步细分为多厅多功能影院服务市场与单一放映厅的小影院服务市场。
同时，应注意的是，在放映行业相关服务市场中，单个影院并非市场主体，市场主体通常为拥有多个影院的院线组织。因此，要判断院线的市场支配地位，除了要确定相关服务市场，还要分析院线旗下的影院构成。
相关地域市场的精确性
电影放映服务是在固定的地点提供的，消费者不会为了一部影片或是因为票价的差异选择长途旅行观看影片。因此，每家影院都是针对其辐射半径内的消费者提供观影服务。同时，电影的主要消费人群集中在城市。我国票房收入来源主要分为三类：第一类是北上广深等一线城市，第二了是省会城市和直辖市、计划单列市，第三类是县级城市。三类票房来源之间的差异是十分明显的。因此，在判断市场支配地位时，应将放映行业的相关地域市场限制在特定的城市或省份内，考虑院线旗下影院的所在城市和占所在城市票房的百分比，不能泛泛以院线在全国范围内的市场份额占有率作为判断其市场支配地位的依据。
时间因素的重要性
电影票房收入有明显的峰期和非峰期的区别。这与气候和假日安排有关。温度舒适和节假日，人们出门观影的机会自然增多。在我国，最突出的例子就是暑期档和贺岁档两个放映档期。因此，影片被安排在哪个月份放映对於电影票房的成功与否会产生巨大影响。影片通常都希望能在电影消费的旺季进行放映，这无形中会增强放映行业在电影消费旺季时对其上游制片行业的议价能力。因此，在判断院线市场支配地位时应当充分考量时间因素的影响。
重视纵向一体化的趋势
投入和产出的不确定性是电影产业最重要的特征，贯穿电影制片、发行和放映三个阶段。这种不确定性导致制片企业、发行企业和院线就电影的发行放映进行谈判时无法有效地确定影片放映权的价格。为克服这种不确定性，分账发行放映模式被引入，即制片方先将影片的放映权授予院线，然后在总票房中按照一定比例分成。但由於制片企业和发行企业并没有渠道获得影片真实的票房信息，院线完全可以瞒报真实的票房收入。为防止院线的这种机会主义，减少交易成本，电影产业倾向於纵向一体化，即当制片企业、发行企业和院线的所有权人变成同一主体后，利益一致，可以有效降低交易中的监测成本。但是纵向一体化会使行业的新进入者需要同时在上下游进行竞争，这种情况下，率先进行纵向一体化的企业以及在院线具有较高优势地位的企业容易获得更大的竞争优势，导致电影市场集中度上升，大大提高行业的进入门槛。因此，在判断院线市场支配地位时，应注意电影产业纵向一体化的趋势，通过考量新进入者同时进入制片和放映行业的难易程度来分析产业纵向一体化的集中程度。
综上，在判断电影放映行业的市场集中程度以及特定院线是否具有市场支配地位时，除使用各行业通用的反垄断分析方法外，还应当考量电影行业的特殊性，才能做出较为准确的判断。
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