Alibaba has recently signed a deal with Walt Disney Co, to acquire a licensing agreement from the company in order to start streaming Walt Disney’s videos in China. Alibaba’s digital media and entertainment group have made this deal, Youku video streaming platform in China will host the largest Disney animation collection in China.
In a press release on Monday, Alibaba said that a multi-year licensing agreement has been inked between Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment Group and Disney’s subsidiary Buena Vista International Inc. Alibaba platforms will receive more than 1,000 Disney episodes including set-top boxes.
As Chinese authorities give had time to international companies to get into China Disney also faced some restrictions to get their content displayed in China. Disney’s last attempt to do this in China was in 2016 when the company joined hands with Alibaba to create an online venture of its DisneyLife, unfortunately, Chinese authorities shut down the operations within five months and the reasons for shutting down the service wasn’t made public.
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However, this time it looks promising from both sides Disney and Alibaba, as Alibaba’s Digital Media and Entertainment Group president of Youku, Yang Weidong said, “Including Disney’s content in our library would greatly enrich the content on Alibaba’s media and entertainment ecosystem, it would give a company an edge in distributing foreign content in China.”
However, the total value of the deal wasn’t disclosed by Alibaba.
Youku is one of the popular video content platforms in China, the company has reached 580 million devices and 1.2 billion views per day. According to Alibaba, the company has made almost similar deals with other content distribution networks such as; Paramount, Warner Bros, Sony Pictures, Fox, NBC Universal and some others.
It seems after leading the retail business in China, Alibaba is now going to lead the media and entertainment, the deals with popular foreign companies authenticates the Alibaba’s vision for the future of entertainment in China.
Alibaba now has all the power to expand in any direction it wants, the company is currently standing among top three companies which would become the first trillion dollar company along with Apple and Google.
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