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Zhou Buqi's time is very tight, he will only stay in London for two days.

The financing framework of Ziweixing Digital Media will be finalized within these two days.

The selected investors came to London one after another, including Purple Star's partner SoftBank, Germany's Allianz Venture Capital Fund, France's National Strategic Investment Fund, and the famous CVC investment fund recommended by the British authorities.

CVC is a professional sports investment institution, the most famous of which is their investment in F1 events. In the past, the F1 competition was in a sluggish state, with poor returns and even signs of bankruptcy.

This is not surprising either.

The sports industry around the world outside the United States is almost always dominated by people in the sports industry. This group of people have no problem letting them engage in sports, but let them do strategy, management, and operations, but their standards are very poor.

Various professional sports leagues in the United States are booming. The reason is that the United States is a purely capitalist country. Whoever pays controls the field. Professional people do professional things. The capital does the strategy, the managers do the management, and the sports people only focus on the sports itself.

The British CVC investment fund is this model.

In fact, it is to use the power of capital to deeply study the American model.

For example, when European rugby was not doing well, CVC invested in the European Rugby League and promoted reforms; for example, when the World Volleyball League failed to become professional and was unable to make ends meet, CVC actively participated.

Including the football industry, the "Toyota Cup" under the World Football Federation was restructured into the "Club World Cup", which greatly increased revenue and attention. Behind this came the investment and planning of CVC.

Then, CVC started to drift away and wanted to enter European football in a big way.

But how powerful is European football?

After several waves of public opinion, CVC became notorious and became a representative of evil capital.

In fact, the sports projects invested by CVC are often very successful. As long as they enter the market, they can turn a poorly managed sports industry from losses to profits and make it prosperous.

The reason why many football bigwigs oppose CVC comes from CVC's own strategy.

Capital is like a pistol.

In the hands of the police, it represents justice; in the hands of criminals, it represents evil.

The bad reputation of CVC mainly comes from its excessive capitalization.

If, like Allianz Ventures, French Venture Capital and SoftBank Group, they are willing to spend decades growing and thriving with the project when investing in a project, then how can CVC, which has made great contributions to the world sports industry, Will there be opposition?

The reason is that CVC is too fucked up.

They often play short-term, taking a few or more than ten years to build a sports industry into a large scale, and then liquidate and leave. This leads them to often make short-term strategic designs, which may undermine the long-term and stable development of a sports industry.

The most typical one is the F1 event.

In order to increase the revenue of the F1 event, CVC launched a series of reform measures, which were very effective and soon turned the F1 event into a world-class sports event.

However, in order to make money, CVC took a further step, that is, it stopped the "free + advertising" live broadcast model and began to focus on the "subscription system".

In other words, TV viewers in the past could watch F1 racing competitions on free channels. But after CVC enters the scene, you can only spend money to watch F1 events on paid channels.

This will inevitably lead to a significant reduction in the number of spectators at F1 events.

F1 is different from football, basketball, and rugby. Ordinary people can play these ball games every day and have a large audience base. F1 racing is different. This thing can only be watched, not played. There is no offline practice. It relies purely on live broadcast of the event to attract viewers. Switching from free to paid will significantly reduce the number of viewers of F1 events.

In the short term, revenue has increased. In the long term, the audience dwindles.

When this group of spectators gradually gets older, the audience for F1 events will become smaller and smaller in the future, and no one will watch it. What should we do? Doesn’t this destroy an industry?

But CVC doesn’t care about that much.

Entering the market at a low price, and then launching a series of reforms, you can quickly turn losses into profits and make a lot of money, attracting other investment funds to eagerly take over. Then CVC made a decisive move at a high position, sold its shares, and got out with a huge profit.

Therefore, CVC's investment in football will definitely be strongly resisted by wealthy clubs.

The heads of professional leagues will retire in a few years. What they pursue is performance during their term of office, and they don't care about the future decades later. Ordinary teams may go bankrupt in a few years or more, and may not be able to do so at all. There is no future.

The century-old giants are different. They want to continue for the second and third centuries. Of course, they don't like CVC's capital operation method of raking in all the water.

It is impossible for Manchester United to accept the strategic guidance of CVC, but Ziweixing Digital Media is different.

Ziweixing Digital Media is very welcoming to CVC!

Zhou Buqi’s popularity with CVC is even greater than that of SoftBank, French Venture Capital and Allianz Venture Capital.

The other three companies are all investment in nature, but CVC has a strategic nature. It is really possible for CVC to participate in the strategic design of Ziweixing Digital Media.

What Zhou Buqi is not afraid of the most is all kinds of different opinions. What he likes most is the collision of ideas and the spark of inspiration. I'm not afraid that you'll say something wrong, but I'm afraid that you won't say anything and will be dumb. If you say something wrong, you can correct it, and maybe you will say it right next time. If you are mute, you will never be able to speak correctly.

Moreover, in this round of financing from Ziweixing Digital Media, 20% of the shares will be transferred to four major investment institutions, raising a total of US$700 million.

After CVC enters the market, it can get up to one director seat and recommend a vice president-level executive.

That's it.

They only have the right to make suggestions, and the decision-making power can only be in the hands of Zhou Buqi. Even CVC themselves do not have the confidence to share decision-making power with a capital tycoon like Boss Zhou.

Zhou Buqi has such strength.

Facing these four investors, he felt no pressure and was not worried at all that they would make trouble within Ziweixing Digital Media with the few shares they held.

Even if the three major European investment institutions, CVC, Allianz and France Venture Capital, join forces, SoftBank will not be able to cooperate with them.

Therefore, in the process of contact and talks, Zhou Buqi's attitude was relatively high, focusing only on himself and not caring about others. In fact, he was sending a signal that Ziweixing Digital Media should "put me first".

This round of financing of US$700 million will be mainly used in four directions -

One, research and development.

There are football communities, mobile apps, official website business reconstruction, streaming media technology development, as well as data analysis, eagle eye technology and other fields.

Second, explore new markets.

This mainly refers to setting up various branches in the European continent and recruiting teams.

Three, marketing.

Once a product is made and launched into the market, investment in marketing is often higher than in R\u0026D.

4. Intellectual property rights.

This is the most helpless thing. Copyright control is too strict. If Ziweixing Digital Media wants to get some game data for analysis, it has to buy the copyright. Copyright fees are also paid for news content and short clips in the football community.

…

Zhou Buqi's plane was relatively large, so he invited Son and his investment assistant Rajiv Misra to come with him, while other SoftBank people took other planes to Los Angeles.

The financing plan for Ziweixing Digital Media has been reached.

The four major investment institutions share 20% of the shares equally, each with 5%, which is impartial.

Since then, the ownership structure of Ziweixing Digital Media has been determined. Ziweixing International holds 65% of the shares, Zhou Buqi holds 10%, SoftBank, Allianz, French Investment Fund and CVC each hold 5%, and the remaining 5% management option pool.

This matter has basically been settled.

The next focus is to return to Los Angeles and start the Ziweixing Global project!

Zhou Buqi naturally talked about the copyright of "Spider-Man".

Unexpectedly, he was opposed by the dark-skinned Rajiv Mishra, "I don't think Ziweixing Global has any need to acquire the copyright of 'Spider-Man'!"

"Um?"

Zhou Buqi frowned.

Rajiv Misra is not a black man. He is a low-caste Indian with very strong abilities. Zhou Buqi even once had the idea of ​​recruiting him as an assistant. His level was too high!

In Silicon Valley, Zhou Buqi came into contact with many Indian-origin executives, and the general impression they left on him was that they were humble, gentle, and particularly friendly.

But Rajiv Misra is different. He is a hardliner.

The professional resume is also very impressive!

He graduated from MIT with a master's degree in computer science and is an IT genius. But after graduation, he did not go to work in Silicon Valley. Instead, he went to Wall Street to become a trader and got involved in finance.

When the subprime mortgage crisis broke out in 2008, he was one of the top twenty "vultures" on Wall Street, and he made crazy bets on the subprime debt market. He even appeared in the Hollywood movie "The Big Short".

Because of this wave of operations, he lost his job at Deutsche Bank, and was then recruited by Son Zhengyi as vice president of SoftBank Group and president of the Vision Fund, in charge of investment business.

Rajiv Mishra said calmly: "Zhou, I respect you very much, but business is business and rules are rules. Ziweixing Global has no reason to buy the copyright of 'Spider-Man'."

Zhou Buqi was very unhappy and glanced at him, "This is an order."

Rajiv said solemnly: "This is ridiculous."

Zhou Buqi looked at Sun Zhengyi, "Is this what you mean?"

Son Zhengyi coughed lightly, "I never said that."

Rajiv waved his hand and said firmly: "Mr. Zhou, you are the best investor I have ever seen. I have full respect for you. However, please also respect my work."

Zhou Buqi was stunned for a moment, "What? I don't respect you anymore?"

"I'm talking about my job."

"What's the meaning?"

"Purchasing the rights to 'Spider-Man' is not in the interests of Ziweixing Universal."

"This was an error in judgment on your part."

Zhou Buqi didn't want to explain more to him. The other party was in the investment business, not the entertainment business, so there was no need to explain it too clearly.

Rajiv Misra's tone was unkind and slightly cold, "Mr. Zhou spent huge sums of money to acquire the copyright of 'Spider-Man'. The real benefit is Marvel! And you are the major shareholder of Marvel! I have There is reason to suspect that you are using Ziweixing Universal and the 'Spider-Man' project to transfer benefits to Marvel to enrich your personal pockets!"

"Is this what you call respect?"

Zhou Buqi was a little angry, feeling that his personality had been despised.