Rich second generation, Internet celebrity, entertainment industry disciplinary committee, playboy, businessman, these labels have created an "IP-based" Wang Sicong, and also opened up the wall between him and the general public.
However, it is a dream every ten years. In 2019, Panda TV failed, Pulse Capital's equity was frozen, and Wang Sicong was listed as the person subject to execution one after another. Xiao Wang, who was once outspoken on Weibo, turned into a "low-key Internet celebrity Xiao Wang" and set Weibo to be visible only for half a year.
But after a few months of silence, Wang Sicong became active again on Weibo.
Late rebellion
Before the age of 16, Wang Sicong would never have imagined that he would be a rich second generation.
At the age of 5, he was sent to Singapore by his father to attend primary school. He was admitted to the University of Winchester and University College London along the way. He got a perfect score in IELTS and was fluent in English. The traditional elite education created Wang Sicong, a returnee with excellent academic performance. After returning from his studies, Wang Sicong served as a director of Wanda Group under the arrangement of his father. This "mysterious figure" finally came into people's sight.
Young, frivolous, and outspoken, this is Wang Sicong’s perception of himself, and it is also the most appropriate evaluation of him. Wang Sicong did not embark on the path of inheritance step by step like other rich second generations. Instead, he found his own world on Weibo. He is a rich second generation who shows off his wealth on Weibo, and is also the "Discipline Inspection Committee" of the entertainment and business circles.
In 2011, Wang Sicong refuted rumors about Wang Xiaofei's mother Zhang Lan on Weibo, saying that "Wang Jianlin sponsored Wang Xiaofei and Big S's wedding for free" was purely a rumor, and then continued to criticize Zhang Lan as not worthy of respect. This spat in the air made Wang Sicong famous.
Afterwards, he ridiculed Fan Bingbing and Zhang Xinyu for being carpet stars, accused JD.com of being "big store bullies", complained about Lei Jun's poor English, and angrily criticized Jumei Chen Ou's ***Xiang power bank for not starting a business. actual. Nowadays, because of his relationship with Cousin Ah Shui, a "game sparring partner" with an hourly salary of 666 yuan has been frequently searched on Weibo.
Wang Sicong, who received an elite education since childhood, instead of protecting the elite class he belongs to, broke it up bit by bit and spread it out in front of ordinary people. He allowed the public to see an "elite grassroots", aloof but clear-faced, and won many fans.
Just as Chen Ou once commented on Wang Sicong: "Lao Wang is a very smart man. He directly expresses and vents netizens' emotions towards celebrities and elites. He is a leader."
Putting aside his “Internet celebrity” status, Wang Sicong is also a businessman.
The Broken Blueprint of the Pan-Entertainment Empire
Wang Sicong once said that his biggest challenge is to surpass his father's success in his lifetime.
At that time, Wang Jianlin allocated 500 million to Wang Sicong to start a business, and let him work on his own for 5 years, being fooled 20 times to see if he could succeed. In 2009, Wang Sicong took this start-up capital and founded Price Capital. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Price Capital became a fulcrum for Wang Sicong to leverage his father's generation, and also became the starting point of his e-sports dream.
In August 2011, Wang Sicong officially entered the e-sports industry. Amid doubts, he acquired the CCM team, which was on the verge of dissolution at the time, and quickly formed the "IG Club". In the following years, Wang Sicong successively invested in Forgame Holdings, Letou Games, Hero Interactive Entertainment and other game industries, from game teams, live broadcast platforms, mobile game publishing companies, to offline competitions, e-sports peripherals, and opened up the entire e-sports industry in one go. Competitive industry chain.
In the e-sports circle, Wang Sicong became what everyone calls "Principal Wang" and also experienced "player addiction". On August 19, 2018, Wang Sicong made his debut in the game against VG and served as the starting AD. One month later, he announced the end of his 31-day professional LOL career.
What really pushed Principal Wang and IG to a climax was the night when IG won the championship. Wang Sicong spent 1.13 million in a cash draw on Weibo. Later, the photo of him eating hot dogs on the field became a hit all over China, dominating the screen for three days and three nights.
For China’s e-sports to enter the public eye, Wang Sicong’s passion and the investment of Pulse Capital are indispensable. At the beginning, Wang Sicong led Chinese e-sports step by step out of the niche and established his own e-sports kingdom. But inevitably, the e-sports craze is slowly fading, and rival Tencent is also quietly playing a big game behind the scenes.
In 2016, Tencent Esports was established. The following year, Tencent established a new LPL league management organization, replacing ACE initiated by Wang Sicong. Since then, Wang Sicong has been completely eliminated by Tencent as the maker of rules for the e-sports industry. Not only that, Tencent also poached the anchor of Panda TV, and Wang Sicong’s e-sports dream has become an empty shell.
Just when e-sports is being constrained by Tencent, Pus Capital is also in crisis due to LeTV Sports.
From May 2012 to February 2016, Pulse Capital completed equity investments in 26 projects in one go. From 2015 to 2017, Pulse Capital made a total of 48 investments. These two years were also the peak of Pulse Capital's investments. Today, Pusi Capital's investment scale has exceeded 3 billion, with more than 80 investment projects and a wide range of investment fields.
In 2015, during the first round of financing of LeTV Sports, Pulse Capital participated as a follow-up investor in the A+ round of financing. In March of the following year, LeTV Sports carried out Series B financing. Wang Sicong took advantage of the situation to carry out short-term operations, and successively reduced his holdings and sold off the old shares of LeTV Sports. However, at the end of 2016, it was revealed that LeTV Sports had misappropriated more than 4 billion yuan of funds without authorization. Its operating conditions rapidly deteriorated, its debts piled up, and Pulse Capital also fell into trouble. Although Wang Sicong reduced his equity holdings twice and made a profit of 200 million, there is still a large amount of LeTV Sports equity that he cannot exit.
In 2019, Pusi Capital’s equity was frozen for three years, and Wang Sicong was subsequently listed as the person subject to execution in November.
Also having trouble is Panda TV, which was established less than 5 years ago. At that time, Wang Sicong announced the establishment of Panda TV in a circle of friends and invited investment bosses to make appointments with him at any time.
Panda TV, which is helmed by Wang Sicong and invested by Internet giant Zhou Hongwei, has invited celebrities from all over the world to settle in, and poached anchors from platforms such as Huya and Douyu. It had a huge halo when it was born. In the "thousand broadcast" war, it quickly entered the top three in the industry.
But after 2016, Panda TV began to decline. From "Hello! Goddess" being asked to be removed from the shelves for rectification, Panda Live had problems in its B-round financing, and it was pushed to the forefront due to suspicion of online gambling. Wang Sicong is no longer as interested in Panda TV as he was at the beginning, and did not even attend the 2018 annual meeting.
At the beginning, Wang Sicong, who had already established an e-sports kingdom, established Panda TV and Banana Project companies, covering the entire industry chain of the e-sports industry, and drawing a blueprint for a pan-entertainment empire. Wang Sicong dreamed of turning Panda into an online version of Mango TV, a 24-hour happy camp, but this dream lasted only three years.
On March 30, 2019, Panda Live announced its official closure, and this once-famous live broadcast platform came to an end.
The last straw for Panda was Tencent’s copyright lawsuit.
In June 2019, Tencent sued Panda Game anchor for infringing the copyright of "League of Legends". Subsequently, Shanghai Panda Interactive Entertainment Culture Co., Ltd., the operating entity of Panda Live, was listed as a person subject to execution for breach of trust, and the Banana Project also "overturned" one after another. Panda Interactive Entertainment's huge investment losses of nearly 2 billion yuan were entirely borne by Pusi Investment and its actual controllers. Take it upon yourself. On January 5, 2020, Panda Interactive Entertainment entered actual bankruptcy proceedings.
Wanda cannot save Wang Sicong
Pulse Capital and Panda TV have come to a dead end. I am listed as the person subject to execution. Wang Sicong is a bit embarrassed at the age of 31, but his father Wang Jianlin and Wanda couldn't save him.
Wanda’s thirty-one-year-old age was the same as Wang Sicong’s. It was not as easy as imagined.
After the "deal of the century" three years ago - Wanda transferred 13 cultural tourism projects and 77 hotels to Sunac and R&F, Wanda's real estate business development is not what it used to be.
But in recent years, Wanda has wanted to return to real estate. Not only has it set the goal of returning to RMB 100 billion in 2021, but it also made a large-scale acquisition of many cultural and tourism projects last year. It also made frequent moves in the first quarter of this year, with a new value of about 10 billion.
However, the reality is that Wanda Real Estate does not have a quick breakthrough.
Last year, Wanda’s full-scale sales were 56.68 billion, ranking 59th. When the epidemic was at its worst in the first quarter of this year, Wanda’s full-scale sales were only 3.7 billion, and its ranking fell further to 80th.
In the first half of the year, the company's sales were approximately 21.87 billion yuan, but it still did not rank among the top 50.
From being in the top ten to just outside the 50s, Wanda has become a medium-sized real estate company.
It once sacrificed growth in exchange for a low debt ratio, but now it has returned to cultural tourism projects with large investment scale and long return cycle. Under the asset-heavy model, it remains to be seen whether Wanda’s financing and debt repayment capabilities can keep up, and whether Wanda can revive its real estate business.
In addition to the real estate business, Wanda Movies, Wanda Plaza, AMC, etc. are all facing difficulties to varying degrees.
Both Wanda Film’s revenue and net profit fell last year, and its losses in the first quarter of this year dropped by more than 200% compared with the same period last year. In the first half of the year, Wanda Film's revenue fell by more than 70% year-on-year, and its net profit attributable to the parent company plunged nearly 400% year-on-year, with a loss of 1.6 billion.
At the same time, AMC's stock price continues to fall, debt levels are high, and cash flow is tight. Even Wanda Plaza, which once had the greatest advantage, has now lost its competitiveness in head-to-head competition with SKP, Longhu Tianjie and others.
Wang Jianlin is 66 years old this year. His own Wanda is still in the process of transformation, and Wang Sicong’s situation is even more difficult to clean up. In other words, even if Wanda itself is doing well, Wanda is not owned by Wang Jianlin alone, and Wanda cannot repay Wang Sicong’s debt.
Wang Sicong’s debt can only be paid by himself. Some time ago, Wang Sicong started a game sparring business on the "Bixin Sparring" app, with an hourly salary of 666 yuan, and has currently served 5 people.