According to the players of the IT market, the bill on the regulation of online cinemas will slow down their development

After the closure of large pirated video content sites, online cinema revenues in Russia grew significantly. However, some of them are developed by foreign companies, or at least they are investors of services. And in current conditions, foreign financing is not always beneficial. At least, experts say so.

In the summer, the Media Communication Union (ISS) developed a bill to regulate online cinemas. One of the most important measures the ISS considers limiting the share of foreign owners: foreigners will not be able to own more than 20% of such companies. In addition, the bill imposes obligations on search engines for the pre-moderation of content. True, the amendments will not affect the services on which users post content, as well as sites with a daily audience of less than 100 thousand people.

In addition to communication operators, the ISS includes the largest media holdings - Gazprom-Media (GPM), the National Media Group, and CTC Media. Of the members of the ISS, only GMP occupies a significant market share, all the rest are independent projects.

As previously reported sources "Vedomosti", large holdings intend to launch their own project in the field of online video. It cannot be that in this way they tried to “remove” competitors.

Back in September, the working group on communications and information technologies of the Expert Council under the government criticized the bill. According to experts, the ISS bill does not solve the current problems of the industry, the measures proposed in it are redundant, and some of them are subject to incomprehensible logic.
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They consider the restriction of foreign ownership of the corruption rule leading to the monopolization of the market. It restricts companies in choosing a source of funding, wrote Vedomosti, citing experts.

If the bill is adopted in its current form, many market players will have problems. And this will allow pirated sites to re-activate.

The Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media Alexey Volin supports the initiative of the ISS. He also shares the position with the ISS that projects like the American online cinema Netflix threaten the “prospects for import substitution” in Russia. According to him, the project is criticized by people who are not deeply immersed in the problems of the industry.

This conversation with Volin took place in September. And now, the “people” and representatives of the IT market, who are not part of the ISS, have nevertheless become more deeply involved in the issue, but their attitude to the draft law is still negative.

On October 11, a meeting was held between representatives of Yandex and the ISS. Amendments to the laws "On Information" and "On Communication" are redundant, they will have a negative impact on competition in Russia, representatives of an IT company explained. The interlocutors did not agree.

Now Yandex and Mail.Ru Group are preparing a joint letter in the Ministry of Communications and Roskomnadzor, explaining the position on the bill.


Control over communications is already governed by existing legislation, they are convinced in Yandex. According to the company, the proposals of the ISS will only complicate and limit the work of the services and provoke an outflow of users to foreign projects.

So, many Russian services have foreign investment, and therefore foreign shareholders. “The need to restructure the owners may lead to an outflow of investments and their withdrawal from the Russian market. This will limit the access of the Russian audience to licensed video content and will lead to an outflow of users to pirated resources, ”Kommersant quotes Yandex as experts.

In addition, because of the "vague" wordings, the bill may affect almost any service, including search engines, are feared in Yandex. The document, for example, imposes obligations on search engines for pre-moderation of content, which "is contrary to common sense."

Last week, the ISS document criticized the vice-president and technical director of the Mail.Ru Group, Vladimir Gabrielyan. “We do not think that the bill meets its goals, which can be achieved for a long time by the previously adopted norms of other laws. We are also not sure that the result will not be a restriction of national services and companies. It is gratifying that the discussion has begun, let's see whether the position of Internet companies will be heard, ”noted Mail.ru Group.

The CEO of the Internet Video Association, Aleksey Byrdin, believes that the problem of control over such services can be solved by obliging them to register a Russian legal entity.

“So, when the 20-percent restriction of foreign capital in the media came into force, there was no restriction of competition, it will not happen here. In addition, we have previously explained that the requirements of the bill will not affect the sites with user content, "- said the representative of the ISS. The work on the draft law will continue, they are clarified in the ISS: “Meeting with representatives of Yandex and Mail.Ru Group was very important: with their help we will be able to develop a balanced draft law.”

In the meantime, the Russian online cinema market is growing and believes in the best.

Online cinema Tvzavr entered into an agreement with "Tricolor TV" on the integration of its new video service kino.trikolor.tv, told RBC in the press service of Tvzavr.

The plans for Tricolor TV to launch its online cinema on the portal kino.tricolor.tv became known in early October. The project was launched in test mode and officially starts work in November.

According to TelecomDaily, in 2015 Tvzavr was the fourth online cinema in Russia in terms of the number of unique content in the video library - 40 thousand, yielding to Megogo from 77 thousand, iTunes from 75 thousand and ivi with 45.1 thousand movies and TV shows.

Amedia TV in July 2016 came to an operating profit. Compared to last year, the Amediateki client base and revenues increased by more than 70%. More than half of the income of Amedia TV comes from the OTT-project. Premium services (Amediateka online project and Amedia Premium television package) connected 500 thousand subscribers.

In October, it also became known that the online cinema Netflix first bought a Russian TV series. The production company “Sreda” Alexandra Tsekalo sold the Major series to the American online cinema. The appearance of the series on the platform is expected in autumn 2016 under the name Silver Spoon.

The largest independent online cinema "TMT Consulting" and J'son & Partners is called Ivi. According to the database "SPARK-Interfax", the revenue of the service in 2015 increased by 45% and amounted to 1.06 billion rubles. The company's net loss remained at the level of 2014 - 328.9 million rubles.

The second-largest online movie theater in 2015 was Okko, with revenue of 650 million rubles.

The revenue of the legal entity of the third largest cinema Megogo - LLC "Megogo" - in the same year amounted to 316 million rubles, follows from the base "SPARK-Interfax". According to the company itself, this figure is higher - 419.4 million rubles.

The representative of the video service Tvzavr told Vedomosti that in 2015 the service revenue without VAT increased more than twice and reached 180 million rubles.

Analysts call this segment one of the fastest growing advertising in the Russian market and estimate it at 3-5 billion rubles.



According to the analytical company J`son & Partners, the volume of the online cinema market in Russia in 2015 grew by 14.7% and amounted to 5.9 billion rubles. More than 5 billion rubles in revenue accounted for advertising. According to TMT Consulting, which Vedomosti reports, the market for legal video services in Russia grew by 32% in 2015 and reached 3.4 billion rubles.