Finance

China’s ‘Netflix’ iQiyi to open theme park with VR based on its shows

Published

3 months ago

March 14, 2025

Chinese videostreaming company iQiyi announced March 13, 2025, it will open a theme park later in the year in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province.

iQIYI

BEIJING — Chinese videostreaming platform iQiyi announced Thursday it plans later this year to open its first full-fledged theme park in China based on characters from its own shows.

The forthcoming “iQiyi Land” is set to open in the city of Yangzhou in Jiangsu province, just over two hours from Shanghai by high-speed train. The company said the theme park will include seven types of attractions — including immersive theater, interactive film sets and experiences that use virtual reality — largely based on characters from iQiyi’s films and television dramas.

It’s the latest company to bet that local consumers will spend more on experiences, despite tepid retail sales.

Legoland is opening its first China resort in Shanghai this summer, while Warner Bros. Discovery last month announced it is opening a “Harry Potter Studio Tour” in 2027 in the same city. Chinese toy company Pop Mart opened a themed “Pop Land” in Beijing in late 2023, which has become the most popular attraction in the city’s business district, according to rankings from Dianping.

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IQiyi’s planned theme park builds on the company’s recent success with VR-specific attractions.

The company has developed technology that combines VR headsets with moving platforms — giving visitors the impression that they are walking, riding on boats or sitting in a flying carriage. That means a theme park-like experience can be compressed into a space as small as a square just 57 feet long.

Since iQiyi’s first dedicated VR experience opened in Shanghai two years ago, the company has worked with business partners to open more than 40 locations in at least 20 Chinese cities. One VR experience based on iQiyi’s “Strange Tales of the Tang Dynasty: Journey to the West” gained more than 100,000 visitors in its first year of opening, according to the company.

VR, gaming and artificial intelligence have enabled the emergence of “distributed” theme parks that are more compact, interactive and able to iterate content more quickly, Hang Zhang, senior vice president at iQiyi, said in a Chinese statement translated by CNBC.

He said some of the VR-based experiences will first be released in iQiyi Land before they’re launched in other venues.

IQiyi shares closed nearly 3% higher in U.S. trading Thursday and are up 14% for the year so far.

Post-Covid growth

Mainland China’s theme park revenue is forecast to exceed 480 billion yuan ($67 billion) this year, with more than 500 million visitors, according to data shared by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions. That would be up exponentially from 30.39 billion yuan recorded across 86 major theme parks in mainland China in 2023, just after Covid-19 pandemic controls ended, the data showed.

Parks are increasingly using a mix of virtual reality to engage guests, while using AI tools to manage crowds, the association said. It added that parks are also combining global intellectual property franchises with domestic narratives in China.

The association announced Wednesday that the head of Disney Parks International would speak at its Asia expo this summer in Shanghai.

Disney, whose Disneyland in Shanghai opened in 2016, reported a 28% year-on-year increase in international parks and experiences operating income in the quarter ended Dec. 28, in contrast with a 5% decline in the U.S.

Comcast, whose Universal Studios Beijing opened in 2021, said higher revenue at its international theme parks offset lower guest attendance at its U.S. parks in the fourth quarter.

A tough environment

Tourism has been a rare bright spot in China’s otherwise lackluster consumer market. The consumer price index, an indicator of domestic demand, rose by just 0.2% last year while the tourism component increased by 3.5%.

China’s plan to boost consumption this year called specifically for developing the experience economy. IQiyi has previously worked with a local tourism board to produce a television drama set in a remote part of China, drawing visitors.

However, competition in content remains fierce. IQiyi reported an 8% drop in 2024 revenue to 29.23 billion yuan, reversing a 10% increase the prior year.

Theme park projects can also face delays.

A Legoland in western China’s Sichuan province was originally scheduled to open by 2023. When CNBC contacted operator Merlin Entertainments about the project, the company only emphasized the summer opening of Legoland in Shanghai this summer.

Disclosure: Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC.

Finance

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Published

2 days ago

June 6, 2025

Business Finance News

Finance

Swiss government proposes tough new capital rules in major blow to UBS

Published

2 days ago

June 6, 2025

Business Finance News

A sign in German that reads “part of the UBS group” in Basel on May 5, 2025.

Fabrice Coffrini | AFP | Getty Images

The Swiss government on Friday proposed strict new capital rules that would require banking giant UBS to hold an additional $26 billion in core capital, following its 2023 takeover of stricken rival Credit Suisse.

The measures would also mean that UBS will need to fully capitalize its foreign units and carry out fewer share buybacks.

“The rise in the going-concern requirement needs to be met with up to USD 26 billion of CET1 capital, to allow the AT1 bond holdings to be reduced by around USD 8 billion,” the government said in a Friday statement, referring to UBS’ holding of Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds.

The Swiss National Bank said it supported the measures from the government as they will “significantly strengthen” UBS’ resilience.

“As well as reducing the likelihood of a large systemically important bank such as UBS getting into financial distress, this measure also increases a bank’s room for manoeuvre to stabilise itself in a crisis through its own efforts. This makes it less likely that UBS has to be bailed out by the government in the event of a crisis,” SNB said in a Friday statement.

‘Too big to fail’

UBS has been battling the specter of tighter capital rules since acquiring the country’s second-largest bank at a cut-price following years of strategic errors, mismanagement and scandals at Credit Suisse.

The shock demise of the banking giant also brought Swiss financial regulator FINMA under fire for its perceived scarce supervision of the bank and the ultimate timing of its intervention.

Swiss regulators argue that UBS must have stronger capital requirements to safeguard the national economy and financial system, given the bank’s balance topped $1.7 trillion in 2023, roughly double the projected Swiss economic output of last year. UBS insists it is not “too big to fail” and that the additional capital requirements — set to drain its cash liquidity — will impact the bank’s competitiveness.

At the heart of the standoff are pressing concerns over UBS’ ability to buffer any prospective losses at its foreign units, where it has, until now, had the duty to back 60% of capital with capital at the parent bank.

Higher capital requirements can whittle down a bank’s balance sheet and credit supply by bolstering a lender’s funding costs and choking off their willingness to lend — as well as waning their appetite for risk. For shareholders, of note will be the potential impact on discretionary funds available for distribution, including dividends, share buybacks and bonus payments.

“While winding down Credit Suisse’s legacy businesses should free up capital and reduce costs for UBS, much of these gains could be absorbed by stricter regulatory demands,” Johann Scholtz, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said in a note preceding the FINMA announcement.

“Such measures may place UBS’s capital requirements well above those faced by rivals in the United States, putting pressure on returns and reducing prospects for narrowing its long-term valuation gap. Even its long-standing premium rating relative to the European banking sector has recently evaporated.”