Synergistic Content, Strategic Contracts: Optimal Licensing in Online Video Supply Chains with Platform-Produced Complementarities

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-980-3_21How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Online video supply chain; platform-produced content; complementary effects; buyout contract; account-sharing contract; Stackelberg game

Abstract

This paper investigates how cross-content synergies between licensed programs and platform-produced content (PPC) affect the optimal licensing contract structure in the online video supply chain. A sequential-move Stackelberg game is formulated, wherein a content studio sets quality and a platform determines pricing under two contractual regimes: buyout and account-sharing. Two empirically motivated spillover parameters are embedded to capture (i) the demand boost from licensed content to PPC and (ii) the reverse spillover from PPC to the studio’s portfolio. First, the studio’s preference exhibits a structural break determined by the relationship between unit copyright fee and account-sharing parameters. When the unit copyright fee is relatively low compared to the account-sharing price weighted by consumer quality sensitivity, studios prefer account-sharing contracts in high-demand markets but favor buyout contracts in low-demand markets. When the unit copyright fee is relatively high, this preference reverses. The complementarity effects from platform content systematically reduce the market size thresholds required for account-sharing adoption. Second, the platform’s choice follows a threshold rule where account-sharing becomes optimal when baseline market potential exceeds a critical level determined by production costs, account-sharing parameters, and copyright fees, all adjusted by complementarity strength. This demonstrates how backward spillovers make revenue-sharing attractive even at smaller market sizes. Third, supply chain efficiency exhibits non-monotonic behavior with respect to contract parameters, where complementarity expands account-sharing optimality regions while simultaneously amplifying buyout’s inherent market-share advantages. Although account-sharing aligns incentives and maximizes total supply-chain profit under strong complementarity, its implementability remains constrained by frictions in per-video revenue attribution.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Xinyue Xing
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/26
TI  - Synergistic Content, Strategic Contracts: Optimal Licensing in Online Video Supply Chains with Platform-Produced Complementarities
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 5th International Conference on Business Administration and Data Science (BADS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 222
EP  - 232
SN  - 2352-538X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-980-3_21
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-980-3_21
ID  - Xing2025
ER  -