On August 7, 2019, Tencent Video gave subscribers an opportunity to watch the final six episodes of The Untamed ahead of schedule. The catch was another payment. Existing VIP members could pay RMB6 per episode or RMB30 for the complete finale package, with the final episode available only through the bundle.
Within approximately 19 hours, more than 2.6 million viewers had purchased early access. Contemporary estimates valued the sales at RMB78 million, assuming every buyer purchased the RMB30 package. The actual transaction mix wasn’t disclosed, but Tencent had demonstrated how much money a hit drama could generate beyond its subscription fee.
The appeal was obvious. Tencent already had the episodes. Moving their availability forward for paying fans created another revenue opportunity without commissioning additional programming.
The experiment also exposed a problem that would eventually bring lawsuits, consumer protection scrutiny, and the cancellation of advance-viewing charges across China’s major video services. Tencent could sell subscribers the privilege of watching sooner, but every additional payment weakened the appeal of VIP membership as the premium viewing experience.
Tencent Was Building Multiple Revenue Streams Before VIP Became the Business
Tencent had experimented with layered video monetization well before The Untamed.
In September 2013, the company announced an agreement to distribute Disney films through Hollywood VIP, its online movie service in China. The arrangement expanded a catalog of more than 1,500 titles available through subscription and transactional purchases, including films from Universal, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and Miramax.
Customers could subscribe for access to a library of movies while purchasing certain newer releases separately. Films including Oblivion, The Conjuring, and We’re the Millers were offered transactionally, with Tencent promoting availability as early as two weeks after their U.S. theatrical release.
The model combined recurring subscriptions with individual movie transactions, allowing Tencent to charge different prices across release windows while retaining customers inside its own service. Its broader online video business also monetized viewers through advertising.
Hollywood had already established the economics of charging more for earlier movie access. Tencent adapted those principles to digital distribution and later extended them into episodic programming.
By 2019, the company’s video business had reached a scale that made incremental monetization increasingly attractive.
Tencent Video ended the year with 106 million subscriptions. Yet Tencent still disclosed an annual video operating loss of just under RMB3 billion, even after reducing losses from previous levels.
A large membership base hadn’t eliminated the cost of producing original dramas, securing exclusive programming, and competing with iQiyi and Youku for audiences.
Tencent also had advantages beyond its streaming service. WeChat and QQ provided enormous consumer reach, while its digital payments and entertainment businesses supported transactions and intellectual property development.
The company could monetize successful entertainment properties through subscriptions, advertising, licensing, and other commercial relationships. Charging existing members for earlier access offered another opportunity to generate revenue from programming it had already paid to produce or distribute.
The Release Calendar Became a Pricing Mechanism
The Untamed gave Tencent a particularly attractive audience for testing additional charges. The series had developed an intensely engaged fan base, making immediate access to its conclusion especially valuable.
Tencent could preserve the ordinary VIP release schedule while allowing customers who valued speed to pay extra.
The approach effectively separated viewers by their willingness to wait. Less enthusiastic subscribers could watch on the existing schedule. Dedicated fans could pay for episodes before everyone else.
Serialized dramas made the arrangement commercially useful. Social media discussions, spoilers, and anticipation surrounding major plot developments increased the value of being among the first viewers to finish a series.
Tencent expanded the approach in December 2019 with Joy of Life, another popular Chinese drama distributed through Tencent Video and iQiyi.
Ordinary VIP members could already watch six episodes ahead of free viewers. Under the new advance on-demand arrangement, members could pay RMB3 per episode or purchase a promotional RMB50 package to maintain an additional six-episode advantage on update days.
The RMB50 package was a limited-time offer scheduled to expire on December 16. Its disappearance after that date was the expiration of the promotion, rather than a withdrawal of the model following consumer complaints. Individual episode purchases remained available.
The pricing created three access levels for the same programming. Free audiences followed the standard schedule, VIP members watched earlier, and VIP members paying additional charges received the latest available episodes.
Tencent could now monetize each series through multiple release windows inside its own service.
There was another consequence. The company had an incentive to preserve a meaningful delay between membership levels because the time advantage was what customers were purchasing.
The greater the urgency surrounding a hit series, the more valuable that delay became.
That gave Tencent a new way to increase revenue per paying viewer, but it also created tension between the commercial value of premium access and the benefits already promised to subscribers.
The Second Paywall Became a Contractual Problem
The Joy of Life charges generated substantial consumer backlash. Viewers questioned why VIP membership no longer provided access to the latest episodes, particularly when early viewing had been one of the service’s selling points.
The complaints eventually became legal disputes.
In June 2020, Beijing Internet Court ruled against iQiyi in a case brought by an existing VIP member over the additional charges for Joy of Life. The court found that certain contractual changes introduced after the customer had purchased his membership couldn’t be applied to him.
The ruling also invalidated portions of the membership agreement that improperly restricted consumer rights.
Tencent faced a similar legal challenge.
In August 2020, a Shenzhen court ruled that certain provisions in Tencent’s VIP membership agreement were invalid and that its newly introduced advance-viewing terms couldn’t be applied retroactively to the plaintiff’s existing membership. Tencent was ordered to compensate the customer RMB1,500 for documented expenses.
Neither ruling prohibited the underlying early-access business model. The courts recognized that streaming services could develop additional paid offerings, subject to existing contractual obligations and consumer protections.
The commercial implications were substantial. Tencent could introduce new products and charge additional fees, but changing the meaning of a membership after customers had purchased it exposed the company to legal challenges.
The criticism continued into 2021.
In September, the China Consumers Association challenged several practices involving online video memberships, including additional early-viewing charges, restrictions requiring customers to purchase episodes sequentially, and changes to release schedules that potentially reduced existing membership benefits.
The association also raised concerns about advertising privileges and automatic renewals, reflecting broader dissatisfaction with how services managed paid memberships.
On October 4, 2021, Tencent Video announced that it would discontinue its advance on-demand service for drama series and stop updating content through the arrangement. iQiyi and Youku announced similar cancellations.
Tencent had proven that customers would pay for earlier access. Consumer expectations and contractual obligations had limited how aggressively the service could monetize that demand.
Tencent Brought Back the Upsell Through a Higher Membership Tier
In May 2024, Joy of Life 2 premiered on Tencent Video, nearly five years after the first season had helped make advance on-demand controversial.
Tencent again offered different release schedules to different paying customers.
This time, the additional access was attached to its SVIP membership. Regular VIP members received episodes under the standard paid release schedule, while SVIP members could watch one additional episode ahead on designated update days.
SVIP already provided other benefits, including expanded access across TV screens. Tencent was now using early viewing as another incentive to purchase the higher membership.
The arrangement shifted monetization from individual episode transactions toward a broader premium membership package.
A higher recurring membership fee could generate revenue throughout the subscription period, rather than relying entirely on one-off purchases tied to a particular series. Bundling early viewing with device privileges also gave Tencent more ways to justify the additional charge.
But viewers again questioned the expanding membership structure, including the prospect of yet another tier above SVIP.
Tencent had eliminated the original advance on-demand service while preserving the ability to charge more for preferential access to popular programming.
The change also gave the company an opportunity to define different membership privileges before customers purchased them, reducing the contractual problems created by introducing new charges into existing memberships.
Its experience demonstrated how a controversial transactional product could evolve into an established premium-tier benefit.
Western Streaming Services Are Testing the Same Limits
Disney introduced a comparable form of time-based monetization in September 2020 when Disney+ offered Mulan through Premier Access for $29.99 on top of the regular subscription.
Subscribers who purchased Premier Access could watch the movie before it became available to all Disney+ members that December.
Disney’s arrangement addressed pandemic-era theatrical disruption and involved a new film rather than episodes of a continuing series. Both models allowed a streaming service to collect additional revenue from subscribers willing to pay for earlier access.
Western streaming services have subsequently extended premium pricing beyond release timing.
In April 2026, Amazon introduced Prime Video Ultra, a $4.99 monthly upgrade on top of Prime membership. The premium package includes ad-free viewing, additional simultaneous streams, expanded download allowances, and exclusive access to 4K/UHD streaming.
Amazon is charging customers more for a collection of viewing privileges attached to content available through the broader Prime Video service.
The strategy sits alongside the widening price gap between advertising-supported and ad-free streaming subscriptions.
Netflix, Disney+, and other major streaming services increasingly charge different prices based on advertising exposure, viewing quality, and account features. Transactional releases and premium memberships provide additional opportunities to segment spending.
These approaches have different economics. An advertising-supported subscription can preserve reach while generating revenue from viewing. A premium upgrade can increase recurring revenue from customers who value particular features. An early-access transaction captures demand surrounding a specific piece of programming.
Tencent’s historical experience highlights the risk of changing which privileges customers receive at each price.
Higher-priced memberships are easier to sustain when they introduce clearly differentiated benefits. Moving a previously available feature behind another payment can make the underlying subscription less attractive, even when the service has added no new content costs.
The Streaming Wars Take
The value of another streaming payment tier depends on how much incremental revenue it produces after accounting for changes in customer behavior.
A hit series can generate substantial transaction revenue from fans seeking earlier access. That revenue becomes less attractive if the offer damages renewal rates, increases cancellations, or makes subscribers less willing to purchase premium memberships in the future.
Tencent’s original early-access experiments concentrated revenue around individual dramas. Its later SVIP approach offered a recurring payment structure with several membership benefits.
Each arrangement creates different incentives.
A transactional release encourages a service to maximize demand during a particular content window. A premium subscription requires the service to justify the higher price across multiple billing periods. Both depend on customers believing that the additional payment delivers sufficient value.
The Joy of Life disputes exposed another consideration: membership benefits carry contractual obligations. Services cannot assume that adding a new premium tier gives them unrestricted freedom to reduce privileges customers previously purchased.
As streaming businesses develop increasingly complex pricing structures, the relevant financial measures extend beyond immediate upgrade sales. Changes in average revenue per customer need to be evaluated alongside cancellations, downgrades, retention, and the contribution of advertising or other revenue streams.
An effective upgrade increases the amount customers willingly spend while preserving the value of the existing subscription. An ineffective one can generate short-term revenue by making the lower-priced product less attractive, increasing pressure on customers to upgrade or leave.
Tencent’s early-access experiments demonstrated substantial consumer willingness to pay for faster viewing. Its later retreat and restructuring showed the limits of extracting that spending from existing members.
A higher-priced tier creates durable value when customers want what it adds. The economics become far less attractive when they’re paying to recover something their original subscription already provided.
The Streaming Wars is intentionally ad-free
We don’t run display ads. Not because we can’t, but because we don’t believe in them.
They interrupt the reading experience. They cheapen the work. And they burn advertisers’ money on impressions nobody actually wants.
So we chose a different model.
We say the things people in this industry are already thinking but don’t say out loud. We connect the dots beyond the headline and focus on explaining why things matter to the people working in this business.
If you believe industry coverage can exist without clutter and interruption, you can support it here → SUPPORT TSW.
Support is optional. But it directly funds research and continued coverage — and helps prove this model can work.
Support TSW →
