IN PROFILE
IN PROFILE: B’IN LIVE TPi travels to Taipei, Taiwan, to meet the B’in Live team and learn more about its turnkey business model, the ramifications that COVID-19 had on the live events industry in the region and the company’s ambitious plans for the future.
Words: Stew Hume Photos: B’in Live
For TPi Awards 2022, with events slowly starting to reemerge post-pandemic, we made the decision to include livestream projects within the Production of the Year category. One of the shortlisted performances was Mayday’s Fly To 2021. With their tour temporarily grounded, the Taiwanese band opted to create several online concerts to keep fans engaged – one of which took place on New Year’s Eve and was watched by 29 million fans. A showcase of the potential reach of online performances, the level of production in these livestreams was on another scale to anything seen before, with the band playing in numerous locations and show design and cinematography clearly high on the priorities list. In fact, TPi was so intrigued by the shortlisted performance that we did some digging to learn about the people behind the scenes of Mayday’s production, which eventually led to us sitting in the Taipei office of Ocean Chou, CEO of B’in Live. With restrictions lifting in Taiwan in late 2022 and the country opening its borders to travellers without the need to quarantine, we took the opportunity to witness JJ Lin’s headline show at Rakuten Taoyuan Baseball Stadium [see TPi #273] as well as visit the offices of B’in Live. Formed in 2014, B’in Live
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was an amalgamation of four companies that were involved in various aspects of the live events industry – from show design to equipment rental and production services. “All four companies had worked together for a long time, but we thought we could have a greater impact if we joined under one banner,” stated Chou. The CEO went on to explain that the company had two main goals from the outset. The first was to implement better connections between show creators and those deploying the hardware for shows by providing a turnkey solution under one banner. The second was to create a company that had a different model from its competitors. “Too often in Taiwan, you find companies get passed down to offspring of the owners, but this relies heavily on the children wanting to work in the same field,” stated Chou. “This is how we wanted B’in Live to differ in that everyone working here really wants to be in this industry – it’s a business built on passion.” From its Taiwanese HQ, over the years the company has built a plethora of services from providing the technical infrastructure for concerts, festivals, galas and award ceremonies to offering design and pre production services. Not only that, but B’in Live has also been heavily involved in IP licencing,
with its own label signing a new boy group. The fact that the company not only provides the infrastructure for live events but also has a hand in creating the pop groups that play them certainly takes the concept of a ‘turnkey solution’ further than ever. Over the two floors of B’in Live’s main office, we got a small look at some of the various shows the company was working on from original sketches and detailed CAD drawings all the way to people heading out to oversee the in-person deployment of a performance. “We are the first company in the region to adopt this turnkey solution to our business,” commented Chou. “We’d heard others had tried to replicate what we were doing but they were not successful.” Although the vast majority of B’in Live’s work takes place within Taiwan, having worked on nearly 10,000 events since 2014, it has also worked on a number of events in China, Singapore as well as a few excursions to Europe, North America and Australia. The company also has bases in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai as well as three offices in Taiwan. “We employ around 272 people across our two warehouses in Taiwan,” stated Chou. “We’ve made an effort to expand to other regions over the years, but we still want our base to be Taiwan,” emphasised Chou. “We have the