Sandbox Network sets up China affiliate for business expansion

South Korea’s largest multichannel network (MCN) company Sandbox Network Inc. has made another major step forward in expanding its China business.

Sandbox said on July 20 that it established a local entity in China, named Shanghai Sandbox Media, about a year after its entry to the Chinese market by debuting five teams of content creators last August on Bilibili, commonly referred to as the “YouTube of China.”

Sandbox, as a leading MCN, provides a wide variety of services to its content creators ranging from channel management, content distribution, advertising, live commerce to business expansion into the music and gaming sectors.

The startup expects that the new company in China will offer more business opportunities to its creators based in Korea. Sandbox said that its Chinese entity will offer various services including localization, subtitle creation and editing, digital rights management, viewer analysis, platform analysis as well as partnership-building with the local firms.

Sandbox said that Shanghai Sandbox Media will also strengthen influencer marketing and e-commerce initiatives in China. The Chinese company will also employ more specialists for content localization and corporate risk management.

Sandbox so far has debuted a total of 63 teams of content creators on China’s Bilibili platform, achieving a total of 4 million subscribers and 170 million views. 16 out of the 63 teams, including planD, MilkyBokiTan, The Soy and Raon Lee, have more than 100,000 subscribers.

Sandbox in April was the first non-Chinese MCN to be ranked on Bilibili’s top 20 list of the most influential MCNs. The company said it will also debut its artists on other popular Chinese platforms such as Xigua Video, Douyin and Xiaohongshu.

Daniel Cho edited this article.