Reaching the pinnacle of Yandex's Fantech, our digital domain: "Upon summiting, we discovered an extended mountain range"

Reaching the pinnacle of Yandex's Fantech, our digital domain: "Upon summiting, we discovered an extended mountain range"

When presented with the possibility of taking over Fantech, what was racing through your mind? Did you immediately accept the offer?

When the CEO of Yandex, Artem Savinsky, offered me this position, I took some time to mull it over. Becoming the head of a multi-brand technological empire like Fantech, with nearly 1,500 employees, was a big responsibility. I've spent eight years climbing my way up within the company, starting from within and knowing the ins and outs of the products. However, this would be my first time leading a business on such a scale. After considering the offer for a month, I decided to give it a go, spending another half-year preparing to transition from overseeing the entertainment business to leading Fantech.

"If Content Ain't Bold and Risky, We Aren't Interested"

- Last year, Yandex announced plans to invest 100 billion rubles into the development of the creative industry by 2024-2025 - for buying rights, content production, and events. From 2021 to 2023, Yandex's investment in content amounted to 73 billion rubles. What sparked this increase and what tasks do you aim to achieve with these investments?

We've already invested more than half of the promised 100 billion, and our investments continue to grow because our business is growing faster than the market. In 2024, we had revenue of over 98 billion rubles, with a strong growth rate of 47%. Our content investments include licensing, books, films, series, sports, and our original production endeavors. Additionally, we've started investing in non-content scenarios, such as offering 50% cashback on cinema tickets.

In addition to content investments, last year we deeply integrated "Plus" with Yandex's city services and fintech to make the subscription more tangible. Along with "Yandex Pay," we added increased cashback, higher interest rates on savings products for Plus users, and better installment plans (Split) in "Plus." It took a lot of resources to roll out these benefits to the entire base.

Or how we integrated "Afisha" into Yandex Go. There's some real technological magic happening there, where you get a reminder a couple of hours before a performance, saying "You're going to the theater today, think about how you'll get there, there are these options." I'll say this without any false modesty: I discovered this scenario as a user and was absolutely amazed at how smoothly and naturally it was. Once it happens to you once, you can't believe it could be any different.

Related Material I'm not quite ready to reveal the exact breakdown of how much money goes to each area, but you can get a general idea based on the range of services we offer and the industries we operate in. We have three main services in "Plus" - "Yandex Books," "Yandex Music," and "Kinopoisk," which cover video, reading, and audiobook streaming, plus music streaming, and there's also sports as an emerging area.

Another thing we've started investing in is near-content products, like games, which is a division within "Plus Studio." We're creating our own IP and investing in some joint partnership products to start offering something to users in this industry as well.

It's worth mentioning that in January we bought the brands Comic Con and Igromir and we'll be reviving the main pop culture and gaming festival. The "Comic Con Igromir 2025" festival will take place on December 12-14 at "Timiryazev Center." I hope we'll be able to share some of our gaming innovations there.

"Our Market Could Double by 2029 and Reach 2 Trillion Rubles"

- What are your hopes for the gaming direction?

• We've reached a point where our business is profitable and growing, so we can afford to explore new directions. Fantatech has been profitable and rapidly growing for two years now. This allows us not only to improve existing services but also to expand them. There are different types of entertainment, but their number is quite limited, and we're looking for a place for our future services among them. We're starting to turn our investment attention towards this.

- When do you expect these investments to start paying off?

• They eventually justify themselves because it's a share of our revenue. We know for sure that among ecosystem subscriptions last year we grew faster than the market, and each of the services within the subscription grew faster than its closest competitors. But there's a nuance in that we predict that by 2025, the streaming and subscription market will grow by about 25%, to around 210-215 billion rubles.

And you?

• We plan to grow above the market. But it naturally reaches a ceiling, because currently, "Plus" has 41.3 million subscribers, which is half of all households in Russia. There was an interesting moment: when I took on the role of CEO, I needed to analyze what I was leading and look at where this business could go next. To understand the possibilities in the market where you're already the champion in all disciplines, profitable, and everything is going well, we needed to change our perspective.

Related Material - What did you do for this?

• We thought: what if Yandex FanTech works not on the market of streaming entertainment, but on the entire Russian entertainment market, with all its online and offline activities and varieties of monetization models - advertising, subscriptions, and others? This is a market that is part of a larger creative economy and seems poised for significant growth. According to our estimates, it could practically double from its current state by 2029 and reach 2 trillion rubles. And when you start looking at yourself not through the lens of where you've already reached, but where you could be and what we can do to make this forecast come true, it becomes much more interesting to plan the future of FanTech.

In essence, this is our strategy for the next 4-5 years - to play a big game on the entertainment market as a whole and help it develop in those industries where it's necessary, so that we can reach such a market volume.

What is your assessment of the creative economy based on? Can you handle the doubling?

• Yes, I'm confident we can, because we've proven over eight years that if you strategically invest in something and create great products, you see a leap in several industries, exciting content events, and new technological solutions. They give a common boost to the entire industry.

Currently, we have platforms that already excel in various entertainment scenarios: video platforms, music platforms, the largest ticket service in the country, and a book service. We have new ambitions in games and sports. And we have experience, largely tied to my past work, in cross-service, convergent products, where IP begins to flow from one scenario to another, multiplying itself, returning money to multiple industries, not just one, and stimulating the creation of new IP or the same.

I believe these starting components are sufficient to form ambitions on this large entertainment market.

"Reaching the Peak, We Found that it's Not the Only One - and there are many to climb"

• Firstly, continuing your analogy, we found that the peak is not alone - there's a whole mountain range, and there are many to climb.
• Secondly, I have a commitment to grow the core subscription business, maintain high product quality, as our entertainment ecosystem's subscription relies on it. And I have an unconditional commitment to shareholders to maintain profitability, as only a profitable business can discuss development and moving forward, not worry about survival or justify its existence.
• Most importantly, it's about preserving and multiplying partnerships, which is what it's all about. What is the creative economy and the service within it now? It's largely about trust. For the eight years I've been here, we've been saying the same thing every month: we have to negotiate with subscribers to extend our relationship. No matter how beautiful, smart, or wonderful we are, they make that decision every month. Or not.

Content is a very dynamic thing. If there's trust between you and your audience, and you don't part ways (because losing a subscriber ends your business), it opens up huge possibilities. You can plan ahead, expect your subscriber base to grow, understand your ARPU and how many user contacts you need. But remember, the relationship can end at any time.

Meanwhile, there's a larger creative industry that also maintains its relationship with you. It sees you as a bridge between the audience and itself, with its own requests, wishes, and expectations for content and events. You build trust there too.

The story of product resilience and relationships is the "fan" in "FanTech." There's also "tech," which is a new challenge for my team. In the last three years, advancements in generative neural networks have put pressure on companies like Yandex to immediately restructure many processes. We're already changing our support, taking on increased responsibilities with engineering teams to integrate "copilots" for coding and auto-tests.

We're starting to adapt innovations in operational processes. In this sense, I need to closely monitor what's happening. We have a big ambition to gather all entertainment under one roof, while also maintaining the stability of our core business and facing the challenge of technology that can't be ignored or delayed. Everything happens at once.

So, I think our strategy comes down to these fundamental things - maintain, develop, and adapt to significant world changes with curiosity. I genuinely believe that LLMs have already changed the world, and we, at "Yandex" and our industry partners, need to adapt these changes to our advantage.

• Like many, you're currently exploring ways to integrate neural networks and large language models into your products. You already have rich experience in this area with "Yandex Music."

Yes, in the super-technological "Yandex Music," machine learning has been present for quite some time, and LLMs provide super boosts. A recent study by Romir found that 80% of residents in large cities listen to music in streams using recommendation systems, making them the primary reason. According to their independent measurement, "My Wave" is the most accurate recommendation product, so "My Wave" is already partly not just a product name, but a way to listen to music. Last year, we learned to change the stream "on the fly" - a big change for listeners, now "My Wave" responds to changes in preferences and feelings instantly.

Related Material Books also have many modern technologies, for example, thanks to LLMs, we have seamless transitions between audio and text. This is a magical effect for users, but under the hood, there's a complex trained model that makes everything very precise and unnoticeable to humans. This includes virtual narrators: there are tens of thousands of books that have never had audio versions, and virtual narrators remove the barrier when there's no time to read or when eyes are tired, etc.

In products, adaptation is already very high. Under the hood, in terms of engineers and development, there are big changes and implementations.

"We Have a Wealth of High-Quality Contacts with People and Services"

• What stands out is how Yandex works with IP: for example, with "King and Jester," besides the series, the company did an exhibition at Winzavod, promoted the Prince's books, made music videos. You place great importance on what can accompany and surround the content itself. How does this justify itself from a business perspective?
• This is very economically justified. Content has a short lifespan, but it takes a long time to create - two to three years for video content, and then it lives for a month and disappears. If someone, for example, connects with a series, feels that spark of interest and love, those relationships will end in eight hours - that's too short. It's important to find a way to prolong those relationships if they occur.

About "King and Jester"? In March 2023, the series was released, from April to October, an exhibition was held at Winzavod, then it moved to St. Petersburg and continued for a long time. Then a symphonic show was launched, traveling across the country. We updated all the merchandise picks, licensed on "Yandex Market." The group's tracks also took off in our streaming "Chart." This content cycle is two-year, not eight-hour. We get a lot of quality contacts with people and services, very meaningful ones.

Many chains emerge that allow for stable investment of money and effort. We've just finished shooting the film "King and Jester Forever" and have a rough idea of how to plan its release. This is the first economic effect.

Related Material The second, perhaps less obvious but certainly important one, is that if you've hit a content-human intersection and understood content economics broadly, you can plan any sequels with much more awareness. There's less risk. You don't need to keep in mind that so much money will go to production and so much to marketing, because marketing is no longer necessary. You can redirect that money to production and boost quality. A lot of organic effects emerge. At "Kinopoisk," we have a very appealing mechanism - "Will Watch." It's indicative, very open, and you can roughly know if a million people are waiting for the film or a hundred thousand, if there's a relationship with the audience or not.

The third effect we noticed after "King and Jester" is that a proven case by any market player gives the industry as a whole confidence to plan five to seven-year IP work cycles. Three films, two series, an exhibition, an ice show, something else... New content franchises have sprouted like mushrooms, and the industry is now thinking not in terms of "made a movie, saw the result, saw if there's money, thought, returned in three years," but, for example, when planning "The Wizard of the Emerald City," the second and third parts, licensing partnerships, a play, or something else are planned simultaneously.

Returning to my thought about creative economy: when it stops being seen as strict venture capital, when long-term planning layers emerge, any investors can come into the industry without fear of wasting their money.

"Kinopoisk" is expecting a big update in the IV quarter"

• Do you feel like you're playing the role of a locomotive that's pulling the industry and attracting investors?
• It's not about what you say, but what they say about you. Any successful precedents immediately turn the industry of investors in the direction we need. For example, we had a huge success with the musical "Nothing to Fear, I'm With You," which entered the "Book of Records of Russia" and grossed 3.4 billion rubles. Previously, this was a fairly narrow market, somewhat stigmatized for various reasons. And now, new high-quality musicals are appearing here and there, and there's competition for theater venues.

"King and Jester," in turn, destigmatized musical series. Historically, it was considered a niche genre, not everyone's cup of tea, "like 'La La Land,' that's still something." And then "Combination" came along, "Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears" is in the works, "Daisies" successfully opened the year, etc.

Taking a non-our example: when "Cheburashka" had a huge success, the entire industry started working on Soviet fairy tales, reimagining old universes. I think investors don't need us to declare anything. They look and say, "Okay, there's this business case, we're ready to participate." And in this sense, compared to the streaming market, we're quite transparent in our metrics. "Kinopoisk" currently has 16.5 million MAU. We have a very clear and understandable metric - paying subscribers. If title "X" gathered 3 million such subscribers, any person with a calculator can understand its profitability.

Related Material - Further, remarkably, about all other online players, we don't know. What do we know? That "Kinopoisk" is the largest, and the second is either "IVI" or Wink, but this is uncertain. Beyond that, it's just a gray area, a random set of metrics: household viewership, combined views, paid-unpaid, view-throughs, etc. In short, a completely unclear thing that doesn't allow anyone to understand: whether the 500 million invested in a single content unit has been recouped or not?

"Kinopoisk" has been profitable for two years now, and its current content monetization model is a robust business model. Plus, "Kinopoisk" has been changing significantly over the past two years and has a strong focus on partnerships, which is evident in its content offerings. Partnership economics are much more stable than content venture capital. This includes brand predictability, user experience, and then what's inside "Kinopoisk" is technology connecting content and audience. This routing provides market monetization. For example, if a TV channel produces content, to increase its production cost, it needs to understand where it will get additional money. "Kinopoisk" establishes these connections because it has a very large audience and can further refine these connecting rules.

Here's a spoiler: "Kinopoisk" is expecting a major update in the IV quarter.

- Technological?

• Product, where partnership will be an even greater focus of the "Kinopoisk" product as a platform. Details to follow. But this is a natural continuation of the strategy of the past two years: we have prepared both the technological and product base for this, so that we can significantly change it this year. It will become even more platform-based, even more valuable to partners.

Last year, we spent a lot of resources and money to gather this very large audience and send them to the cinema thanks to cashback and marketing support for major releases. We invested a lot in supporting "The Emerald City of Oz" in the New Year's battle, and the distributor certainly attributes part of the success of their box office to us. Currently, we are supporting "Father 2. The Grandfather." About 10-15 major releases per year.

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"At "Yandex," We Actually Don't Mind if Someone Takes a Break from Their Smart TV, Steps Away, and Goes to the Cinema"

- It may sound paradoxical, but we at online streaming actually don't mind if someone takes a break from their Smart TV, steps away, and goes to the cinema. We even encourage this with all our product mechanisms, knowing for certain that big Russian cinema is born in theaters. If a film succeeds there, we expect guaranteed success on our platform and increased value in our catalog. It's always better for a film to debut in the cinema first. Therefore, "Kinopoisk" acts as an audience router: "Please, go to the cinema and make sure there's active life there."

"Plus Studio" is one of the driving forces of our growth, with big business ambitions.

• **"Plus Studio" will release its projects this year, including continuations of successful "Kinopoisk" series like "Dishonest in Petersburg". Upcoming are the large-scale fantasy series "Eterna" and "Method 3", the sequel to "The Monastery", "Major in Dubai", new episodes of "Cyberslav", but our current focus is on what we're producing or completing this year. Big cross-service stories in the following periods include our Pelevin adaptation, the big comic book universe series "Furia", and "Atomic Heart". There are also several IP projects that could become big cross-service stories.

So, "Plus Studio" continues to produce evergreen multi-season series for "Kinopoisk" and aims to create big cross-service stories that could reach a wider audience, not just our Fantach and "Yandex," but the broader entertainment market. This is exactly what should be one of the driving forces of our growth.

"We've Already Been a Producer for "Kinopoisk" Films and Series like "Patient Zero" and "The Monastery","King and Jester" and "Games", as well as Major Grom films and Guy Ritchie's projects "Translator", "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Affairs", and "Outlaw". What other projects can we expect from you as a producer?"

While I'm focusing my efforts on Fantech as the CEO, my team continues to work on various projects in a producer capacity. Here's a list of some exciting projects you can look forward to:

1. Tender to Myself: This film adaptation of Olga Primchenko's novel is currently in pre-production, with casting and other preparations well underway.
2. Nothing to Fear, I'm With You sequel: We've already announced a follow-up to the highly successful musical that broke records in Russia last year. Details about the story, cast, and release date are still under wraps, but we promise it will be just as exciting and entertaining as the original.
3. Boston Waltz: This musical project is a collaboration with Ilya Krivitsky and Mikhail Mirronov, and it's going to be a treat for all fans of love stories set in the vibrant city of Boston.
4. "Doors" Universe: We're working on expanding our popular "Doors" universe, which we co-created with "Channel One." The new installments will delve deeper into the fascinating mythology and characters that have captured audiences' imaginations.

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Over the past three months, it's become clear that producing the upcoming Fantech is a full-time job, making it challenging to dedicate much time to other projects. Currently, I find it difficult to be everywhere at once, so I'm mostly keeping an eye on most projects, but there are some that I'm deeply committed to and plan to continue working on. These include the film adaptation of Olga Primchenko's "Tender to Myself" (preparing for filming), the adaptation of "Nothing to Fear, I'm With You," the "Doors" universe which we're steadily working on with "Channel One," the musical "Boston Waltz" in collaboration with Ilya Krivitsky and Mikhail Mirronov, and projects with the Tretyakov Gallery and Elena Prokhorova.

Plus Studio has big business ambitions and a four-to-five-year planning cycle. We also have a beautiful partnership project - the series "Star Federation," which we're working on with the film company "Vodorod" based on Kir Bulychov's "A Hundred Years Hence" universe.

At Plus Studio, we also house our gaming IPs. We expect to have Vertical Slice (a playable version with detailed gameplay elements) ready this summer for "Diamond Sword, Wooden Sword," and "Distortion." I hope we can show something at Comic Con and talk about our games. We're also working on three other games internally, aiming to have a result ready to present to the world in eight to nine months.

- "Outlaw" was supposed to be released in January 2025 but hasn't been...

"Outlaw" is currently in post-production. The release date has been pushed back, and we're currently developing a release strategy. I don't think we'll release it before the fall season. However, "Outlaw" is a charming film, shot on Tenerife a year and a half ago, starring Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal in top form. It's another film in Guy Ritchie's universe, which fans love and eagerly await, even if they didn't like his previous films.

- Why has the collaboration with Guy Ritchie been so fruitful?

There's a very practical Yandex backstory here. In 2020, we conducted a study on "Kinopoisk" - the most popular Russian and foreign directors among our audience. The top five foreign directors were, in descending order: Guy Ritchie, Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Hayao Miyazaki, and Luc Besson.

As the content director, I simply went down the list to negotiate cooperation. People want films by these directors on the platform. Notably, we were the first to offer Hayao Miyazaki's library in the Runet and showed his latest film, "The Boy and the Beast". I approached the list in order: first, Guy Ritchie, we started talks with Nolan's agents in 2021, but Hollywood partnerships paused in 2022. Meanwhile, we'd already made our first joint film with Guy Ritchie.

Between 2020 and 2025, user interests changed significantly. Today, 83% of "Kinopoisk" users watch Russian content, up from 60% in 2020. Our audience grew from 1.6 million to 16.5 million. Clearly, interests have shifted dramatically.

"When majors start returning to Russia, they'll face a very different market"

- What do you attribute this to?

• The lack of marketing for foreign releases, the accessibility of Russian content, and a significant boost in quality and series/film production. Russian superstars and brands have emerged. In March 2025, the "Kinopoisk Pro" index showed that Russian films/series accounted for 37% of viewer interest, Americans 18%, followed by South Korea, Japanese anime, etc.

It's interesting that when majors return to Russia, they'll have to compete for audience attention in a very different market. This is good news for all parties, as there's now a high bar for Russian content, stable audience interest, and growth.

- By the way, how's the situation with majors and their content? Are there any talks about bringing back Hollywood premieres and libraries to Russian platforms, like "Kinopoisk"? It's also interesting to know about music.

We, to be honest, never broke off contacts. In fact, from time to time, some great releases continue to come out - "John Wick", "Paddington 3". For instance, in February, we released a new installment of "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy" from Universal, thanks to Amediateka, and "House of the Dragon" and "The White Lotus" were available to subscribers. All connections are maintained, and when the other side is ready to return to partnerships, we will be too, but with an understanding that the audience now views Russian content not with skepticism, but rather with anticipation and love.

Material on the topic - So, the answer to the question of why some films like those by Guy Ritchie and "John Wick" are released in theaters while others are not lies in the fact that there are those who are more open and at ease with Russia, and those who are not?

Precisely. I would say that these are exaggerated fears and concerns. Nothing unusual has happened to American, British, or French distributors who sold their films in Russia besides earning revenue and audience attention. We are now awaiting "Ballerina," a spin-off of "John Wick." I know that at the Berlin Film Market, a Russian distributor bought the new installment of "Now You See Me." Some big films will continue to appear in the Russian box office, and I think pure Hollywood will gradually return as well.

"The 'cinema park' bill only regulates online cinemas, ignoring video hosting platforms, pirates, and social media."

- You've mentioned before that the content overproduction crisis has led to a global increase in content prices, with Russia seeing a 40% annual increase in TV series production costs. Is this trend continuing? Can it be reversed?

• It is continuing, but it can't be quickly reversed. What are we doing in this situation? We're consistently reducing the amount of content we produce, and what we do produce, we try to do with partners to ensure a guaranteed TV broadcast and a joint approach to production and distributed revenue. Partnership is key because it's rational. There are fewer units of content, more focus, and we're not rushing.

Material on the topic - What do you see as the main challenges facing the entertainment industry? The rising production costs? The lack of quality scripts? Perhaps regulation? Piracy?

The entertainment market is currently suffering somewhat from a lack of new content. For instance, the music industry lacks artists who can fill stadiums. "Yandex Music" has been creating a product line for artists for several years now, initially connecting young musicians with their first audience through the "Nitro" technology. If there's mutual interest, "Yandex Music" then takes the artist under its wing in "Iskra," helping them rapidly build a listener base and become part of our ecosystem's products - advertising, events, and contributing to "Plus Studio" soundtracks. We also offer monetization tools like donations and concert tickets to fill the music scene with names that can perform at clubs and stadiums within a year or two. This is a significant offline vertical that needs to be fully developed, but it's not a quick process.

Currently, there's a lot of piracy in video content, both in cinemas and online. However, the pressure is mainly on legal online cinemas. Among all content display services on the internet, online streaming services are the most regulated. We have to adhere to labeling rules, follow numerous instructions, and comply with laws against LGBT propaganda (recognized as extremist and banned in Russia). Now, the law on distribution certificates hangs over us. What are the challenges this creates? The current draft of the distribution certificate law only regulates online cinemas, ignoring video hosting platforms, pirates, and social media. I can't recall a single case where a pirate service was fined by Roskomnadzor for incorrect smoking or age labeling.

The system of distribution certificates was invented in 1993, I believe, for cinemas. When there are limited screens and showtimes, but more films than showtimes, a system is needed to regulate which films can play simultaneously. However, online cinemas can stream millions of films simultaneously, making zoning (if one film is released, another can't be shown) a rather strange mechanism.

And we'll set aside for now the order of obtaining the roll, where you have to take DVD carriers with content to the Gosfilmofond... It looks like pressure on those who comply with legislative requirements.

- Who is easiest to reach?

• Yes, and this further complicates our work. According to the law on LGBT propaganda, which has been in effect for two years, we, like other players, receive fines, but neither the law itself, nor the subordinate acts, nor the explanations of the agencies have formulated criteria that would help clearly distinguish between propaganda, demonstration, and when we can be fined. There are hundreds of thousands of titles in the catalogs of platforms, and there are no ways, technologies, or mechanisms to view and identify what is one thing and what is another. We would rather expect that if a platform consciously does not comply with the regulator's instructions, then it will be fined. But in reality, you always receive a fine as a surprise.

Related Material - If we go back to piracy: according to data from J'son & Partners Consulting, user interest in pirate resources is decreasing, and traffic is being drawn to social networks and legal video hosting sites. Nevertheless, you mentioned earlier that "pirates" are still prevalent. How do you assess the situation with the availability of such content? In particular, with the fact that it is present on perfectly legal platforms.

• In 2022, some portion of the "Kinopoisk" audience moved to alternative sources of viewing, but significantly less than we expected. To be honest, we don't have much time or resources to point fingers at our neighbors. We don't work with piracy and believe that the anti-piracy memorandum has been working quite well for a long time, protecting content if the rights holder is involved. There's a question of why, for example, foreign players didn't use the memorandum when they entered our market. For instance, we've written to Netflix many times suggesting they clean up the "pirate" content in the Runet. But currently, foreign rights holders aren't involved in anti-piracy work, they're maintaining silence, so piracy has flourished a bit.

The good news is that in the competition for time and attention, we see growth in legal content as well - in sports, books, music. In this regard, the arrangement of our own ecosystem product, in my opinion, is significantly more important than increased attention to the outside world. I don't want to sound arrogant, but we don't reflect much on fixing the world around us. But we do reflect a lot on improving the world within.

"KHL Is Not Just a Sport for Us, It's a Franchise"

- By the way, what's happening with sports at your place? How are they viewed? Do you plan to expand your sports content offerings in the future?

• The KHL is growing rapidly, it's our flagship product. Each subsequent playoff game has a larger audience than the previous one. We've put a lot of effort into popularizing hockey. Right now, our KHL game audience has tripled, and since "Yandex Afisha" also sells tickets for sporting events, this is historically a very large part of Afisha's business. We know for sure that sometimes a hockey game with a capacity of nine to ten thousand sells out faster than a concert by Basta. That's the effect of building an audience.

Plus, we've started thinking about the KHL not just as a sport, but also as a franchise. Let me explain. We're intersecting real life with our content IP. Last season, we wrote a special novella for "Dishonest People" where the girls go to a hockey arena to watch the handsome guys play. In Sochi, we filmed SКа hockey players who, in a scene at a bar, protect a girl from hooligans, and she watches them in awe. In "Books," we're working on writing children's books about hockey or supporting dreams of becoming a hockey player. These hockey-related entertainment attract not only sports viewers, but also regular people who care. People follow the Gagarin Cup or know about Ovechkin and his record. By the way, we did a big tribute to Ovechkin on all our services, we even chipped a tooth on the "Kinopoisk" logo, "Yandex Books" replaced the sheep-counting bedtime story with Ovechkin's goal count, where 895 goals are counted gradually, and you can fall asleep to it. Our "Search" even dressed up for Ovechkin's record. All this creates a high level of attention and interest, so our main sports viewing is growing.

We also have a long-standing collaboration with "Match TV." We see how the audience for football, hockey, and other major sporting events is growing. Right now, sports are regularly viewed by more than 2.3 million subscribers on "Kinopoisk."

Related Material While we currently have another product layer that's very important - sports tech, graphics that we're currently using in some football broadcasts on "Match." This includes player fitness metrics and graphs that appear during live broadcasts: how far a player has run, their speed, etc. It's a very appealing product when you see it on screen, but it's very complex under the hood. It requires the infrastructure of modern cameras at the stadium. You first have to set it up, then the issue of high-speed signal reception arises, as not all stadiums have quality internet - often, it's not available. Then, the signal is processed using computer vision technology. The computer vision identifies the player to determine their statistics and prevent confusion with their teammates, and outputs it in graphics and live in real-time. The layers shown by the broadcaster look very nice now, but there's still a lot of work to be done to make it look even better.

In general, we're currently investing a lot in technological and ecosystem development in sports. Yes, we're focused on hockey, we're getting a lot out of it, and we're supporting "Match" in big events, but we want to "fine-tune" the product quality so that we can participate in bids for sports rights in the next stages.

- Do you remember when Okko bought the rights to the Champions League, and that became a milestone in the world of sports TV? Will you also be bidding for such contracts?

• To rationally bid for something, you need to understand how you're going to make that money back. If you have a great product, your chances of making that money back increase significantly. We know this from our other services. We're not rushing: when we prove with hockey that we can double or triple engagement and viewership, and turn it into a national beloved entertainment for millions (it's already there, but you enrich it with pop culture layers and become an absolute fan, even if you're not that into sports), then it's easier to figure out how to do the same in other disciplines where cross-service opportunities arise.

Showing a broadcast - that's one piece, showing a sports technological layer - another, but it's a video product. Products are much broader - it's merchandise, going to stadiums, it's traveling with your favorite team, it's subscriptions. There are many points of view in the big entertainment market where you can come with this product and be welcomed with interest and curiosity because people have fallen in love with it.

1. Among the industries Yandex operates in, we have three main services in "Plus" - "Yandex Books," "Yandex Music," and "Kinopoisk," which cover video, reading, and audiobook streaming, plus music streaming.
2. The CEO of Yandex, Artem Savinsky, has a commitment to maintain high product quality and shareholder profitability in Fantech.
3. In January, Yandex bought the brands Comic Con and Igromir and will be reviving the main pop culture and gaming festival.
4. The investment in content amounted to 73 billion rubles from 2021 to 2023, with investments growing because the business is growing faster than the market.
5. Yandex aims to reach a point where the creative industry market could practically double from its current state by 2029 and reach 2 trillion rubles.
6. Yandex's business is profitable and growing, so they can afford to explore new directions such as gaming.
7. We have a big ambition to gather all entertainment under one roof by Fantech, while also maintaining the stability of the core business.
8. The creative economy largely relies on trust, and Yandex continues to negotiate with subscribers to extend their relationship.
9. With machine learning, Yandex has already seen significant improvements in products like "Yandex Music" and books, where seamless transitions between audio and text are possible.
10. LLMs have already changed the world, and Yandex, along with industry partners, needs to adapt these changes to their advantage.
11. After the success of "King and Jester," many content franchises have sprouted, and the industry now plans five to seven-year IP work cycles.
12. In terms of creative economy, long-term planning layers emerge, allowing any investors to come into the industry without fear of wasting their money.
13. "King and Jester Forever" is under planning for its release due to its economic effect and the interest it generated.
14. Kinopoisk expects a big update in the IV quarter, expanding its services and offerings.
15. Successful precedents turn the industry and attract investors, as seen with the musical "Nothing to Fear, I'm With You" and the production of new high-quality musicals.

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