Who Is Eating Away at the Tutoring Market? Super IPs Are Replacing Traditional Channels

Super IPs move in as formal tutoring retreats

China’s once-booming private tutoring market is being hollowed out — not chiefly by regulation this time, but by a shift in how parents and children consume learning. The new winners are “super IPs”: large, cross-media intellectual properties built around cartoons, game franchises, celebrities and streamer personalities that package learning as entertainment. Who is eating away at the tutoring market? The answer increasingly looks less like cram schools and more like platforms and pop culture brands.

From classrooms to fandoms

After the 2021 “double reduction” policy curbed after-school tutoring, many education firms retrenched and diversified. Companies such as New Oriental (新东方) and TAL Education (好未来) pivoted into adjacent businesses — livestream commerce, educational entertainment, and character-led content — while platform giants like ByteDance (字节跳动) and Bilibili (哔哩哔哩) repackaged short videos, livestreams and IP tie-ins into learning funnels. For Western readers: in China, “IP” often means a multi‑platform franchise — think character merchandise, animated series, and influencer ecosystems — that keeps kids engaged outside a formal classroom. It has been reported that these content-driven funnels are proving more effective at retaining attention and monetizing families than traditional channel sales and teacher referrals.

Why the shift matters

The model is simple and powerful. Entertainment IP lowers the barrier to discovery on social platforms, turns passive viewers into paying fans, and monetizes through subscriptions, microtransactions and merchandise rather than high‑ticket tutoring fees. Platforms can therefore capture lifetime value across play, learning and consumption. But is this a durable transformation or a regulatory workaround? That question looms large. Beijing’s regulation of education was the trigger that pushed firms to adapt; if regulators broaden scrutiny to IPified learning or platform monetization, companies could be forced to shift again.

Implications for parents, startups and policy

For parents, the shift means more playful and accessible options — and also more signal noise: not all IP‑driven products teach as effectively as they entertain. For startups, building or licensing a recognizable IP is now as strategic as hiring star teachers. And for policymakers, the migration of education services into entertainment platforms raises fresh trade‑offs between child welfare, cultural influence and commercial innovation. Reportedly, the next battleground will be how regulators differentiate between “edutainment” and formal tutoring — a distinction that will determine who survives and who gets squeezed out of China’s reconfigured learning economy.