EXCLUSIVE: Pan-regional streaming service Viu, owned by Hong Kong telco and media group PCCW, has been one of many greatest native success tales in Southeast Asia, holding its personal towards the doorway of worldwide giants together with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+.
The streamer is primary when it comes to month-to-month lively customers (MAUs) throughout Southeast Asia, based on information from Media Partners Asia (MPA), and quantity three in paid subscribers behind Disney+ and Netflix. In the primary half of 2022, Viu’s MAUs grew by 23% to 60.7 million, whereas paid subscribers elevated by 31% to 9.1 million.
Viu’s ‘freemium’ enterprise mannequin and partnerships with regional telcos and different tech suppliers have contributed to that success, however as Asia content material chief Marianne Lee explains, it’s additionally right down to a nimble and hyper-localized content material technique.
“We serve a very young audience,” says Lee, who joined Viu final yr from WarnerMedia within the function of Chief of Content Acquisition & Development for Asia (Viu additionally operates as a streamer and content material producer within the Middle East and South Africa).
“Our audience is young and they’re digital natives. They may have skipped over that pay-TV stage and moved straight into watching content on their mobile phones. We’re also mass audience, so in Hong Kong we aim for Cantonese speakers, and in Malaysia we aim for the audience that speaks Malay.”
That provides Viu barely totally different positioning to the worldwide streamers, which at the moment are beginning to go mass market in Southeast Asia, however had been initially aiming for barely older, skilled viewers with higher capacity to pay.
Marianne Lee
Launched in 2015, the yr earlier than Netflix entered the area, Viu had an early begin in Korean drama and Japanese anime, two content material classes that play throughout the area, and has additionally expanded to supply content material in Chinese and Southeast Asian languages. Ok-drama alone accounts for 38% of premium viewing in Southeast Asia, based on MPA information. Asked to elucidate the success of Korean content material, Lee sums it up as: “Beautiful sets, beautiful people and the editing is super engaging.”
Of course, over the previous few years, the demand for Korean content material has reached such heights that it’s additionally turn into prohibitively costly. But Lee explains that Viu is leveraging long-standing relationships with all of the Korean broadcasters, together with CJ ENM, JTBC, SBS and the general public broadcasters, and is now additionally beginning to transfer upstream.
Typically, Viu acquires worldwide rights to Ok-dramas and simulcasts them to its streaming markets instantly after they’ve broadcast in Korea. It additionally syndicates to Asian territories the place it doesn’t function as a streamer, together with Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam, in addition to additional afield. Lee factors to Viu Original Reborn Rich, starring Song Joong-ki (Vincenzo), as a very good instance of how the streamer is now boarding reveals a lot earlier – working on this case with broadcaster JTBC and its manufacturing arm Studio LuluLala (SLL).
“We’d already built those relationships with the broadcasters, and now we’re working much more closely with the production houses,” explains Lee. “That means we get involved much earlier, having input on the casting and the scripts. Of course it’s competitive – everyone wants the ‘S Grade’ [Super Grade] series, but we’re not all chasing the same content, as we all have a certain demographic in mind.”
The similar simulcast technique is used for Korean selection reveals and different codecs, though Lee says it’s clearly a lot more durable to get content material subtitled and out on its platform nearly instantly whenever you’re working with unscripted reveals.
Viu has additionally had success via tapping into different sizzling content material tendencies. Lee says that Chinese content material can also be beginning to play throughout the area: “We’ve noticed that the costume, fantasy, palace genres work really well in Chinese-speaking markets [Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia], while the contemporary, urban dramas can travel outside those territories to Thailand and Indonesia.”
But she predicts that the subsequent large wave is more likely to be Thai content material, together with the BL [Boys’ Love] style that’s turning into enormous in Asia however just about unknown within the West. Originating within the ‘Shonen-ai’ style of Japanese manga, BL options stunning younger males engaged in (often fairly tame) gay relationships, however is usually consumed by younger ladies and teenage ladies.
Viu’s Thai BL hits embrace Close Friend, that includes six pairs of males experiencing totally different types of love, however ‘straight’ Thai sequence are additionally working nicely – together with romcom My Bubble Tea and romantic drama Finding The Rainbow, each starring Nichkun, a Thai-American star who can also be a member of Ok-pop band 2PM. “The Thai industry really knows how to position and market their stars,” says Lee. “They’ve learned a lot from the Korean industry and are making bigger shows. Finding The Rainbow is Nichkun’s second project with us – it’s a beautifully filmed, epic love story set from the early 1990s until the present day.”
Finding The Rainbow
But there are additionally rumblings in different Southeast Asian territories. In addition to Thailand, Viu has manufacturing places of work in Malaysia, the place it has produced crime drama Black and romcom She Was Pretty, each tailored from Korean IP; the Philippines, the place Viu Originals embrace music-themed sequence Still and Ok-Love, described as an ‘ode to K-drama’; and Indonesia, the place current reveals embrace an adaptation of Pretty Little Liars, already into Season 2, and Bad Boys vs Crazy Girls, about rebellious college students scheming find out how to escape from their boarding faculty.
Describing Bad Boys vs Crazy Girls as a “guilty pleasure” she likes to observe herself, Lee says that every one these Southeast Asian markets are maturing quickly. “For example, Indonesia is moving past adaptations, and the team there is doing a great job of engaging scriptwriters and selecting interesting IPs.”
Back house in Hong Kong, Viu’s sister free-to-air broadcaster ViuTV, has been bringing youthful audiences again to Cantonese-language content material with youth-focused dramas, selection reveals and sizzling boy band Mirror, the primary real Canto-pop breakout in a number of years. This native content material, which Viu subtitles and simulcasts throughout the area, reverses a development of younger Hong Kong-ers concerning native TV as old style and turning as an alternative to English-language reveals.
Lee explains, nonetheless, that the Hong Kong market is barely totally different to Southeast Asia. Viu’s Hong Kong viewers skews younger, however not as younger as elsewhere, and it’s a market that embraces live-action Japanese drama along with anime. Japanese BL present Ossan’s Love was so common in Hong Kong it resulted in a Cantonese remake.
“Hong Kong just has a very long history of consuming Japanese content,” says Lee, who’s herself from Hong Kong and has additionally labored in Singapore for international studios and broadcasters. “We’re very influenced by Japanese culture. During the pandemic all my friends complained that they couldn’t visit Japan, and all described it as their second home.”
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