Ahead of the arrival of a new summer season in mid-2025, Turkey\u2019s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, together with the country\u2019s Tourism Promotion and Development Agency, leveraged the popularity of Turkish television dramas to attract more foreigners to visit the country through miniseries with themes highlighting the richness of diverse destinations, produced primarily for international digital platforms.<\/p>\n
According to the World Tourism Barometer of May 2025, published by the United Nations World Tourism Organization, Turkey became the fourth most visited country in the world in 2024, receiving 56.7 million foreign tourists. The total number of visitors reached 62.3 million.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the success of Turkish dramas internationally has had an impact not only on the number of visitors the country receives annually. According to reports from early 2025, Turkish television dramas continued expanding their global reach after generating more than $500 million in export revenue in 2024 and being distributed in more than 150 countries.<\/p>\n
Positioned among the world\u2019s leading drama exporters, the Turkish industry continues to flourish, with no signs of stagnation. On the contrary, last October, Inter Medya revealed its entry into the vertical drama space, for which it has already begun production of its first original series. In addition to developing its own titles, the company plans to expand its vertical drama distribution catalog, collaborating with producers and acquiring third-party projects.<\/p>\n
Regarding the company\u2019s entry into production of this new format, Beatriz Cea Okan, VP and director of sales and acquisitions, notes, \u201cYou have to reinvent yourself in the business. Our first micro-drama was born a week before MIPCOM. Can [Okan, founder and CEO] approached our production office and asked if they could have a micro-drama ready in four days to present it to the market. It was filmed in a building that has multiple locations, where we were able to take advantage of different spaces within the same place.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to a recent report by Omdia, micro-dramas are projected to generate $11 billion in global revenue for 2025, while Fabric Data highlights that in Latin America, the format already represents 47 percent of drama consumption on smartphones, led by audiences between 16 and 24 years old.<\/p>\n
Along these lines, Barbora Suster, director for Latin America and Iberia at Eccho Rights, suggests waiting and seeing how the business and its monetization evolve. \u201cMost programmers are producing their own micro-dramas because I haven\u2019t heard that they\u2019re acquiring this type of content,\u201d the executive explains. \u201cFrom our office in Istanbul, we\u2019re seeing how to join in and thus begin to produce and distribute vertical dramas, but it\u2019s still very incipient.\u201d<\/p>\n
For her part, \u00d6zlem \u00d6zs\u00fcmb\u00fcl, sales director at Madd Entertainment, comments that being part of the audiences that consume telenovelas or dramas on various platforms, she is also aware of the trends. \u201cVertical micro-dramas are becoming a new star and are now very popular, and as a company, we are also involved in that area.\u201d<\/p>\n
The executive explains that currently, Madd Entertainment has a catalog with several titles for which they have created short versions in a micro-drama format. \u201cWe have a good catalog of vertical content and great interest from buyers,\u201d notes \u00d6zs\u00fcmb\u00fcl.\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b<\/p>\n
Despite acknowledging the current trend toward micro-dramas, Iv\u00e1n S\u00e1nchez, sales director for Latin America at Global Agency, emphasizes that the company has not entered this business, for which “we have no plan or defined strategy. For now, there is more noise than certainty, and we are not sure of the real scope they may have. In a way, it could be a mistake to overestimate expectations around content that, at the end of the day, consists of miniseries with episodes lasting one or two minutes. Personally, I’m not clear on the model. We’re observing it from the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless of whether the challenges come from new competitors or trends, and already accustomed to the political, economic or social ups and downs of a region like Latin America, Turkish drama distributors have managed to continue expanding their businesses while satisfying the demands of programmers and the tastes of their audiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cLatin America continues to be one of the most dynamic regions for us,\u201d says Mikaela P\u00e9rez, director of sales for Latin America, the U.S. and Iberia at OGM UNIVERSE. \u201cEven with changing programming needs, evolving budgets and new production strategies, we have adapted by working with our partners to remain active in as many countries as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Various Turkish distributors discuss the emergence of vertical dramas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":283,"featured_media":24322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,70],"tags":[6682,7497,490,153,1880,7533,2717,3612,6363,2916],"class_list":["post-24311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-features","category-top-stories","tag-barbora-suster","tag-beatriz-cea-okan","tag-eccho-rights","tag-global-agency","tag-inter-medya","tag-ivan-sanchez","tag-madd-entertainment","tag-mikaela-perez","tag-ogm-universe","tag-ozlem-ozsumbul","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\n