U.S. Content Maintains Leadership in AsiaPac SVOD Space

U.S.-originated content was viewed by 60 percent of SVOD users across the Asia Pacific in Q1 of this year, according to Media Partners Asia (MPA), outperforming fare from South Korea and Japan.

Korean content was viewed by 56 percent of AsiaPac SVOD streamers in Q1, with Japanese shows at 48 percent, according to data from MPA’s ampd research platform, which tracks viewership trends across Australia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.

U.S. content has a commanding lead in Australia, at 69 percent of SVOD viewership, and is also performing well in Southeast Asia, where it accounts for 32 percent of SVOD usage, driven by Singapore and the Philippines. At the other end, U.S. content only drives 9 percent of SVOD engagement in Korea and 11 percent in Japan. U.S. fare is key for subscriber acquisition in several markets, the report found, especially in Australia (69 percent), Singapore (39 percent), Taiwan (37 percent) and the Philippines (34 percent).

“While U.S. content’s reach has declined steadily to 60 percent over the past two years, it retains an important role in subscriber acquisition,” MPA lead analyst Dhivya T said. “Even in highly local markets such as Korea, Japan and Indonesia, U.S. content drove 15 percent to 30 percent of SVOD customer acquisition. Long-tail appeal and a variety of scripted genres across series and movies, topped by science fiction and fantasy, power U.S. content’s popularity in APAC. Fan-favorite sitcoms and procedurals such as Friends and The Office have enduring engagement impact, with library titles making up 68 percent of the top 500 U.S. titles in APAC.”

About 75 percent of U.S. content engagement on Netflix and Prime Video was driven by third-party studio content, while Disney+ viewership was almost entirely on in-house content, the report noted. Netflix dominates U.S. content engagement at 50 percent to 75 percent of U.S. streaming hours per market in the past year. In Japan, Prime Video is out front, driving 23 percent of U.S. streaming hours. Disney+ commanded a share of between 15 percent and 20 percent in Australia, Japan and Korea.