Where there’s a yearning for content, there’s a streaming service to meet it. And never has the invisible hand of the market been more evident than in the organic growth of platforms delivering content from South Korea and other Asian countries to viewers well beyond the contintent’s borders.
Rakuten Viki, one of these streamers has seen remarkable growth over the past few years. Viewers log on from all corners of the globe, including Australia and Latin America. Sam Wu, Viki CEO (the streaming arm of Japanese retailer Rakuten), spoke to Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast about Viki’This is why Korean dramas are so popular.
“The U.S. is our biggest market by audience. But we’re we’re global,”Wu. “We have users in North America, South America and Europe, and Australia and New Zealand and India. So we really see this fandom growing, not just here in the U.S., which is really strong in terms of the audience reception, but we’re really seeing it grow everywhere around the world.”
South Korea’s drama series, known as K dramas, are particularly popular — as Netflix discovered when its investment in original content from Korea delivered with global phenomenon of “Squid Game”Last year. K dramas are enjoying a growing audience, which is evidence of a maturing entertainment sector and production infrastructure. Wu says that K dramas are still strong.
“It’s easy to fall in love with K dramas,”Wu. “The stories are about life about love, things that people can really connect with and the production format is really high-quality, it lends itself to be easily enjoyed.”
Wu describes the streaming business models Viki uses to maintain a steady flow of users. He also discusses how tech tools are used to build fan communities. Viki also discusses the extraordinary level of dedication of ardent fans, which allows Viki overcome language hurdles within Asia diaspora. Viki users have voluntarily created subtitles for hundreds titles in multiple languages.
Wu also credits Viki’s passionate user base for driving buzz and sampling the various Viki channels.
“We truly leverage (our) community to be the advocates that help share the content, “Wu says. “Outside of Viki, we’ve built a strong social media presence with followers across social media. People will tend to highly engage and tag their friends and share and also post and repost. So we leverage that quite heavily as a way for us to get the word out there. It’s authentic and something that really scales quite well, because people discover content now through word-of-mouth and their friends.”
“Strictly Business”It is Variety’s weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. You can download new episodes every Wednesday on iTunes, Spotify and Google Play as well as SoundCloud and Stitcher. Subscribe to the podcast by clicking here Variety‘s free “Strictly Business”Newsletter featuring media earnings, investment news, and other information.