Content Investment In India, Korea & SE-Asia Grew 21% To $10bn In 2021, But Film Contracted Due To Delayed Releases

deadline.com:

Video content budgets across India, Korea and Southeast Asia climbed 21% to reach $10.4bn in 2021, and are forecast to grow 15% to $12bn in 2022, according to a report from Media Partners Asia (MPA).Asian content investment surged last year as key operators “replenished content pipelines after the initial waves of Covid depleted programming inventories in 2020”, according to the report, entitled Asia Video Content Dynamics 2022.The report tracks content consumption, investment and production costs across seven key Asian markets: India, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

The figures include free-to-air (FTA), pay-TV, online video and film investments.All those verticals are growing except for theatrical films, which saw investment contract 2% as pandemic restrictions delayed releases in many markets.

However, film investment is expected to grow 140% in 2022 as theatres start screening new locally-produced movies.Pay-TV was the biggest vertical in 2021 – accounting for 46% of total industry content investment – reflecting the strength of the pay-TV sectors in India and Korea.OTT content was the fastest growing vertical, up 83% year-on-year to become the second largest vertical with 26% of industry investment.

FTA ranked third with 25% of the total.Korea and India were the largest content investment markets overall with a combined $7.4bn; generating particularly strong OTT investment growth.