Show Tracker added Pan-Regional Asia this month giving a more detailed view than ever of the Asia-Pacific acquisition market
So far in the 2020/21 season, the number of premieres of the latest US scripted titles have been on par with average global market levels in Pan-Regional Asia and India while Australia continues to perform well above average
China’s Bilibili SVOD acquired The Watch from BBC Studios, debuting it on the service as a stack at the beginning of the year
The title was originally commissioned by BBC America and has yet to find a home in the UK with many high-profile UK services passing on the opportunity to air the UK first window
Meanwhile direct-to-consumer activity in Pan-Regional Asia is the main driver for the market achieving higher than average distribution levels, with both WarnerMedia and Disney debuting several of their own titles on their own broadcast services in Pan-Regional Asia
Disney owned services have had the most new-season premiere activity across all of Asia-Pacific so far this season, with 60% of these titles vertically integrated
Australia’s higher volume of content acquisition helps push some of its independent service owners such as Foxtel and Nine Entertainment to a dominant position of acquisitions right now, but as direct-to-consumer is prioritised more by US studios this strong position may falter in forthcoming seasons
WarnerMedia and ViacomCBS have so far only licensed content from their own distributors so far this season in Asia-Pacific, with Warner taking from its own catalogue both for HBO Asia but also Warner TV in Pan-Regional Asia
Voot Select, a local Indian SVOD owned by Viacom 18, is clearly capitalising on the relationship it has with ViacomCBS (who is a 49% owner in Viacom 18 against Network18’s 51%) as all new titles so far this season have come from the distributor
SVOD has long dominated the US acquisition market in both India and China but across all Asia-Pacific markets this season SVOD acquisitions are leading over broadcast, even in Australia where Nine Entertainment’s SVOD Stan is particularly prevalent
While still in the minority when compared to SVOD, Pan-Regional Asia has the highest proportion of broadcast acquisitions out of all Asia-Pacific territories
But with much of this driven by direct-to-consumer activity on studio owned broadcast channels, this will shift dramatically if they elect to shut down their Pay TV channels in favour of launching SVOD services in their place
Local VOD services such as iflix aren’t acquiring new US titles such as they did a few seasons ago and with 60% of US premieres in Pan-Regional Asia this season occurring through vertical integration, its likely that future SVOD activity will continue to be driven instead by studio owned services licensing content from their own distribution arms
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