Tokyo – The Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA) held its very first Japan focused industry event, Japan in View, on 29 October at the Andaz Tokyo, bringing together over 130 international and regional players from across the video and streaming industry.
The conference opened and dove straight into the streaming potential of Japan, with TVer Inc., executive managing director & COO Shinjiro Ninagawa, sharing his ambitions of growing TVer to thrice as large as it was now, with the business doubling over the next two – three years. Dazn CEO (Japan, Asia) Yu Sasamoto, also said that Japan was still at the tipping point of the shift and transformation from traditional linear programming to digital services, and he expected more disruption from new players, with the landscape shifting significantly in the next five years.
Ampd Analytics (an MPA company) VP, Sam Yousif further expanded on the opportunities for Japan, opening his session describing Japan as “a lucrative, consistently growing multi-billion-dollar industry with a complex competitive landscape and unique customer behaviour.” In Asia (excluding China), Japan was the largest Video On Demand (VOD) market in terms of revenue with $ 6 billion in 2024, almost two times bigger than the next biggest market, Australia. Revenue had also been growing near double digits every year in the past four years, with a Cagr of 17 per cent from 2020 – 2024. VOD consumers also had diverse options, both within and outside of the industry, with VOD only representing six per cent of their free time. Japanese consumers also exhibited unique viewing behaviour not seen across other markets, including a distinct preference for local content. 78 per cent of the total hours viewed on VOD in Japan was with Japanese content, with 93 per cent of VOD users consuming Japanese content and US content only at 16 per cent. And interestingly, there was also a large, shared economy where the top titles, mostly anime, were shared across all the platforms. “With so much content shared across so many platforms, it feels more like a streaming cooperation in Japan than a streaming war,” added Avia CEO Louis Boswell.
However, beyond anime, panelists believed that Japan was only scratching the surface in terms of the international opportunity for the export of its content. “If the industry can turn and create content that can be appealing both for Japanese audiences and globally, it's enormous value and enormous opportunity,” said Iconique Pictures executive producer David Shin.What was key was to take the wonderful stories that were indigenous to Japan and elevate them with a high level of storytelling that could propel the industry and that content overseas, added Shin.
And with the success that Korean content has had internationally, Tving chief content officer Sun Hong Min shared that the foremost reason behind TVING's impressive growth this year was their strategic partnership with leading content providers, that enabled them to offer a diverse arrangement of high-quality premium content that resonated deeply with their users. Min was also of the opinion that local content could resonate on a global scale by combining universal human elements with a narrative deeply rooted in local history, culture and sentiment.
Partnerships were also key to growing the business for Warner Bros. Discovery general manager - Japan, Buddy Marini across both linear and streaming, having recently announced a new partnership with U-Next to launch Max in Japan. For local giant J:Com, general manager, media business division, Kaz Sasajima, the digital domain too represented room for growth, particularly in the space of professionally produced content. And wrapping up in the closing panel, for TV5Monde, managing director, APAC, Alexandre Muller, AI was presenting new possibilities, notably in terms of providing greater access to content across multiple languages. “Definitely the place to be is in Asia Pacific, and this is really where the growth is and I can see growth both in linear and as well as on OTT,” added Muller.
