AVIA's Inaugural 'Japan in View' Conference Highlight Japan's Streaming Potential
Tokyo, Japan, November 7, 2024 – The Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA) held its very first Japan focused industry event, Japan in View, on 29th 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 Shinjiro Ninagawa, Executive Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, TVer INC., sharing his ambitions of growing TVer to 3 times as large as it was now, with the business doubling over the next 2 – 3 years. Yu Sasamoto, CEO of Japan and Asia, DAZN, 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 5 years.
Sam Yousif, Vice President, AMPD Analytics (an MPA company), 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 VOD market in terms of revenue with US$6B 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% from 2020 – 2024, an astounding number for a market this size. VOD consumers also had diverse options, both within and outside of the industry, with VOD only representing 6% of their free time. Japanese consumers also exhibited unique viewing behaviour not seen across other markets, including a distinct preference for local content. 78% of the total hours viewed on VOD in Japan was with Japanese content, with 93% of VOD users consuming Japanese content, and US content only at 16%. 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 Louis Boswell, CEO, AVIA.
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 David Shin, Executive Producer, ICONIQUE PICTURES. 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, Sun Hong Min, Chief Content Officer, TVING, 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 was also key to growing the business for Buddy Marini, General Manager – Japan, Warner Bros. Discovery, across both linear and streaming, having recently announced a new partnership with U-Next to launch Max in Japan. For local giant J:COM, Kaz Sasajima, General Manager, Media Business Division, the digital domain too represented room for growth, particular in the space of professionally produced content. And wrapping up in the closing panel, for Alexandre Muller, Managing Director, APAC, TV5MONDE, 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.
Japan in View is proudly sponsored by Lead Sponsor Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency (CCIDA); Gold Sponsors Akamai, Magnite and Publica; Silver Sponsors INVIDI and TV5MONDE.
