Asia video content investment to reach $15.1 billion by 2026

The shift in capital toward streaming and local film highlights a fundamental reallocation of resources as traditional broadcast revenue declines, particularly in markets like Thailand where TV ad spend dropped 18%. While audience engagement is high, the industry faces a profitability gap that necessitates cost rationalization and the adoption of AI to manage production expenses. This environment is accelerating consolidation, as seen with the JioStar merger in India and the proposed TVING-Wavve tie-up in Korea. Watch for whether Southeast Asian markets like Indonesia and the Philippines follow this merger trend to achieve the scale required for sustainable returns.

The Media Partners Asia report arrives amid a wave of consolidation that is fundamentally altering the competitive landscape across Asian streaming markets. In India, the JioStar merger between Reliance's Viacom18 and Disney's Star India operations created the country's largest entertainment entity, combining streaming assets that now compete directly with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video for premium content budgets. In South Korea, the proposed merger between TVING and Wavve would create a domestic streaming champion capable of challenging Netflix's dominance in the market, where CJ ENM and other local studios have driven significant content investment growth. These mergers reflect the same profitability pressure the MPA report identifies, as operators seek scale to justify rising content costs. The shift from traditional television to streaming content budgets is accelerating across the region, with particular intensity in markets where broadcast advertising revenue has declined sharply. Media Partners Asia's own research has tracked how Korean content spending has been propelled by global demand for K-dramas and variety formats, with CJ ENM and other studios investing heavily in original productions that serve both domestic platforms and international licensing deals. The report's emphasis on IP ownership as a path to profitability aligns with strategies pursued by regional players seeking to capture downstream value from content that performs well across multiple distribution windows and geographies. Technology adoption, particularly AI-assisted production tools, represents one of the few levers available to Asian media companies seeking to close the gap between content spending and revenue. The MPA report highlights that cost rationalization through technology is essential for improving margins, a finding consistent with broader industry moves toward AI-driven localization, dubbing, and post-production workflows that reduce per-title costs without sacrificing quality. For platforms like Vidio in Indonesia and JioHotstar in India, where subscriber bases are large but average revenue per user remains low, these efficiency gains could determine whether streaming operations reach profitability before further industry consolidation reshapes their competitive positions.