Media Partners Asia’s latest data shows a tilt toward streaming in Asia, a still-powerful free-TV environment, and a content-spend bubble that is unlikely to last. 

Premium video economics have tilted towards streaming in Asia, particularly since the beginning of 2020, but the region had yet to see “a real major pivot” towards streaming, Media Partners Asia (MPA) executive director, Vivek Couto, said during the ContentAsia Summit 2020.

“Television is still worth an enormous amount of money, both in terms of what consumers still spend per unit cost on television and advertising dollars, particularly on free to air in markets like Indonesia, Thailand and to some extent the Philippines,” he said.

In a presentation entitled “Playing Through the Pandemic, The Rise of Streaming Video”, Couto said consumer spend on online video subscriptions was significantly up as freemium players moved more content behind pay walls to insulate themselves against advertising decline.  

Noting that low-ARPU subscriptions in the region were growing, Couto said five markets – Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand – had signed up 5.5 million net new paying SVOD customers coming into the ecosystem in 2020 so far.  

Couto went on to tell delegates at APOS September edition, that Asia’s content creators and storytellers “have to be aware of content bubbles” in the new video ecosystem.

He said advertising had deteriorated and that streaming/OTT content licensing in the near to medium term was not enough to offset the loss. This would “hurt content creators”; “the online window isn’t really going to fill the void and that’s a big risk,” he said.

He also warned that while streaming platforms would increase investment in content, “they will increasingly do so in a more balanced and sustainable mode in the new world”.

Sports rights holders “have to be prepared to accept even more serious ground realities than ever before as they look at monetising in this part of the world,” Couto said, adding that: “Due to Covid, operators have lost their premium sports subscribers and may never regain them”. 

MPA has not put its usual dollar amount on content investment in Asia Pacific for 2020 because of widespread uncertainty and “lots of swaying on sports rights”.

Couto identified the “next content battleground” as local series, where local TV players had a competitive advantage.

This was already happening in India, and increasingly in Southeast Asia. “But we expect global and regional streaming players to go into this market,” he said.

Streamers – particularly Viu and Netflix – fared well in the first half of this year. Couto said Viu grew 45% in the first half of the year and that Netflix was on course for its best growth year ever in Asia Pacific, with full-year revenue growth of more than 55%.

MPA’s AMPD Research shows that average weekly streaming minutes reached 5.1 billion in four markets – Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore – during lockdowns in first half 2020, dropping to 4.3 billion average a week post lockdown.

Published in ContentAsia's Issue Two 2020, September 2020