The earliest batch of short drama platforms that went global have already achieved an annual revenue of over 2 billion yuan.

During the May Day holiday, some people spent their time traveling, while others chose to stay at home and linger on various apps on their phones. At this time, the consensus among netizens at home and abroad may not only be short videos but also short dramas.

From a domestic perspective, the myth of getting rich overnight brought about by short dramas has turned out to be a deflated bubble of prosperity. The inability to make money has become the sentiment shared by most practitioners in the industry.

During this period, platforms have emerged as the ultimate winners. Relying on the experience and team of Fanqie Fiction, Hongguo Short Dramas has rightfully become the leader in the industry, and rewritten the market share ratio of paid and free short dramas. According to relevant practitioners, free short dramas represented by Hongguo Short Dramas now account for half of the domestic short drama market and are still on the rise.

Meanwhile, the short drama market overseas presents a completely different competitive landscape and market pattern. Overseas, short dramas are still a lucrative business and an outlet for practitioners who find it difficult to survive in the domestic market.

Currently, the leading overseas short drama platforms are represented by DramaBox under Dianzhong Technology and ReelShort under Crazy Maple Studio (Fengye Interactive Entertainment), which has spun off from Chinese Online. A relevant person in charge of Dianzhong Technology told 36Kr that the revenue from its overseas short drama business exceeded 2 billion yuan last year. As 36Kr has learned, this figure is close to half of the revenue of leading domestic short drama platforms. The company behind ReelShort, Crazy Maple Studio, also achieved a revenue of 2.91 billion yuan in 2024.

In addition, many domestic companies that previously focused on online literature are accelerating their pace of expanding into the overseas short drama market. In the past year, Zhangyue Technology launched the overseas short drama platform iDrama; Chinese Online launched short drama apps such as Sereal+ and UniReel; platforms like NetShort of Maiya Media and StoReel led by Zhou Yuan, the former co-founder of Lemon Pictures, have also entered the market. More notably, Melolo, a free short drama app under ByteDance, has been launched in Southeast Asia and other regions.

According to data from DataEye-ADX, since September 2024, the number of short drama apps being promoted overseas has increased significantly. By February 2025, the number of promoted short drama apps had reached 231, nearly four times that of the same period last year.

As competition intensifies, DramaBox and ReelShort still lead the pack. This is not surprising, as in the early days of an emerging market, the winners are often those who seize the opportunity first. However, some trends are now changing.

From extensive expansion to intensive cultivation

According to Chen Ruiqing, the chairman of Dianzhong Technology, the launch of short dramas at home and abroad was almost simultaneous, with a time difference of only about two months. It was just that due to the capabilities of the team, the overseas expansion was a bit slower.

What supported Chen Ruiqing's decision to expand overseas was his prediction of the scale of the overseas short drama market - the overseas market would be three times the size of the domestic one, with a market scale exceeding 100 billion yuan.

Both DramaBox and ReelShort were among the first batch of short drama platforms to go overseas. During this period, DramaBox experienced a process of catching up from behind. In the second half of 2023, ReelShort caught the attention of domestic media after topping the US iOS entertainment list, while DramaBox was still relatively unknown at that time.

During the Spring Festival in 2024, this situation changed. DramaBox topped the Apple App Store entertainment list in Taiwan, China, for seven consecutive days. In the Google and Apple stores in North America, the daily revenues of DramaBox and ReelShort took turns to rank first among overseas short drama companies. This situation has almost continued until now.

What helped DramaBox achieve a comeback was not only a change in the team but also the fact that the platform introduced a large number of translated dramas to enrich the supply, which was an extremely effective method during the extensive market expansion stage.

Moreover, just like in China, short dramas overseas also rely on advertising promotion. Aye, who has experience in shooting and investing in overseas short dramas, told 36Kr that the advertising promotion cost of a single overseas short drama still accounts for the majority of the total cost. Therefore, Dianzhong Technology, which has relatively rich experience in advertising promotion, also has certain advantages in the process of expanding overseas with short dramas.

Currently, the person in charge of Dianzhong Technology's overseas business said that the main source of DramaBox's revenue comes from English-speaking regions such as North America, with the United States accounting for the highest proportion.

In addition, the supply on the platform still mainly consists of translated dramas, and the monthly output of local dramas is only about 10 - 15, which is far from enough.

To some extent, this is because localization is not an easy task. Apart from the cost being 2 - 3 times higher than in China, there are also more compliance issues and more unpredictable advertising promotion effects.

Compared with DramaBox, ReelShort took a more thorough localization path from the beginning. However, ReelShort, which originated from interactive dramas, lacks content supply. Although the quality is better, it also faces problems such as slow updates and difficulty in scaling up.

Taking the data from the Google Play Store as an example, in the same period of 2024, DramaBox's downloads were still lower than those of ReelShort. However, now the former's downloads in the app store have reached over 100 million, while the latter's downloads are only half of DramaBox's, that is, over 50 million.

However, this does not mean that localization is not important.

On the one hand, cultural differences and compliance issues can even determine the success or failure of a short drama. For example, "The Immortal Cultivation Master in New York" on Kuaishou's international version, SnackVideo, was taken off the shelves after being complained about for "objectifying the witch group".

On the other hand, localized content also determines the baseline for a short drama to become a hit.

Aye told 36Kr that to save costs, some short drama teams shoot overseas short dramas in China. The female lead in the overseas short dramas she shot also came to China for filming recently. In the recent Instagram post shared by this actress, she was wearing a yellow tweed suit. "It will look a bit out of place." Tweed is a popular element in the daily wear of Chinese women, but few women in Europe and America would wear such clothes in their daily lives. The probability of such a short drama becoming a hit is also very small.

In addition, for domestic teams, it is difficult to distinguish foreign faces and foreign accents, but locals can accurately identify them.

Therefore, the relevant person in charge mentioned above said that Dianzhong Technology's overseas business will gradually increase the localization process and increase the number of local dramas in the future. The supply of local dramas will also adopt full localization, that is, produced, shot, and performed by locals.

While platforms like DramaBox and ReelShort maintain their leading positions, some competitive trends are also changing.

Market migration and changes in business models

Audiences in the European and American markets have developed mature habits of paying for content, and the US market is also the largest paid short drama market overseas.

According to Diandian Data, from August 2023 to June 2024, the RPD (average revenue per download) in North America was $4.7, and in Europe it was about $2.3, far higher than the average level of the overseas short drama industry 2.0 and much higher than the RPD of $0.7 in Southeast Asia.

However, the shooting cost in Europe and America has been rising continuously - from the original $150,000 per drama to about $200,000, and there is a trend of continuous increase.

This is due to the change in the supply - demand relationship. During September last year, the executive producer who produced short dramas for Aye had a conflict with her cooperation members. The reason was that this producer had taken on several production projects at the same time. The other party said that there would be dozens of production teams starting shooting simultaneously in Los Angeles every day, all shooting short dramas.

On the other hand, some cost - saving methods are difficult to produce hit dramas. For example, shooting overseas short dramas in China not only results in the domestic production teams' lack of understanding of European and American cultures but also language is a major obstacle. Aye was involved in an overseas short drama project some time ago. The person in charge of the other party told her that only the director in the entire production team could speak English, and it was not even certain that the director could direct the play in English. This really shocked her. "What does the assistant director do? How can they communicate with the actors?"

In contrast, Southeast Asia, with closer cultural similarities and lower shooting costs, and Japan and South Korea, with relatively high RPD (average revenue per download), have also become the choices of short drama companies going overseas in recent years.

In addition, the short drama market in Southeast Asia has surpassed Europe and become the second - largest short drama market after the United States. According to Diandian Data, in February this year, the United States, with a revenue of $26.54 million, accounted for nearly half of the overseas market, followed closely by Southeast Asia with a revenue of $6.9 million.

At the end of 2024, Melolo, a short drama app under ByteDance targeting the Southeast Asian market, was launched, featuring a free model. However, in the few months after its launch, Melolo didn't make much of a splash. Instead, the poor quality of translated dramas on the platform and the low download volume showed a sense of haste. Even so, because it is backed by ByteDance, the launch of Melolo still sparked discussions in the industry about whether ByteDance is going to create another "overseas Hongguo".

The emergence of Melolo and the poor payment habits of audiences in Southeast Asia are both promoting the development of the free short drama model. A relevant person in charge of Dianzhong Technology's overseas business said, "Our user coverage in Southeast Asia is also very high. Due to the limited local payment ability, we haven't focused on development. In the future, we will also start exploring the free model with advertising subsidy revenue."

Even earlier, DramaBox, which had not taken many localization measures, already had a good number of downloads in Southeast Asia, accounting for nearly 30% of its total downloads.

Overseas short dramas are going through a path similar to that in China, but monopoly has not emerged yet, and the free model has not yet dominated.

(Source: 36Kr Future Consumption   Author: Lan Jie   Editor: Qiao Qian)