DramaFever, the five-year-old online video site best known for importing first-window Korean dramas into the US, is planning to expand into Southeast Asia next year, accelerating its growth plans after agreeing to be taken over by SoftBank, the Japanese telco, two months ago.

At the same time, DramaFever is ramping up plans to diversify its content portfolio, seeking out more under-served market segments following its success monetizing Korean entertainment in the US. 

The site offers both free and paid viewing options, with good levels of engagement for its specialized content. Average weekly viewing hours per sub in the US rank higher than Netflix by paid subs, and are second to Hulu for free content.

In Southeast Asia however, prices for popular Korean shows are soaring, including online rights that are increasingly part of TV deals for regional Korean channels.

“We now have content from 12 different countries, and we are betting on different types of content,” said Hyun Park, DramaFever’s VP of licensing and business development, speaking at this week’s Asia TV Forum (ATF) in Singapore.

“At some point, Hallyu or the Korean Wave will start to go down,” Park added. “We need to replace that with something else. We have buckets of new content that we are getting exclusive rights for, so we don’t get into a pricing war a couple of years down the road. For the online video space, especially where we go, it’s a new market.”

Next year, the video site wants to start streaming services in Western Europe as well as Southeast Asia, Park said. The company has already extended its footprint into Latin America, subtitling shows in Spanish and Portuguese in addition to English, signing a distribution deal for telenovelas from NBCU’s Spanish media arm, Telemundo, two years ago.

DramaFever now has around 70 content partners, Park said.

In addition to running its own platform, DramaFever also licenses content to other OTT platforms, including Amazon, Hulu and Netflix in the US.

telco ambition

SoftBank meanwhile already signalled the scale of its own content ambitions earlier this year, hiring Google’s former chief business officer Nikesh Arora to run a new internet and media investment arm, set up in July.

This was followed by a US$250 million investment in US studio Legendary Entertainment, announced in October. Softbank and Legendary are setting up a mobile video JV to exploit the studio's IP, targeting China and India in particular.

Terms for the DramaFever deal, announced last month, were not disclosed.

DramaFever, part of SoftBank's Internet and Media division, is a key element within the telco's media push, Park noted. The two companies are setting up a new studio for shows aimed at North America, using online viewing data to improve the odds of turning out a hit.

DramaFever has already co-produced two Korean dramas: The Heirs in 2013 with Hwa & Dam Pictures, which debuted on Korean terrestrial major SBS before DramaFever distributed it internationally; plus a more recent production, Tomorrow’s Cantabile, with Korea’s national broadcaster KBS this year.

DramaFever had been working on a five-year plan from a startup perspective, Park explained, but the Softbank deal has enabled the company to bring many of its plans forward.

“Everything we’ve done so far has been slowly but surely,” he told the audience at ATF. “That changed. The business plan we had earlier was too conservative.”