![]() “As the streaming market gets more crowded and competitive, personalized curation of foreign content is a successful strategy to cut through the clutter.” audiences,” said Alejandro Rojas, director of applied analytics at Parrot Analytics. “In fact, Viki houses three of the four most in-demand Korean-language series with U.S. Among the sites hosting the top 10 most in-demand Korean-language series in the U.S., Rakuten Viki beat out Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and YouTube. And NBCUniversal, which just launched its new streaming site, Peacock, signed a deal with South Korean streaming site Wavve to license content and invest in the production of future content.Įven so, Rakuten Viki maintains it has the shows that American viewers want to watch. Netflix started expanding its original and licensed Korean content after it launched in Asia about five years ago. Several other streaming sites have since broken into the genre as demand for Korean content has climbed. acquired the company, and within two years shut it down amid licensing violations and other problems, leaving an opening for Viki and others. ![]() The platform boasts the largest library of Korean content, which gained popularity after the film “Parasite” won four Academy Awards in February.Ī similarly focused streaming site, DramaFever, was owned by Japanese telecommunications firm SoftBank Group, and streamed Korean content to global audiences. The company has more than 100 employees with offices in Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo and Singapore. Rakuten Viki uses a tiered subscription system, offering free content with ads and monthly subscriptions of $4.17 or $8.33.Īlthough it targets a global audience, Rakuten Viki has a big following in the U.S., where it attracted 5 million users in the last month. Tokyo-based Rakuten, which also owns companies in advertising, telecommunications and e-books, acquired the streaming site in 2013 as part of its own global expansion. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company was launched in 2007 by three Stanford and Harvard graduate students - with funding from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and a Singapore startup backed by Joichi Ito - to tap into the growing global demand for Asian content. Owned by the Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten, Viki offers more than 1,300 shows and movies, including originals, from Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan. Viki is meant to be a mix of the words “video” and “Wiki,” playing on the idea that the subtitles are user-generated, like content on the site Wikipedia. ![]() Additionally, many of the site’s subtitles in more than 130 languages are generated by users and volunteers who compete to contribute the most content, giving the site its name. On Rakuten Viki, users can curate collections of shows on the site, at least one of which is focused on dramas that feature K-pop idols. “So we’ve been seeing that growing appetite in Asian content firsthand here.” “The trend in the Korean wave actually began over 20 years ago, and it’s been building for many years leading up to the recent breakthrough,” Rakuten Viki Chief Executive Sam Wu said.
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