China’s micro-short drama market is gradually saturated, and going overseas has become a new direction of exploration. The article analyzes the opportunities and challenges of micro-short dramas going overseas, pointing out that the growth potential of overseas markets is huge, but issues such as competition, cost, and localization cannot be ignored.
China’s micro-short drama industry chain, from IP production, production and packaging, platform construction, back-end operation and other upstream and downstream related layouts, has been clearly improved, and even has a trend of saturation. With the increasing number of micro-short drama works year by year and the slowdown in market expansion, micro-short dramas going overseas have brought new incremental space to the industry.
In the first quarter of 2025, the in-app purchase revenue of global short drama applications was close to $700 million, nearly four times that of the first quarter of 2024. In addition, the number of downloads of short drama applications worldwide reached 370 million in the first quarter of 2025, and the significant growth trend is exciting for the industry. Seeing that the data of the overseas micro-short drama market is rising year by year, for the highly competitive short drama industry, going overseas has indeed opened up a new market territory. But this does not mean that going overseas is equated with steady winning, and even many investors have not yet recovered their costs.
The seemingly “foreign” micro-short drama going overseas is actually not easy at all.
01 Overseas data continues to grow Chinese short dramas are heading to new seas
With the continuous improvement of the quality of “Made in China”, the wave of going overseas has swept through various industries, and short dramas going overseas are a fresh and hot topic in the current entertainment industry. With the further improvement of the rules and systems of China’s micro-short drama market, the micro-short drama market will embrace more innovation and opportunities, and China’s micro-short drama going overseas is a major opportunity.
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According to the “2024-2025 China Micro-short Drama Market and Overseas Market Analysis Report” released by iiMedia Consulting, the market size of China’s micro-short drama market is on the rise.It is expected that the market size of China’s micro-short dramas will exceed 100 billion yuan in 2027.
Going overseas for Chinese micro-short dramas is obviously a two-way rush for the global short drama market.The use time of mobile phones in many overseas countries exceeds that of China, and the viewing time of short dramas has increased the scope of expansion for the industry.
According to the “2024 Short Drama Overseas Industry Report” released by the Short Drama Study Room, from August 2022 to June 2024, the total in-app purchase revenue of overseas short drama applications reached US$252 million, and the cumulative number of downloads of overseas short drama applications was 148 million, and the amount of in-app purchase revenue and downloads showed an overall growth trend.
For the “myth of economic returns” brought about by the fever of short dramas going overseas, it has triggered the emergence of “a single cost is only 150,000 yuan, and the overseas return exceeds 10 million.” Regarding the real status quo of Chinese short dramas in overseas markets, the entertainment value officer interviewed Li Fangfang, the founder of the short drama production company “She Sees Culture”.
Li Fangfang believes that the capacity of overseas markets can indeed play a role in releasing the saturation of some domestic products, but the audience of overseas markets is different from that in China, and the needs of different countries and regions are even very different. For example, the preferences of North American and European audiences and Thai and Vietnamese audiences are very different, so making overseas short dramas should start alone, not simply “clear inventory”.
In addition, the industry rumors that the era of tens of thousands of yuan or hundreds of thousands of yuan to make a short drama is also fading away. At present, the competition in the industry is fierce, and the short drama service she makes by herself must be benchmarked against the level of long dramas, and the actors have also begun to use short drama stars with their own traffic, plus the cost of distribution.The rumor of 150,000 yuan returning 10 million will never appear in today’s short drama market, and it has long become a thing of the past.
02 The output of 10,000 micro-short dramas going overseas may not have high returns
The entertainment value officer found that the discussion on a new round of short dramas going overseas stemmed from a speech by Chen Ruiqing, chairman of Dianzhong Technology this year, in which he put forward a series of data, “At present, more than 200 overseas companies have a cumulative overseas user of about 300 million”, “If the penetration rate of overseas users is 60%, the short drama will be 2 billion users”, “The market size of overseas short dramas is at least 350 to 36 billion US dollars” A series of information has aroused huge repercussions in the industry.
Previously, at the China Online Audiovisual Conference, Chen Ruiqing also said that the entire recharge and advertising in 2024 will exceed $1.2 billion, or even close to or exceed $1.5 billion. Doubling this year is certainly not a problem, more than $2.4 billion, or even to $3 billion. Excluding access fees from Apple and Google, the net income is nearly $2 billion.
In this way, the huge potential of the overseas market of micro-short dramas is 7-12 times that of the domestic market, and it is a veritable blue ocean track. So, can the short drama industry, which tends to be saturated in China, really achieve “profitability when going overseas”?
Looking back on 2020, micro-short dramas have risen rapidly with their characteristics and advantages in form, expression, function and creation, communication, industry, etc., accompanied by stereotypes such as shoddy production, low allocation and low quality. With the continuous empowerment of the governance of industry management departments, the entry of professional forces, and technological upgrades, the micro-short drama industry has gotten rid of the previous non-mainstream label.
In the past two years, long video platforms have entered the short drama track, well-known directors and production teams have come to an end, and a large number of high-quality works have emerged in the industry. From vertical screen aesthetics, to small incisions and micro-narratives, works such as “Golden Pig and Jade Leaf”, “Return to Yongle Ceremony”, “A Dream Pillow Galaxy”, “Flying Youth”, “Macao Story” and other works show a trend of transformation to high-quality products.By this year, domestic micro-short dramas have reached an annual production capacity of 10,000 copies.
When the production of domestic micro-short dramas is saturated, going overseas seems to be a fast way to “clear inventory”.
But this is not the case, the current overseas hit short dramas are mostly based on themes such as hegemony, revenge, romance, etc., focusing on the sense of “coolness”. European and American audiences prefer supernatural themes such as werewolves and vampires, while Southeast Asian audiences prefer themes such as bitterness, sadomasochism, and wealthy strife. A short drama director told the entertainment value officer that the threshold for filming works for overseas markets is very high, such as the selection of scenes, the expression of actors, the art and so on. Some countries also require filming to be local, which will intercept many creative teams interested in going overseas.
The northern micro-short drama filming base solves the problem of overseas scenery
In addition to content creation, short drama applications are an important part of the micro-short drama industry chain. Paid short drama apps began to deepen their cultivation in overseas markets very early, Chinese the industry situation of Reelshort, a subsidiary of Online Maple Leaf Interactive, Dreambox of Dianzhong Technology, and Shortmax under Kyushu Culture was basically formed. In the overseas short drama market, where translated dramas account for 80% or 90%, these three leading applications can currently guarantee an average of 2-4 overseas self-made dramas per week. However, industry insiders said that such output is slightly insufficient.
With the end of ByteDance, the competition for overseas free short drama apps has entered a white-hot stage. According to the data of the short drama study room, the monthly active activity of Melolo, a subsidiary of ByteDance, has exceeded 670,000, an increase of 193% month-on-month, and the number of downloads in March exceeded 2.3 million, nearly 70% of which came from Indonesia, the most populous country in Southeast Asia, and the remaining markets were Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines.
Li Fangfang told the entertainment value officer that it is a consensus in the micro-short drama industry that if you can’t sell it in China, it is still the head company that really makes considerable profits. She has tried to go overseas in Southeast Asia, but was dissuaded due to the high cost of language and overseas team establishment.
As for Fanku Culture, which has successfully gone overseas, it will begin to try as early as around August 2023, and the current collaborative production capacity of multiple project teams of overseas short dramas can reach 5-10 films/month. The strongest advantage is a team composed of overseas Chinese professional filmmakers like Pandapix, which involves Los Angeles, Eastern Europe, Vancouver and other regions, and is well versed in the local culture, aesthetics, rules, etc. of the filming location, and the production capacity is also considerable. It is not difficult to see that the localized collaborative creation team is the core competitiveness of micro-short dramas going overseas.
03 Opportunities and risks coexist for those who go to sea
Xu Mingkui of the Yuan Dynasty said, “The wind drives the boat, and the thousands of miles are endless; If the sails are not collected, they will be carried and drowned”,Every navigator must maintain a cautious attitude, and excessive risk comes with potential risks.This is especially true for short dramas going overseas, and behind the opportunities must be parallel to risks.
According to Li Fangfang’s own industry observation and analysis, although short dramas are constantly heating up, the production cost of overseas short dramas has also risen, from 100,000 US dollars to 20-300,000 US dollars or even higher. At present, only the leading companies dare to spend a lot of money, which may be one of the reasons for the lack of production capacity of overseas short dramas.
The “translation drama” model is a fast-starting, low-cost choice, and 80% of the micro-short dramas on the market come from this model. Although the cost is low, there is also the problem of whether it matches the overseas market. The current cost-effective and relatively stable model is to launch the framework of domestic popular short dramas and carry out localized adaptation and processing. Li Fangfang believes that in fact, the risk of going overseas mainly comes from cross-cultural collaboration, first of all, if the language of the team manager is not the native language, then there will be mistakes in communication, affecting the filming progress and judgment. There are also some countries that have daily working hours requirements, which cannot be met or exceeded.
According to Moby Dick reports: “The first stock listed on short dramas” Mega Matrix as an example, through the operation of the overseas short drama platform FlexTV, the company will achieve a total revenue of US$36.18 million in 2024, but the company’s sales expenses are also as high as US$22.55 million, and the advertising expenditure of US$22.39 million covers 62% of the total revenue. High overseas promotion and customer acquisition costs have severely squeezed profit margins, and Mega Matrix’s financial report shows that the company still recorded a net loss of $10.5 million in 2024.
As Wang Jiacheng, chairman of Kyushu Culture, said at the online conference, the common problem encountered by the current overseas platform is that everyone is investing on a large scale and there is no way to share more benefits with creators, which leads to creation not being able to enter a positive cycle. Although it is now in the dividend stage, whether it is the business model, content production system, or talent pool, it has not yet been perfected and matured. However, looking at the production capacity of 10,000 short dramas in China every year and the inventory of diversified and high-quality works, we have reason to believe that the vigorous development of overseas micro-short dramas has just begun.
