The global FAST market reached US$5.8 billion in 2025, with the US accounting for 81% of this total. This number, however, is equivalent to almost half of the US$11 billion generated by microdramas in the same period, a territory where China, with an 83% share, exercises almost absolute dominance.
Analyst Sandra Lehner used Omdia data to draw a key distinction that explains the format’s evolution from fringe experiment to multimillion-dollar market. Microdramas are often treated as a “global trend”, when, in practice, the business model is deeply regional.
Today, only Asia, notably China and parts of Southeast Asia, operates microdramas as a complete system, integrating production, distribution, monetization and scale.
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In China, the sector went from approximately US$500 million in 2021 to more than US$7 billion in revenue in 2024. Projections indicate that the market could reach US$16.2 billion by 2030, according to The Guardian.
In the United States, Business Insider estimates that microdramas will generate around US$1.3 billion by 2025, mostly via direct payments, such as subscriptions and unlocking episodes. Variety projects the category could reach about $26 billion in annual revenue by 2030.
The astronomical numbers support the comparison made by Lehner: it is a market equivalent to some niche segments of streaming, with a significantly higher growth rate.
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Analyst Hernan Lopez noted that the industry appears to be “discovering” microdramas as a “new continent.” And the sequence of movements recorded only in the first weeks of 2026 corroborates this reading.
A week ago, Fox Entertainment announced a deal with Dhar Mann Studios to produce 40 narrative-driven vertical titles for My Drama. The content will have an exclusivity window both on the app and on Fox Entertainment Global platforms.
Two days earlier, Deadline revealed that The Lodger: A Story of the London Foga silent film by Alfred Hitchcock released in 1927, became possibly the first classic reinterpreted entirely as a microdrama. The title is now available in the United States on the British Tattle TV app, in vertical format. The company describes the project as one of the first known cases of a classic film completely redesigned for mobile-first consumption.
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On the 21st, the column Outro Canal reported that Globo is preparing to launch a short video platform to compete directly with TikTok and Kwai. Internally called Globopop, the initiative must combine viral videos and original content, with emphasis on vertical soap operas, a format that has come to be treated as strategic within the group.
Two weeks earlier, insiders identified that TikTok had discreetly launched PineDrama, an independent micro-drama app, in the US and Brazil. The move follows ByteDance’s standard playbook: identify a compulsive consumption behavior (in this case, serialized vertical storytelling) and transform it into a new revenue channel.
The ripple effect of these initiatives reinforces Lehner’s premise. The growth of microdramas does not represent additional screen time. The format is, above all, capturing the attention dedicated to other short-term content. In other words, they compete with short videos, and not with traditional TV.
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The boom in microdramas points less to isolated bets and more to the construction of industrial systems capable of producing content continuously, with scale, efficiency and broad distribution, as is already happening in Asia.
PineDrama launched without fanfare at the end of December. Global Short Drama Index subscribers received this story long before any press coverage, as Lopez revealed. The interface replicates TikTok’s vertical feed and brings together series produced by studios such as ShortMax, FlareFlow, Sereal+ and others. Most titles star American actors.
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The question raised by Lopez is in the model. PineDrama presents itself as ad-free and, so far, does not impose paywalls or subscriptions. This immediately shifts the discussion to two questions: where is the monetization and who captures the value generated?
As Lehner noted, market structure is decisive. The revenue stream tends to be concentrated on platforms rather than independent producers.
In this ecosystem, production and profitability rarely go together. The platform has control of the audience and monetization mechanisms, not the creators.
Another recurring obstacle pointed out by the analyst is the difficulty of direct monetization outside of these applications. Creators report limitations in both advertising revenue and direct payments.
In a Reddit forum from three months ago, cited by Lehner, users discussed emerging alternatives. Brands are starting to pay for insertions in short narrative arcs, perceived as more organic than traditional ads. Some creators sell episodic packages on platforms like Patreon or Ko-fi. Others use narrative shorts as a gateway to longer content on YouTube, where AdSense still supports the model.
Serialized storytelling, therefore, stops being just a creative format and becomes consolidated as a fragmented and adaptive business model, in which value is captured outside the walls of the application that hosts the content.
In Lopez’s words, if PineDrama is successful, it will not be by delivering better television, but by transforming storytelling into a recurring habit, measurable and monetizable at scale.
