Thai BL series

General Discussion
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dramacool is not legal…

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Agreed, best is to go to the studios’ YouTube channel to officially support them. But sometimes there are some stuff we just can’t find for free or sometimes the subbing is not done correctly. Dramacool comes handy during those times.

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Unfortunately LineTV - Left US! I am so upset - I still have not gotten over it! LINETV was a great place to go to BL

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Me neither I didn’t realize how many I watched on Line but according to MDL it’s my second most watched platform (Viki is probably first even though it says NF)

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I also had Netflix as a top watch - No it’s VIKI

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The best Thai BLs ik is, TharnType, You’re My Sky, and I have That’s My Candy in my watchlist.
They’re all on viki, if that part wasn’t obvious…

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Don’t Say NO

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OK so my original comment was that they are flooding the market with Thai BL series and Tharn Type was rubbish,

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I think Viki does not have many Thai Male/Female Romance Dramas for 2 reasons:

#1- Difficult/Expensive to get the Rights for Thai dramas. Many of the mainstream content providers for Thai Television programs make it difficult to get international rights for their dramas. These are the networks that broadcast the majority of Male/Female Romance dramas like-Channel 3, Channel 7, TrueVisions. I’m not sure why, because it means more $$ for them, but this is what I have heard. Namely, that contracts can be difficult to negotiate. The situation seems to be similar to that of Japan where it is also notoriously difficult to get international rights for dramas.

That being said, I believe things are slowly changing in the Thai dramas area. When dimsum.my proved there was a market for Thai content overseas in Malaysia (and then to Singapore, Brunei) over the past 4 years or so, more Thai content becoming available internationally on streaming services like NF, VIU, WeTV. However, most of the liscensing is region restricted to the immediate areas around Thailand-places like Malaysia, Singapore. And very, very slowly some of the Thai networks are putting English subtitles on a few of their series on the YT Channels. GMMTV has been an early adopter of subbing their shows in English on their YT channel and also they were the 1st network to make a deal with NF, which is why NF has so much of GMMTV content. Outside of GMMTV, the other networks are not subbing their shows-maybe 1% of content total. And GMMTV only really subbing the youth content. Dramas broadcast on their main channel One31- again only 1% available with Eng subs on the YT channel. It’s baby steps but hopefully the Thai television industry will come to make it more easy in future to negotiate international rights contracts for countries outside the immediate areas and also get wise to subbing their content on their own YT channels. There is a market for Thai content.

The second part of the equasion is cost. International rights for Thai dramas are very expensive which is the other reason you don’t find much of the Thai content. For sure TrueVisions came under fire in the past for having high cost to liscense their dramas. Hopefully this will change in future and maybe Thai content providers will not charge so high prices or be willing to negotiate a little more.

For Viki, this combo of expensive + difficult to get liscensing = not many Male/Female Romance Thai dramas available.

#2 Thai Male/Female Romance dramas not as popular as other countries here at Viki. For Male/Female romance #1 is South Korea, so Viki going to focus on there with getting liscenses. Then it’s China and Taiwan. What is popular? Thai BL dramas. The BL genre dramas are hot-consistently getting in the Top 10 Lists. Viki makes $$ with BL Genre as people will become subscriber to watch them. Viki gets lots of requests for BL Genre dramas, and Thailand is one of the largest producers of BL dramas. So Viki concentrate on getting Thai BL dramas over Male/Female dramas. BL dramas are somewhat easier to get the rights since most are independent companies rather than major networks (although that is changing-mainstream networks just now entering the BL market) and the cost is lower compared to mainstream dramas.

So, I feel this is why we do not see more of the Male/Female Romance dramas at Viki.

How to change this? Show Viki that we viewers want to see the Thai content. More people need to request the Thai Male/Female Romance dramas and viewers need to watch the Thai Male/Female dramas that are here at Viki. Then Viki might allocate more of the budget for the Male/Female Thai dramas. I think Viki is willing to get more Thai content if it can. I was happy to see 2 Thai Male/Female romance dramas in the “Coming Soon” section. Voice in the Rain and My Bubble Tea. Both are VIU Originals so it looks like Viki was able to make a deal with VIU. If people watch those dramas and continue to request Thai dramas showing Viki that there is an interest in Thai Male/Female content then hopefully we will be able to see more of the Thai dramas at Viki.

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