Asian Content’s Rise in MENA

In July 2025, Korea’s CJ ENM, the media juggernaut behind Parasite, Crash Landing on You, and the Mnet Asian Music Awards, announced the launch of a Saudi Arabian subsidiary, signaling a serious push into the Middle East. Just a month earlier, the company struck a major partnership with Shahid, MBC Group’s flagship streaming platform, to bring a pipeline of K-dramas and other Asian series to viewers across the Middle East and North Africa.  With this move, Shahid is working to close its revenue gap with Netflix by expanding its vast Arabic slate to include a growing catalogue of Asian content. As of Q2 2025, Dataxis reports that Shahid counts 5.7 million subscribers, well ahead of Netflix’s 3.9 million in the Arab world, but still trails in streaming revenue, generating USD 142 million versus Netflix’s USD 193 million in SVOD during the first half of the year. Yet momentum is clearly on Shahid’s side: the platform recorded a 25% year-on-year surge, reaching roughly USD 178 million in total revenues for H1 2025. From the emotional pull of Korean dramas to the bold style of Japanese anime and Southeast Asia’s inventive series, Asian content has become a major force in global streaming. Now it’s shaping Arab platforms, driving new collaborations and expanding what regional audiences watch and expect. Expanding Asian Libraries and Emerging Regional Partnerships Between August 2024 and August 2025, most major streaming platforms in the MENA region expanded their libraries of Asian-produced content, according to Dataxis. The strongest growth came from OSN+, which nearly doubled its catalogue from 124 to 227 titles, and Amazon Prime Video, which climbed from 934 to 1,030 titles. StarzPlay Arabia and TOD also posted moderate increases, while the Indian streaming platform ZEE5 consolidated its dominance in South Asian programming, growing from 2,834 to 3,165 titles. The overall trend underscores how platforms across the region are quietly deepening their investment in Asian storytelling. The growing presence of Asian content in MENA isn’t limited to larger catalogues; it’s also visible in the arrival of new players and cross-regional partnerships. In 2024 and 2025, Chinese streaming giant iQIYI made a decisive push into the region, marking one of the most significant recent expansions of Asian media influence. After distributing over twenty popular Chinese dramas, animations, and films through evision’s StarzPlay Arabia in 2024, iQIYI strengthened its foothold with a deal involving Egypt’s Watch IT. The agreement allows the Egyptian service to stream a curated slate of iQIYI’s premium Chinese-language titles, including Road Home and Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty, while iQIYI, in return, showcases Watch IT’s original documentary Mother of the World. Taking a closer look at the data, one figure stands out: Shahid’s catalogue of Asian titles...