Short dramas in 2025: free, high-quality, and competing for IP

In 2024, the short drama market has experienced explosive growth, with a user base of 576 million and a market size that has surpassed movie box office to reach 50.44 billion yuan. Behind this phenomenal growth is the transformation of short dramas from a paid model to a combination of free and paid, as well as the trend of high-quality content.

2024 can be regarded as an important year for the explosion of short dramas.

The White Paper on the Development of China's Micro Drama Industry (2024) released by the China Internet Audiovisual Association shows that as of June 2024, the number of micro drama users in my country has reached 576 million, accounting for 52.4% of the total netizens.

The number of people watching short dramas has exceeded the number of people ordering takeout, taking online taxis, and reading online literature.

At the same time, with the increase in participants, short dramas are also developing iteratively, with the model changing from paid to half paid and half free, and the content moving towards high-quality.

1. Short dramas surpass movie box office, growing at an alarming rate

In 2024, short dramas will have an interesting comeback.

In 2024, the short drama market size reached 50.44 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 34.9%, exceeding the estimated total annual box office of Chinese films of 47 billion yuan for the first time.

"Although this reversal is highly related to the sluggishness of the film industry itself, considering that the rise in short dramas has only happened in the past few years, the growth rate is really too exaggerated," industry observer Lan Xi pointed out.

In fact, in 2023, short dramas also ushered in an extremely high growth rate. The market size that year was 37.39 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 267.65%.

Behind this, the entry of players from all walks of life has continued to expand this market. According to Qichacha, as of November 7, the number of newly registered short drama companies in my country in 2024 reached 16,100.

At present, the domestic micro-short drama market is divided into several camps, including short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, free short drama apps such as Hongguo Short Drama, long video platforms such as iQiyi and Tencent Video, e-commerce platforms such as Meituan/Pinduoduo/Taobao, and major companies such as Baidu, Huawei, and Xiaomi.

The rapid development of Hongguo Short Drama may be a reflection of the popularity of short dramas. In May 2023, Hongguo Short Drama was launched. As of November 2024, the monthly active users of Hongguo Short Drama rose to 140 million, a year-on-year increase of 626.3%.

Some new players are still planning and increasing their investment. Baidu not only applied to register the "Baidu Short Drama" trademark, but also announced that it will upgrade the five major aspects of distribution, profit sharing, rewards, exclusive broadcasting and investment promotion in 2025.

Specifically in the broadcast of short dramas, we can also see the trend of short dramas becoming popular. On the one hand, the penetration rate is getting higher and higher. In October 2024, the penetration rate of Douyin short drama content has reached 66.1%, and the penetration rate of short dramas on the Kuaishou platform is as high as 73.6%. On the other hand, short dramas have started to "go big screen". According to statistics from China Audiovisual Big Data (CVB), as of November 2024, more than 30 micro-short dramas have been broadcast on provincial satellite TV stations across the country, with a viewing scale of more than 500 million households, and dramas with a scale of tens of millions of viewers accounted for 48.3%.

With the prosperity of the short drama industry, the related employment market has also formed a certain scale. In 2024, the development of the short drama industry will directly and indirectly drive 647,000 jobs, and the number of jobs will continue to grow in 2025 along with the market size.

2. Short dramas enter the free era

In the past, short dramas were mainly paid models, and the direct access to the C-end payment model even gave birth to many myths of wealth creation. Take "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" as an example. On the day of its launch, the single-day recharge exceeded 20 million, and the cumulative recharge exceeded 100 million.

However, there are also many challenges under the paid model. With the surge in entrants, the content of short dramas has become more homogeneous, the cost of streaming has increased, consumers are less willing to pay, and the audience of short dramas has shrunk.

According to the Daily Economic News, 80% to 90% of the paid income from "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" was spent on "investing" to increase the exposure of the short drama and attract viewers. In other words, the company needs to produce 20 such popular short dramas a year to support the company.

To some extent, Hongguo short plays have opened up a new business model for short plays.

Lan Xi mentioned that "the investment flow of free short dramas has now exceeded 50%, which means that more than half of the promotion costs are not to convince users to pay to watch dramas, but to send users to new platforms and create opportunities for long-term captivity." A practitioner also said that now it mainly produces free short dramas, and viewers no longer need to pay to unlock and watch the full film. But in the 25th episode, you may need to watch a 10-second advertisement, and another 10-second advertisement in the 30th episode.

Bohu Finance learned that since October 2024, the ratio of free to paid short dramas has reached 1:1. And according to feedback from industry insiders, in 2025, free will exceed paid.

However, the success of Hongguo is not only due to its free model, but also inseparable from the resource integration and promotion of ByteDance. The financial resources to purchase short dramas from other platforms, the traffic support of Douyin, and the IP supply of its Tomato Novels are all the foundations that support Hongguo's siphoning of short drama traffic.

Behind the entry of short dramas into the "free" era is still a big competition of platform strength.

3. In 2025, short plays will be more popular

As more and more players enter the market, the scale of the short drama market has expanded, and "high-quality" has become a key word in the development of the industry.

The quality of a short play is mainly reflected in its content, while the crudeness of a short play is also mainly reflected in its content.

Wu Tian, ​​the creator of the short play, believes that some short plays are chasing hot topics and need to be released before the heat of hot events subsides in order to attract traffic, so it is difficult to have sufficient time to polish the script. "The fundamental reason is the limited budget. Some short plays only have a few tens of thousands of yuan in investment. After deducting the cost of shooting and production, there is not much left, so they try to save as much as possible on the script investment."

In addition, the lack of excellent short drama creators is also a major reason why short dramas are not high-quality. Guangming Daily pointed out that most professional screenwriters in the micro short drama industry are born after 1995 and 2000, and their script creation is mostly adaptations of related online literary works.

Against this background, roll production has become a major trend in short dramas in 2025.

In terms of subject matter, short plays are no longer limited to clichéd plots such as "boss", but are expanding into traditional culture, historical stories, heroic figures, natural humanities, etc.

The production is also more sophisticated. Ting Huadao’s relevant person in charge predicted that making big money with shoddy products will soon become a thing of the past. “We discuss it every day, we are not ahead enough, and our peers are iterating too fast.”

At the same time, the participation of many platforms will also intensify competition. Among them, IP resources may become a major direction of competition. Platforms such as Douyin, Baidu, and Tencent have online literature ecosystems such as Yuewen, Fanqie Novels, and Zhangyue, and have a large number of relatively mature IPs, which give them greater advantages in short drama content.

On January 13, iQIYI and Hongguo Short Drama announced that they had reached an in-depth cooperation. The two parties will jointly promote cooperation models such as IP joint development, joint production and finished content authorization, aiming to launch more high-quality short drama works.

The entertainment value officer believes that the platforms that hold the IP source and traffic resources of short dramas have further accelerated the transformation of the so-called mini-program short drama platforms and producers on the market into distributors through the free model. They obtain the content developed by the short dramas from the platforms, and then build a distribution network, gradually becoming the intermediary service provider between the short dramas and the platforms. However, because they do not have their own user base and the traffic is getting more and more expensive, the profits will only become thinner and thinner, and most competitors will be eliminated by 2025.

It is conceivable that by 2025, short dramas will become more and more like long dramas. Not only will they become more and more "high-quality", but competition will also become even more intense.

Source | Bohu Finance (bohuFN)
Author | Lynn