The most interesting buyer trend in vertical drama licensing over the past 18 months is not coming from streaming platforms. It is coming from telecom operators.

Telcos in Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and LatAm are building vertical drama libraries as part of their content and data bundle strategies, and the commercial logic is stronger than it might appear from the outside.

The Telco Content Problem

Telecom operators have been trying to solve the same problem for a decade. They control the distribution infrastructure. They have billing relationships with tens of millions of subscribers. They have the ability to bundle content with connectivity and charge for it. What they have struggled to find is content that is cheap enough to acquire at scale, engaging enough to drive uptake, and mobile-first enough to justify the format.

Long-form scripted drama from traditional studios is expensive, typically arrives with territorial restrictions that do not match telco footprints, and is designed for television screens rather than mobile devices. Sports rights are expensive and episodic rather than library-building. Music and podcast content does not generate the same session depth.

Vertical drama solves most of these problems simultaneously.

Why the Format Fits the Telco Model

The pricing is appropriate for telco content economics. Vertical drama titles license at a fraction of the cost of equivalent long-form scripted content. A telco building a 100-title library of vertical drama is spending a budget that would not cover a single episode of a premium scripted series from a major studio. This allows telcos to build meaningful libraries rather than making a single high-stakes content bet.

The format is built for mobile consumption. Telcos are, ultimately, in the business of selling mobile data. Content that drives mobile data consumption is content that serves their core commercial interest. A subscriber who watches 10 episodes of vertical drama on their phone on the commute home is consuming data in exactly the way a telco wants to encourage.

The episode structure suits carrier billing models. Many telcos in emerging markets operate carrier billing systems where subscribers pay per episode or per bundle of episodes, with the charge added to their phone bill. Vertical drama's episode structure maps directly onto this model in a way that long-form content does not. A subscriber can unlock five episodes for a small charge, watch them, and unlock five more. The friction of the transaction is minimal and the consumption pattern is self-reinforcing.

The content does not require live rights. Sports and live events require real-time infrastructure. Vertical drama is evergreen catalogue content. It can be licensed, stored, and served without any live broadcast infrastructure. This is a significant operational advantage for telcos whose content delivery infrastructure is built for on-demand rather than live.

Where the Telco Opportunity Is Largest

The opportunity is not evenly distributed. The telco markets where vertical drama fits best share a set of characteristics: high mobile penetration, growing middle-class audiences with appetite for entertainment content, carrier billing infrastructure, and content markets where local production is limited relative to demand.

Southeast Asia is the most active market. Operators in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines are actively evaluating and acquiring vertical drama content. The combination of high mobile penetration, young demographics, and established appetite for Asian drama content makes the region a natural fit.

LatAm is the emerging opportunity. Brazil and Mexico have telco operators with tens of millions of subscribers, carrier billing infrastructure, and audiences that have demonstrated appetite for drama content. The market is less developed than Southeast Asia for vertical drama specifically, but the structural conditions are right.

The Middle East is relevant for specific operators. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt have telco operators with content ambitions and subscriber bases that could support vertical drama libraries. The content selection needs to account for regulatory requirements around certain genres, but romance and family drama, the highest-performing vertical drama genres, are generally compatible with local content standards.

Europe is a smaller opportunity but not irrelevant. Telcos in France, Germany, Spain, and the Nordics have been experimenting with content bundles for years. Vertical drama is a cost-effective way to add content depth to those bundles without competing directly with Netflix or Amazon on premium scripted content.

What Telcos Get Wrong When They Start

The most common mistake telcos make when they first approach vertical drama is treating it like a traditional content acquisition. They send a detailed technical specification, request exclusivity on specific titles, and ask for individual title negotiations. This approach works for long-form scripted content acquired from major studios. It is the wrong approach for vertical drama.

Vertical drama is a catalogue format. The right entry point for a telco is a bundle acquisition: a defined number of titles across a range of genres, for a defined territory, for a defined term, at a flat fee. The negotiation is about the bundle parameters, not individual title terms.

Telcos also sometimes underestimate the localisation requirement. Content in Chinese, Japanese, or English may perform reasonably in some Southeast Asian markets as subtitled content, but dubbed content in Thai, Indonesian, or Vietnamese will significantly outperform it. The localisation investment is part of the content strategy, not an afterthought.

Finally, telcos tend to underestimate the volume required for the format to work. A 10-title pilot is not a vertical drama strategy. It is a sample. The subscriber who finishes those 10 titles in a week has nowhere to go, and the telco has not built the habit-forming library depth that makes content a genuine subscriber retention tool.

The Right Structure for a Telco Vertical Drama Deal

The deals that work best for telcos in this space share a common structure.

A minimum of 50 titles at launch, with a mix of genres weighted toward romance and family drama. Thriller and action content provides range without requiring the telco to bet on genre-specific audience behaviour.

All or most titles dubbed into the primary language of the territory. The dubbing investment should be part of the acquisition budget, not a separate project.

A one-year term with clear renewal options. Vertical drama content does not age in the way that news or current affairs content does. A title that performs well in year one will continue to perform in year two, and renewal pricing should reflect that.

Non-exclusive rights for the telco's territory. Exclusivity is available at a premium but is rarely necessary for the telco use case, where the content is part of a bundle rather than a competitive differentiator against streaming platforms.

A single contract and single invoice covering both licensing and localisation where possible. Managing multiple supplier relationships for the same content package adds operational overhead that most telco content teams are not structured to absorb.

Working With Face Production

Face Production Media works with telco operators as well as streaming platforms and broadcasters. The structure of our offer is designed for the telco use case: access to English, Chinese, and Japanese catalogues under a single agreement, dubbing services in over 10 languages through our studio partnerships, and delivery within five business days of payment confirmation.

If you are a telco operator evaluating a vertical drama strategy for your subscriber base, we can move from initial conversation to delivery-ready proposal in a short timeline. Use the contact form to start the conversation.