Latin America’s media landscape is being reshaped by new entertainment producers, with short-form drama platforms, often with business ties to China, taking an increasingly large share of the region’s video streaming market.
Demand for short-form drama is driving a “tectonic shift in consumer attention,” and such content is thriving in Latin America, according to the State of Mobile 2026 report released last week by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
Globally, downloads of short drama platforms grew 186% year-on-year to reach 733 million in Q4 2025, outpacing downloads of video streaming platforms such as: Netflix According to the report, Disney+ has 658 million.
Short dramas, also known as “micro” or “mini” dramas, refer to vertically shot serial dramas that usually feature episodes of three minutes or less.
“The appeal of short dramas is their ability to deliver emotional intensity and excitement, which is why the format has quickly become so popular,” says Wenjia Tan, a research fellow at the University of Sydney’s School of Media and Communication.
First popularized in China on short-form content sharing apps like TikTok’s sister apps Douyin and Kuaishou, short dramas have found international appeal, with popular platforms like ReelShort and DramaBox now producing dubbed content in English, Spanish, French, and other languages.
Although short-form dramas are increasingly expected to meet higher standards of production quality and professionalism, their original narrative style has largely been maintained, offering low-effort and low-effort entertainment that does not require deep thinking or concentration, Tan told CNBC.
Seema Shah, vice president of insights at Sensor Tower, said this content is often “easier to digest” for consumers who are used to watching short-form content like TikTok videos and Instagram Reels, as opposed to long-form content on streaming platforms like Netflix.
Sensor Tower reports that while consumption of short-form drama content is increasing significantly globally, Latin America is “emerging as the fastest growing region” in interest in these videos.
According to Shah, the number of downloads for the top 20 short drama apps in Latin America has increased by 4,300% year-on-year from 2024, and by about 402% year-on-year in 2025.
Not only do users in Latin America overwhelmingly consume entertainment content on their phones, but there are strong similarities between short dramas and telenovelas, a genre of soap operas popular in Latin American countries, said Maria Rua Aguete, head of media and entertainment at research firm Omdia.
exponential growth
Short-form drama platforms DramaBox and ReelShort consistently rank as two of the most downloaded video entertainment apps in the region, with ReelShort’s 77 million downloads in 2025 just ahead of Dramabox’s 74 million downloads, according to figures provided by Shah.
Although officially based overseas, both platforms have business ties to China.
ReelShort is owned by Crazy Maple Studio, a content creation and distribution company founded in San Francisco in 2017. Despite having offices in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, Crazy Maple Studio is still a subsidiary of Chinese media conglomerate COL Digital Publishing Group.
Microdrama custom thumb for digital video.
Reel Short | Good Short | Drama Box | Getty Images
Similarly, although officially headed by Singapore-based Story Matrix Ltd., the content on DramaBox remains the intellectual property of China’s DianZhong Technology, according to a copyright infringement complaint filed against Crazy Maple Studio in 2025.
ReelShort and DramaBox are part of a suite of entertainment companies vying for a stake in Latin America’s growing video streaming market.
Omdia estimates that the total revenue generated by the Latin American market will increase by 9.1% from 2024 to 2025. This is more than three times the U.S. revenue growth over the same period. This growth rate is expected to accelerate to 10.7% in 2026.
Shah said Latin America’s expanding middle class is increasing demand for short video streaming, as well as retail and ride-sharing services.
Short-form drama platforms aren’t the only ones benefiting from the growing Latin American market. The region is also a key source of revenue growth for streaming giants like Netflix, which recorded the fastest revenue growth in Latin America on a currency-neutral basis, according to its Q4 2025 earnings report.
Downloads for short-form drama platforms are starting to outpace those of long-form providers, but experts do not believe these new short-form video streaming platforms are a credible threat to market leaders like Netflix.
“That’s not the case now, and that’s not their target. They’re targeting a different audience, and the way they make money is different,” Tan told CNBC.
Short-form drama platforms have lower production costs and can produce content at much higher rates than traditional studios, but their business models typically rely on advertising and pay-per-view revenue, which doesn’t necessarily translate to higher profit margins, Omdia’s Rua Aguete said.
Omdia estimates that the total revenue of all short drama streaming platforms generated outside China will reach $3 billion in 2026. In comparison, Netflix reported $12 billion in revenue in Q4 2025.
Nevertheless, as demand for short-form drama content increases in Latin America and beyond, these platforms are likely to create an increasingly diverse video streaming market.
“I don’t think short drama apps will completely replace streaming, but they will create new competition for consumers’ attention and money,” said Sensor Tower’s Shah.
