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Yoshimoto Kogyo, iflix forge content JV

MIPTV: Yoshimoto Kogyo, Japan’s largest entertainment talent agency and production group, has entered a joint venture with Asian streamer iflix, marking its first investment in a foreign media service.

Mark Britt

Operating out of Singapore, the tie-up will see Yoshimoto Group content carried on iflix across its territories in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, while also bringing iflix content to Japan.

Yoshimoto Kogyo VP Hideaki Shimizu called the partnership “a big step” for the group’s Asian strategy. The deal will include the two firms producing adaptations of popular Japanese formats for other Asian countries, which will help expand iflix’s own original content offering. Further ahead, the aim is to develop original Japanese content for the Asian market.

The JV will also strengthen iflix’s growing focus on developing and creating engaging, hyper-local programming aimed at millennial and Gen Z generations in emerging and developing markets across South-East Asia. It also fits with Yoshimoto’s mandate to export Japanese content and formats to younger audiences internationally.

Yoshimoto Kogyo has been active in South-East Asia since 2014, when it began operating n Indonesia as MCIP Holdings. There it launched the Living in Asia Comedians programme, under which Yoshimoto-represented comedians live and work in seven different countries across the territory. In April last year, it announced the launch of Japanese online content service Okinawa Asia Entertainment Platform.

Iflix co-founder and group CEO Mark Britt said: “We have an incredible opportunity to deliver a uniquely localised product for iflix audiences, based on proven Japanese comedy formats with mass appeal through this joint venture. Yoshimoto Kogyo has set the standard for popular, culture-defining millennial comedy content.”

The collaboration opens up the opportunity to “experiment, explore and create new content to cater to a mobile-savvy, discerning global iflix audience,” he added.

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