CJ ENM to Invest 5 Trillion Won in Content Over 5 Years... TVING to Expand Overseas Next Year

Kang Ho-sung, CEO of CJ ENM, Announces at Press Conference
Plans to Diversify Content Production Formats
80 Billion KRW Investment This Year... Drama, Entertainment, Film
Discovering Franchise IPs to Lead Long-Term Growth

[Asia Economy Reporter Cha Min-young] "Including 800 billion KRW this year, we will make content investments exceeding 5 trillion KRW over the next five years."

Kang Ho-sung, CEO of CJ ENM, stated this on the morning of the 31st at a press conference held at the CJ ENM Center in Sangam-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, saying, "We will reflect customer preferences in real time through interactive communication directly with customers and diversify content production formats."

CJ ENM's goal is to leap into a "complete entertainment company." In addition to investing 800 billion KRW in content this year, it will undertake large-scale, long-term content investments. Starting with Studio Dragon, a drama-specialized studio, it will also build a blockbuster intellectual property (IP) production system and infrastructure encompassing movies, variety shows, and music.

Its own over-the-top (OTT) platform, "TVING," also plans to expand overseas next year. TVING was established with the goal of becoming a global platform, not limited to Korea, since its launch in October last year. The recruitment of Yang Ji-eul, who has experience at a US IT company, as co-CEO is known to be a strategic move for this purpose. TVING's cumulative paid subscribers have increased by 63% compared to the initial period, and new app installations have risen by 67%.

TVING aims to produce about 100 original contents and secure 8 million paid subscribers by 2023. It will also nurture drama and variety show franchise IPs such as the "Reply," "Wise Life," "New Journey to the West," and "Great Escape" series. Franchise IPs can be long-term revenue sources due to their long value cycles. Lee Myung-han, co-CEO of TVING, emphasized, "We will turn customers with diverse tastes into fans of TVING through various contents. To build fandoms, we plan to invest more than 50% of TVING's total original content investment into nurturing franchise IPs."

Meanwhile, CJ ENM plans to continuously secure mega music IPs. Following music festivals like "KCON" and "MAMA," which spread K-pop worldwide, it will create locally customized music audition programs. After recent successes with "I-LAND" and "JO1," it plans to introduce a South American K-pop idol group audition program.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.