DMM's short-drama entry leans on someone else's forecast

The figure or the record

On 26 September 2024, the Japanese platform operator DMM.com published a press release stating that its video service DMM TV would enter the vertical short-drama field, investing on the order of 2 billion yen a year from that winter. The release names its plan: four or more original short dramas a month, plus fifty or more licensed domestic and overseas hit titles a year. Justifying the move, DMM's own text cites a market-research firm, YH Research, as forecasting that the global short-drama market will reach 8.8 trillion yen by 2029. Separately, YH Research's own research blog, in an 11 May 2026 post titled (in Japanese) 'Global vertical-screen short drama: top companies' market share and ranking 2026', states a different global figure: $11,820 million in 2025 growing to $60,350 million by 2032, a forecast compound annual growth rate of 26.4% for 2026 to 2032.

What the documents establish

Neither document gives a Japan-specific market total. DMM's release documents a domestic platform's own announced spending decision, denominated in yen, with a stated content schedule; it is an announced plan, not a delivered result. The YH Research figures it cites and the YH Research figures found directly on the firm's own blog are both global projections, not measurements of Japan, and the two do not obviously reconcile: one uses yen and a 2029 horizon, the other uses US dollars and a 2032 horizon, and neither release explains how the two relate to each other or which base year and method each rests on.

Scope and caveats

What is available for Japan, in other words, is a company's own investment figure and a global research firm's projection, cited two different ways in two different documents, at two different times. That is not the same as an independently measured Japanese market size, and neither document claims to be one. The 2 billion yen figure is DMM's own planned spend, not a market total; it says how much one platform intends to commit, not how large the category is in Japan or what share DMM expects to hold.

What to watch

This is editorial: the more useful check is not whether either global forecast proves accurate by 2029 or 2032, but whether any Japanese research firm publishes a domestic short-drama total that can be checked against DMM's own investment and content-output figures.

• Does DMM report actual short-drama viewership or spending once its winter 2024 slate has launched?
• Do YH Research's yen and dollar projections converge in a later report, or do they remain separate series?
• Does any Japanese broadcaster or platform publish a Japan-only short-drama market figure?

A platform's own spending announcement and a research firm's global forecast can both be genuine documents while still leaving the question the angle asks unanswered: what Japan's own short-drama market is actually worth has not yet been separately measured in either record.