SBA, SPP International Contents Market 2025 held··· 'The Spread of K-Culture'

Nam Si-hyun • 2025.9.26. 17:03

[IT Dong-A reporter Nam Si-hyun] The 'SPP International Content Market 2025' hosted by the Seoul Economic Promotion Agency (SBA, CEO Kim Hyun-woo) was held at the Westin Chosun, Jung-gu, Seoul from September 24 to 26. SPP (Seoul Promotion Plan) started as an animation market in 2001 and entered its 25th time this year, and is now reborn as the largest comprehensive content B2B market in Korea. This year's event was held as a large-scale event with the participation of more than 500 content demand companies and 1,000 content suppliers at home and abroad.

Seoul Promotion Plan 2025 (SPP 2025) hosted by the Seoul Economic Promotion Agency / Source=IT Dong-A

SPP is a B2B (company-to-company) event ▲ 'Business Consultation' with the participation of global media platforms and investment companies ▲ 'Contents Meet Up' with company officials by content genre ▲ Networking party 'Seoul' with the theme of Seoul content ▲ Conferences and forums to announce content industry trends and success strategies ▲ SPP Night to present SPP 2025 excellent intellectual property rights (IP) etc.

On the 24th, the first day of the event, a content meet-up for IP pitching and business networking was held at Space Sopora, Haikerground, and Traditional Ju Gallery located in Jung-gu, Seoul and Jongno-gu, and in the evening, an SPP Night was held with demand companies and suppliers interested in Seoul content. The reporter visited the site on the 25th to look at the site for K-Contents' overseas market development and market entry.

Korea's content industry, overseas with SPP as a stepping stone

The flower of SPP is a meeting site for domestic and overseas content service companies, promotion companies, domestic content studios and production companies. Various contents made in Korea spread all over the world with the hands of overseas demand companies who visited SPP. The September 25th SPP schedule began with a business consultation with the participation of 1086 companies in 29 countries around the world. At the venue, 1:1 business consultation was conducted between 511 domestic and foreign demand companies and a total of 575 content suppliers, including Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Tencent, and Lil Short.

I met with Rosemond Perdue and Jess Khanom, co-founders of Rock And Rose Studios, who visited the scene, and listened to the background of the visit. "Rock and Rose Studios is a comprehensive IP company that deals with global content such as movies, TV series, and animation," Rosemond Purdue said. Currently, we are strategically purchasing Korean content to target not only Asia but also Eastern Europe, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the Middle East." Co-founder of Jess Canom said, "Fox, Warner Bros. has been in charge of global distribution for 30 years, and is mainly promoting content distribution in the UK. I came to Korea to find content to show to major customers," he replied.

Both of them are looking for content contracts at MIPCOM in France, Asia TV Forum (ATF) in Singapore, and TIFFCOM in Japan, but emphasized that SPP is the fastest and most active. ROSMOND PURDU SAID, "IN JAPAN AND SINGAPORE, IT TAKES SEVERAL YEARS TO MEET THE PERSON IN CHARGE OF THE CONTRACT, BUT SPP CAN MEET THE PERSON IN CHARGE WITHIN AN HOUR. It is a very important factor in a rapidly changing era like now," he pointed out the difference.

Both of them have only started a business meeting for a few hours, but they have already met with the web novel company 'Goznok NT', JTBC studio 'SLL', the animation production company 'Toon Motion', and the short-form-based webtoon production company 'One Minute'. Jess Kanom said, "People are very interested in finding and pioneering new genres. There are many short-form dramas in the industry, but I first learned about short-form webtoons through One Minute Go. Through this schedule, there will be a lot more Korean content to introduce to the world," he said.

I also made practical results. Rosemond Purdue has cooperated with Pita Fat Studio last year after signing a memorandum of understanding for content joint planning, development, and distribution. As a result, this year's SPP signed a remake production and Turkish distribution contract for two domestic dramas that Canvas N has an IP and is managed by Pita Fat Studio.

As more and more companies are visiting SPP for the purpose of finding K-contents overseas, the number of domestic companies and overseas companies are signing memorandums of understanding and strategic collaboration cases. On the same day, Jaedam Media signed a content animation contract with ADN (Animation Digital Network), a French animation streaming platform and distributor.

Noh Eun-jung, general director of Jaedam Media, said, "With the original IP of Jaedam Media, ADN of France decided to produce a work called 'Hero Killer', which is being serialized on Naver and Line Webtoon, as an animation. It seems that the cool action fantasy webtoon based on the hero is considered appropriate for animation."

He went on to say, "Jadam Media previously connected the original cartoon 'Gong' to Thailand, Mexico, China, etc. as a drama contract, and in China, a webtoon called 'Standard Standard Warrior' has been aired as an animation on Tencent since the end of last year. This is the first time that France has signed a contract with Europe, and we will spread K-contents to various countries with various original IPs in the future," he said.

Vibravo also signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the French webtoon studio Flagcat, which contains the contents of joint production, distribution, and joint licensing of webtoon content. Kim Chae-won, CEO of Vibrabo, said, "Through this memorandum of understanding, 'The butler is overprotecting me!' The same French work was distributed in the Korean market, and Vibravo's original IP, Picture 725, and Kim Ji-sook's 'Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary', etc. became known as short-form animations in France.

He continued, "Based on this agreement, I have gained confidence that intellectual property rights can be rediscovered by secondary processing of content. I will focus on a way to commercialize a content genre in various formats," he said.

Meanwhile, an investment consultation and IR pitching day were also held to support small and medium-sized content companies in Seoul that hope to cooperate and attract investment between the Seoul Economic Promotion Agency and the Seoul Content Investment Council. 23 domestic investment companies interested in cultural contents participated in the investment consultation, and 82 companies in the fields of OTT, virtual reality, and augmented reality, as well as content industries such as animation and characters, webtoons, movie industries, and games, visited the site. Each investment company was provided with 1:1 investment consulting support through mutual matching as well as networking opportunities.

The next IR pitching day was attended by companies that have been invested or are going to be invested in through the Seoul Content Investment Council after January 2025. The project has already held IR pitching day at the end of July, and five excellent companies visited the event venue on that day to conduct IR pitching.

Excellent companies ▲ 'Studio Meta K', a content production company that combines AI technology and original content IP ▲ 'Hello Apollo', a character entertainment company that discovers new IPs and provides one-stop commercialization from manufacturing, distribution, and licensing ▲ 'Super Play that embodies the IP of famous game brands at home and abroad in real space ▲ 'Play Legend', a realistic sports experience content company that combines screens and sports ▲ 'Booster Lab', a digital-based ticket reservation office linkage integration such as NFC and QR'.

According to the 'K-Contents' Emergence (飛上): Analysis of Industrial Characteristics and Growth Factors compiled by the KDI Korea Development Research Institute in March this year, Korea's content industry exports are 12.45 billion dollars (about 17,446.1 billion won) as of 2021, and it has reached the highest level every year since the statistics. The capacity of Korean content is strengthened, and the dependence of content on overseas is becoming more and less. As a result of COVID-19, the current market size will be much larger than expected.

The reason why the whole world is looking for K-contents is the background of the growth of Korea's content industry, but there is also the continuous efforts of domestic content companies to make it known overseas. In that respect, SPP has established itself as Asia's number one B2B content market sought by content platforms and planners around the world in name and reality, and has become a place for cooperation beyond Asia and around the world.

Kim Hyun-woo, CEO of the Seoul Economic Promotion Agency, said, "SPP 2025 will be a solid bridgehead for K-content companies to enter the global market," and "I expect the status of Korean content to become more solid through this event." As CEO Kim Hyun-woo wishes, it is clear that the status of SPP will grow as the potential of K-contents grows.