Asia falls in love with Thai Boys Love
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Loading... - Sofia Chew
- 16 May 2022
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Buoyed by the openness of the LGBT community, Thailand's "Boys Love" (BL) movies and series have been well received in the local market and are considered promising export products that can draw lucrative revenue streams and foster business opportunities in other areas, including tourism.
BL dramas are known in Thailand as Y Series, derived from the Japanese term "yaoi", which refers to a genre of fictional media that features homoerotic relationships between male characters.
The government last year said that Thailand's Y content market was worth more than 1 billion baht, with the key export markets including China, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Latin America.
In June last year, the Department of International Trade Promotion held an online Y content business matching event to boost the industry, with the participation of 10 Thai content creators.
More than 360 million baht was generated from the purchase of the Thai content, with the top three buyers coming from Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam.
One of the most popular Thai Y Series in overseas markets is "2gether", which was produced by Thai television production studio GMMTV and launched in 2020.
According to Japanese publication Nikkei, the "2gether" show began on Japan's Rakuten TV streaming platform in July 2020, and eventually became No.1 on the platform's annual movie and drama rankings.
A Japanese tour operator, H.I.S. Tours, has organised a virtual tour to locations where some scenes in 2gether were shot, according to the Japanese news agency Kyodo News. The Feb 11 online tour drew more than 250 people, with nearly 99% of them women.
The company is now planning future Thailand tours related to Y content.
According to blwatcher.com, a website dedicated to BL content, Thailand has dominated the BL content market with a large number of Thai BL dramas. "Few countries have embraced BL with as much enthusiasm as Thailand, and its popularity has spread worldwide," it said. Read More…
