Founded in 1983, GMMTV Company Limited is one of Thailand’s Top entertainment companies and has been expanding the television program production business since 2007. It becomes a subsidiary company of The One Enterprise Public Company Limited in 2020, and currently is the country’s largest Ecosystem for Borderless Entertainment, with more than 316 million followers from GMMTV official and GMMTV artist’s social media channels combined.
Sataporn Panichraksapong, CEO, explained to Prensario: ‘We run our production and management in three segments mainly content, talent, and engagement, through the full business line from content production, talent management, live event and merchandise and licensing’.
The company is betting strongly on the international market. ‘The contents we produce are teen and new generation audiences focused. We started with producing music and teen variety programs and extended the business to other content areas such as events and series production afterward. Our first notable project was the first series we produced in 2015 – Ugly Duckling, which became the top search series from Google and the most viewed series on YouTube that year ’, the executive exemplified.
Following this success, in 2016 GMMTV continued producing the series, which is a BL Series called Sotus The Series, which created the Asian BL series phenomenon – a talk of the town about the stage from the two main protagonists not only in Thailand but also in the global stage. Another big project in the same year was U-Prince The Series, which was the adaptation of the top-selling teen novel with 52 episodes, 12 stories, and 12 protagonists, the longest run-on air for a year.
Panichraksapong continued: ‘One of our key achievements between 2018 and 2020 included The Gifted, which had been nominated for many awards across Asia, and another one, 2gether The Series that became a global hit, a global BL Phenomenon, the biggest global sensation bringing a spotlight to the leading actors – Bright Vachirawit and Win Metawin who are now becoming the Asian superstars’.
Last year, GMMTV continued producing the project from the Asian famous IP which has been remade in many countries, F4 Thailand: Boys Over Flowers, with Bright and Win. ‘The series was very successful internationally and became the most talked about and anticipated series of the year’, remarked the CEO.
For this year, the company has produced 20 series and 1 movie so far, amongst them there are seven that are BL series. ‘That’s 35% of the total series we produce this year. There are many genres in our BL series, including romantic, rom-com, mysterious, action, fantasy, time travel, etc. Our BL series Bad Buddy Series has recently received the best LGTBQ+ program made in Asia from Content Asia Award 2022’, said Panichraksapong.
‘We are now focusing to produce the content, especially series production, mainly for young and teen audiences. However, the BL series is the most attractive content and always gets good feedback from the targets. This is because of the various genre for each title we produced, also the storyline and things that audiences can be touched and related to’, he completed.
Globally, GMMTV’s After Sotus The Series was the first BL series international success: ‘We have rapidly gained a number of fans and followers from all around the globe. Then we started launching international fan meeting events in many countries including Japan, China, Korea, the Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Vietnam. This was the first very good start of our international fan meeting event, then many events followed us afterward’, he described.
And during COVID-19 pandemic, the company saw an opportunity to expand its business and engage more with our audience globally with the new technology and online platforms, so it launched Global LIVE Fan Meeting in 2020 with more than 100 countries all over the world attending online and many more world live fan streaming meetings. ‘We have also been doing GMMTV Exhibition in Japan where we display our costumes and props from the notable series in Fukuoka, Sendai, Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo in 2021’, added Panichraksapong.
The company has recently launched the biggest Thai Artists concert for the first time in Japan, GMMTV Fan Fest 2022 in Japan, with 11 notable artists last month. The upcoming international activities/events are GMMTV Exhibition in Japan 2022, Shooting Star Asia Tour, Fan Meetings of Tay and New, Ohm and Nanon, Off and Gun, Earth and Mix, and other artists which are planned to be held in many countries around Asia. ‘We plan to attend various content trade shows such as ATF, to present our product licensing to the buyers’, he remarked.
GMMTV CEO concluded: ‘The majority of our international fan bases are in Southeast Asia, North Asia, and expanding to Latin America, Europe, and other territories around the world. So, we see an opportunity to expand our full business lines, starting from TV content/program/product licensing in those counties. We are exploring the possibility to partner with the right alliance in each market we are aiming to expand our business ‘.
