MIPCOM 2026 officially kicked off with the second edition of the LATAM Partnership Summit, an exclusive event organized by the team behind MIP Cancun. Led by Maria Perez-Belliere, Director of MIP Cancun, the summit gathered key industry figures to debate the strategies needed to navigate the sector’s challenging current landscape. ‘It is incredible the interest that the region and its potential awakens, especially with all these changes related to vertical content, the creator economy, and digital platforms’, the executive noted, while opening the session.
Setting the stage for the summit’s high-level discussions, Maria Rua Aguete, Senior Research Director at Omdia, delivered a compelling opening presentation. Armed with fresh data, Rua Aguete analyzed the specific nuances of the Latin American market before diving into the global behavioral shifts that are upending traditional television and premium streaming.
Contrasting North and South America, Rua Aguete pointed out that while the US is experiencing massive cord-cutting due to high broadband penetration and expensive Pay TV subscriptions, Latin America presents a different reality. Broadband penetration remains lower, and SVOD subscriptions currently sit at just 35% of households. However, she emphasized that this represents a massive opportunity. ‘That means it’s a focus for many companies to go to LatAm’, she explained. ‘The opportunities there are more than in North America where almost everyone already has a streaming video service’.
Despite global economic challenges, Omdia data shows that the Latin American media and entertainment market is exceptionally healthy, boasting a 15.4% growth rate this year—significantly higher than the 10% growth seen in the US. The primary driver of this regional expansion is online video, which has now overtaken Pay TV in total revenue. Within this streaming ecosystem, Netflix remains the undisputed leader, commanding the majority of subscriptions and over 50% of all streaming revenues in Latin America. Additionally, Rua Aguete highlighted that Latin American content, particularly from Colombia, is surging in global popularity across a wide variety of genres, from thrillers and realities to book adaptations.
However, the most provocative segment of analist’s presentation focused on what she termed the ‘battle for attention’. She argued that the sheer volume of content is no longer the primary issue for the industry; rather, the challenge is capturing the undivided attention of multitasking viewers. According to an Omdia consumer survey, three out of four US TV viewers are not actually watching the screen when they are on the sofa. ‘50% of the times people are watching video content [on TV, they are also on] Instagram Reels, Facebook video’, she revealed.
This behavioral shift toward mobile and vertical scrolling is not limited to teenagers. Rua Aguete presented data showing heavy consumption of YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok among demographics aged 45 to 64. Shockingly, she revealed new data showing that in the US, the YouTube Shorts category alone is now more popular than Netflix.
‘So who is the competitor of Netflix today?’ she asked the audience. ‘The competitor of Netflix is not really Disney. It’s not even Paramount or Warner. Netflix‘s competitor is TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and even these microdramas on the mobile phone’.
Consequently, microdramas—short, vertically shot episodic series curated on apps like ReelShort and DramaBox—are gaining immense power. Rua Aguete commented that these apps often generate more engagement on mobile phones than major streamers, successfully monetizing the audience’s addiction to scrolling. Notably, Latin American countries, specifically Brazil and Mexico, rank alongside the US as the top consumers of this format, drawing parallels to the region’s traditional love for telenovelas.
Alberto Buitron
