The Latin fever: Which countries enjoy Latin American content the most?

Approximately 7.000 Latin American productions or co-productions are available outside of Latin America, according to BB Media. When identifying the top buyers of Latin American content outside the region, United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Canada, and Australia lead the ranking.

Mexico leads the export of original content in Latin America, representing 1.87% of the original titles, followed by Argentina with 1.08%. The other countries that make up the ranking of top exporters of original content are Brazil, Colombia, and Chile.

BB Media detects that streaming platforms in the United States have over 5.200 titles in their catalog produced by some of the main content exporters from the region. In the US catalog, for example, Mexican content shows a strong presence with a total of 2.660 titles, followed by 1.137 titles from Argentina and over 790 from Brazil.

On the other hand, Spain includes more than 2.400 Latin American titles in its catalogs. Although it is a Spanish-speaking country, it does not equally embrace all content. Argentina leads the export of local titles to Spain with 884 titles, while Colombia presents the lowest number, with 179. In contrast, in the United Kingdom, Mexican content predominates, with over 760 titles, followed by Brazil, offering 579 titles.

In addition to the increase in the production of original Latin American content, it is interesting to analyze the distribution of genres in these titles. BB Media’s data reveals that, regardless of the country, the Drama genre takes the first place with a significant difference in popularity.

To make a comparison, there is also an analysis of the preferred genres in the countries that are most open to Latin American productions: the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom. From this comparison, the absence of genres like Science Fiction and Action stands out, in an equivalent amount to the potential demand for such content, considering the preference for these genres in the analyzed countries, especially in Spain.

Upon detailed analysis, the most popular Latin titles outside of Latin America are “Cidade de Deus” (Brazil), “Relatos Salvajes” (Argentina), “El Secreto de sus Ojos” (Argentina), “Amores Perros” (Mexico), and “Argentina, 1985” (Argentina). It is worth noting that all of these were titles nominated for the Academy Awards in one or more categories, and even one of the Argentine productions won the award for Best Foreign Language Film.

“The data reveals an interest in the market for Latin American productions and highlights a sustained growth in key countries with high consumption of streaming content, where Latin American creativity becomes highly popular,”  commented Gonzalo Martins, Media Analyst at BB Media and the author of the report.