The era of stacking subscriptions and waiting for renewal dates to take care of themselves is over. Across streaming, sports, gaming, and music, audiences are now active managers of their entertainment spend, cycling in and out of services based on what is worth paying for in any given month.
Rising prices, fragmented discovery, and an overflowing field of content options have rewritten the retention equation, and most engagement systems were not built for it.
This shift, and the regional dynamics shaping how it plays out, is one of the central themes of a new report from Braze, the Media & Entertainment Personalisation Report.
Drawing on direct practitioner experience from streaming, sports, gaming, and music brands across Asia, ANZ, and the GCC, the report examines the pressures driving change, the capability gaps holding brands back, and the personalisation strategies, data foundations, and AI applications delivering measurable results.
This article, which features excerpts from the main report, looks at the market pressures redefining audience behaviour and the regional contexts that shape how brands need to respond.
Subscription fatigue and discovery fragmentation
The clearest market pressure across media, entertainment, gaming, and sports in Asia, ANZ, and the GCC is that audiences are now active managers of their entertainment spend. Subscription fatigue and rising prices have changed the retention equation. Brands can no longer rely on habit or inertia to hold subscribers between peak content moments.
Two dynamics are driving this shift: consumers cycling between services based on what is immediately worth paying for, and social platforms replacing owned recommendation engines as the primary source of discovery. Together, they mean the window to demonstrate value to a returning or new subscriber is shorter than it has ever been.
Two years ago, the priority for most brands was audience growth. That equation has shifted. Across streaming, sports, and media, the focus is now on managing and retaining existing audiences.
The pressure is coming from several directions at once. Anthony O'Byrne, Managing Director of Growth at Australian sports streaming service Kayo Sports, describes a market where consumers are actively managing their entertainment spend by cycling between services rather than stacking them.
"As a streaming service, you're either trying to be the evergreen that's on all the time, or you're at least trying to get a share of the year. And once you've got your foot in the door with the customer, you're trying to ingratiate yourself to become that evergreen service," O'Byrne said.
Yudai Goto, CRM Team Lead, Experience Design at TVer, Japan's ad-supported streaming platform operated jointly by the country's major commercial broadcasters, sees the retention challenge arriving from an unexpected direction.
"One of the major shifts in the video streaming landscape compared to two years ago is the rapid rollout of lower-priced, ad-supported plans. While this has made it easier for users to subscribe to multiple services on a whim, it also means brands now need a much stronger hook or a unique value proposition to be the one that truly gets chosen," Goto said.
Sport now competes directly with all entertainment, not just other sports. With fans following six to eight sports on average, any single property is fighting for attention year-round against a much wider field.
Seasonal behaviour, not linear journeys
Traditional lifecycle models are too rigid for the way consumers actually move through media and entertainment. The assumption of a linear path, from acquisition through to long-term retention, no longer holds. The way consumers move through subscriptions and content has forced brands to rethink their personalisation strategies.
Tim Armstrong, Director at data, advertising and marketing tech consultancy Mangrove Digital, points out that traditional lifecycle models assumed a linear path. The reality is more fluid.
"A couple of years ago most personalisation was based on lifecycle stages: onboarding for new subscribers, recommendations for active ones, retention offers for lapsing. Now customers cycle constantly. The brands winning this personalise for portfolio behaviour, recognising seasonal patterns, measuring engagement during active periods, treating re-entry as expected," Armstrong said.
Consumers cycle in and out of services around specific content. They subscribe for a football season and leave when it ends. They sign up for a new series and cancel once they've watched it. Personalisation engines that label these users as churned end up triggering win-back campaigns aimed at people who were always planning to come back.
This shift changes what personalisation needs to do. Rather than nudging every user toward the same always-on relationship, effective personalisation accounts for the rhythm of how people actually consume. Consumers have never had more choice or more control, and they expect personalised experiences wherever they show up. Retention depends on delivering relevance at every touchpoint, not just during onboarding or at the point of churn risk.
Growth patterns and consumer behaviour across Asia, ANZ, and the GCC
The growth dynamics across Asia, ANZ, and the GCC are distinct, but they share common underlying drivers. Across all three regions, audiences engage with meaning, belonging, and identity. The differences lie in how those drivers express themselves through platforms, business models, and consumer expectations.
Asia's streaming and gaming markets are the region's primary growth engines. Online video revenues are expected to rise from about US$64 billion in 2024 to roughly US$89 billion by 2029, with streaming set to overtake traditional TV by 2027. Engagement flows through platforms, creators, and social ecosystems, with mobile as the dominant screen.
Con Raso, Managing Director of global music cloud platform Tuned Global, notes that telcos operating music streaming services across Asia can reduce friction with bundled data, direct carrier billing, and large-scale distribution.
"Telco-powered services outperform global platforms on relevance, particularly when discovery and promotion mechanisms are tuned toward domestic talent," Raso said.
Superfan models are also gaining traction in Asia, where platforms layer mechanics like exclusive content, artist tipping, and community-driven engagement on top of streaming to drive higher retention and new revenue streams.
In the GCC, a young, mobile-first population and rapid smartphone adoption are driving simultaneous booms in streaming and gaming. The Middle East and Africa video streaming market generated about US$5.7 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach roughly US$23.9 billion by 2030.
The Middle East gaming market is forecast to roughly double over the same period, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE acting as regional anchors.
Sport in the region functions as lifestyle, identity, and premium access, with success depending on mobile-first design, localised content, and flexible monetisation models that blend subscriptions, in-app purchases, and ad-supported tiers.
The differences between these regions are structural. Asia needs personalisation that drives habitual consumption. ANZ needs personalisation that builds value ahead of churn. The GCC needs personalisation that connects to identity and live experience. A one-size-fits-all approach applied across these markets risks automating the wrong strategy, helping brands fail faster rather than succeed.
The challenge across all three regions is not that audience behaviour has changed, but that most engagement systems still assume stable, linear relationships with predictable renewal cycles.
Growth now comes from relevance, not volume. Relationship, not reach. The brands making progress are the ones rethinking personalisation around how audiences actually behave, rather than how legacy lifecycle models assume they should.
For the full picture, including the capability gaps holding most brands back, the personalisation strategies delivering measurable results, and the AI applications worth investing in, read the complete Braze Media & Entertainment Personalisation Report.