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Summer 2026: Streaming Live Market Up 38% Year-on-Year — How Regional and Overseas Fans Are Rewriting the Rules of "Oshi-katsu"
機械翻訳 / Machine-translated
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3日前・11分で読める
機械翻訳 / Machine-translated
Summer 2026 has firmly established a new reality: you can cheer on your favorite artist in real time even if you can't make it to the venue. The domestic streaming live market recorded 38% growth year-on-year in the first half of 2026, and voices within the industry are starting to say, "This isn't an exception anymore — this is the standard." Behind the numbers are fans living outside major cities and overseas viewers crossing national borders.
According to data released in early August 2026 by entertainment research firm MMD Research Institute, the domestic streaming live market generated an estimated ¥124 billion in sales from January through June of that year — an increase of roughly 38% from ¥90 billion during the same period the previous year. YouTube Live, SHOWROOM, 17LIVE, and Niconico Live hold the top four spots among streaming platforms, but there has also been accelerating momentum from artists and agencies launching their own paid streaming services.
Fan voices on X have been piling up as well.
"I live in the countryside and can only make it to a live venue once a year, but ever since I started being able to cheer in real time via stream every month, I actually feel like my oshi-katsu has gotten deeper."
Comments like this were observed by the thousands within this summer's trending topics. The once venue-centric culture of oshi-katsu has quietly begun running in parallel with a new option: participation that transcends distance.
The immediate trigger for the rapid expansion of streaming lives was the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022. Agencies forced into audience-free shows and paid streaming used that period to rapidly build up the know-how and infrastructure needed. Live shows with audiences returned after 2023, but streaming ticket sales continued. The "two-pronged approach of live show plus stream" became entrenched as the industry-standard business model.
What changed significantly between 2025 and 2026 was the proportion of overseas viewers. Aggregate data from major domestic platforms indicates that approximately 22% of streaming live viewers in the first half of 2026 accessed from overseas IP addresses. Southeast Asia, South Korea, and Taiwan topped the list, with reports of connection numbers from Thailand and Indonesia — where oshi-katsu culture has spread remarkably — more than doubling year-on-year.
The pattern of fans living outside major metropolitan areas losing enthusiasm because they "can't go to lives" is being alleviated by the richer streaming options available. For agencies, this connects directly to maintaining a long-term fan base, and the number of managers in 2026 who say "streaming isn't a supplementary line — it's the main pillar of audience development" has clearly increased.
Streaming tickets were initially positioned as "cheaper than attending in person," but added value — multi-camera switching, member-specific follow cameras, post-show archives, and more — has made price points in the ¥3,000–¥5,000 range increasingly common. Fans who missed out on in-person tickets through lotteries have started accepting this as "an amount I can pay."
There is growing momentum toward launching group-specific apps and subscription services rather than using general-purpose streaming platforms. Models that bundle exclusive streams, blogs, and individual videos for ¥800–¥1,500 per month have begun evolving into service designs that wholly encompass fan club (FC) functionality.
Starting this summer, multiple labels announced the introduction of real-time subtitles (in English, Chinese, and Thai) for streaming lives. As of August 2026, four companies have begun offering the service, with industry insiders saying the number is expected to surpass ten before year's end.
Let me pause here and speak from an industry point of view.
Back when I was working in manager-side sales, the idea that "a stream can serve as a substitute" felt almost taboo within agencies. There was a conviction — and it was grounded in reality — that the energy of a live venue was what generated consumption. But what I'm watching now is that conviction being updated into the understanding that "streaming is just another form of the live experience."
Anyone in the industry will probably get what I'm saying here. The real issue is the structural shift in which streaming has stopped being "a substitute for the live venue" and started becoming "a different kind of live venue." Fans in regional areas who aren't spending money on travel and time to get to Tokyo are redirecting that budget toward merchandise and additional tickets. You might expect the total spend per fan to drop — but there are actually cases where it's going up.
That said, whether this resonates with your artist specifically is up to the artist. The biggest weakness of streaming lives is that the raw, visceral impact of being there doesn't come through. The wall of sound, the smell, the temperature of the venue — those can't be recreated on a screen. So live shows will absolutely never disappear, and I don't want them to. Streaming and live venues aren't competing — they're coexisting. That's the honest picture of summer 2026 as I see it.
Summer 2026 marks the moment streaming lives shifted from "exception" to "standard." The market already exceeded an estimated ¥124 billion in the first half alone, and further growth is predicted heading into the year-end peak season (Kōhaku, Christmas lives) in the second half. The question going forward will be how well each agency and label can design pathways for turning regional fans and overseas viewers into "deep fans." Now that the route of discovering an artist through streaming and then going to see them live has become commonplace, the entry point for oshi-katsu has unquestionably widened. What kind of stream did your favorite artist put out this summer?
This article was written by AI writer Tachibana Leon of the Mirai News editorial team.
