Summary:
Ramadan 2025 showed an Arabic content market gaining audience demand at home and abroad, but not moving as one. Dialect shaped local performance, leading markets outside MENA spanned several regions, Indian and Turkish programming also traveled across MENA, and four analyzed markets produced four different number-one titles.
- Local and international Arabic Content Demand Growth Indices reached 16.71 and 13.14 in 2024, relative to a 2020 baseline of 1.
- The share of Arabic demand during Ramadan 2025 rose 30% year over year.
- Egyptian, Iraqi, Maghreb and Khaleeji content led in their respective home markets.
- No single 2025 season-one release ranked first in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Morocco.
Arabic content entered Ramadan 2025 with substantially more momentum than five years earlier. The important question for executives is not simply whether demand grew, but where that growth is strongest, which dialects drive it, which titles travel and how imported programming changes the attention set.
Those distinctions separate local dominance from regional breadth. A show can lead one country, rank consistently across several markets or attract demand beyond MENA without achieving the same result everywhere. That makes market-level audience demand more useful than a single regional average.
Arabic content entered Ramadan 2025 with structural demand momentum
Arabic content’s growth was well established before Ramadan. Indexed to a 2020 baseline of 1, the local Arabic Content Demand Growth Index reached 16.71 in 2024, while the international index reached 13.14. These are relative indices, not annual growth rates.
The higher local index indicates that local demand grew faster relative to the baseline, but international demand also expanded sharply. Ramadan strengthened Arabic content’s position further: its share of demand during Ramadan 2025 was 30% higher than during Ramadan 2024. This is a change in share, not a 30% increase in total demand volume.
A cross-language benchmark places Hindi content at approximately 13 times the level shown for Arabic content. That gap indicates potential headroom for locally produced Arabic programming. It should not be read as a forecast that Arabic content demand will necessarily grow 13-fold, or that the gap will close within a particular period.
Dialect determines where Arabic content wins
Arabic-language performance cannot be reduced to one regional average. During Ramadan 2025, Egyptian content accounted for 69% of Arabic content demand in Egypt, Iraqi content reached 40% in Iraq, Maghreb content reached 35% in Morocco, and Khaleeji content reached 36% in Saudi Arabia.
Local preference was strong, but some dialects traveled. Egyptian content represented 19% of Arabic content demand in Iraq and 24% in both Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Mixed-dialect content reached 14% in Saudi Arabia, compared with 2% in Egypt, 3% in Iraq and 7% in Morocco.
For commissioners and buyers, this suggests a portfolio approach: local anchors built around dominant dialects, titles with evidence of regional appeal and mixed-dialect concepts where audience response supports them. “Arabic content” is too broad a category for precise development, acquisition or marketing decisions.
The market-level differences also matter when evaluating performance. A title designed for an Egyptian audience may still travel meaningfully into Morocco, Iraq or Saudi Arabia, but its relative position will not necessarily remain the same. Home-market strength and regional portability should be measured separately.
Arabic content travelability extends beyond MENA
The top markets for Arabic content outside MENA span North America, Europe, Asia and West Africa. The United States ranked first, followed by Turkey, the United Kingdom, France, Thailand, India, Spain, Pakistan, Ghana and Nigeria.
The ranking demonstrates geographic breadth, but it does not show how concentrated demand is. It provides market order rather than each country’s share of international audience demand. Executives can use it to identify where interest is strongest, but not to conclude that demand is evenly distributed among those territories.
This supports a market-by-market approach to rights and distribution. Strong local demand establishes a title’s base, while demand in external markets can identify where further commercial analysis may be justified.
For investors, travelability adds another dimension to title evaluation. It helps separate properties whose appeal remains concentrated in a home market from those that may support broader territorial opportunities. Audience demand does not assign a financial value to those opportunities by itself, but it can indicate where closer analysis is warranted.
Indian and Turkish titles broadened the Ramadan attention set
Ramadan audience demand across MENA included more than Arabic programming. Indian and Turkish content traveled into selected markets, with both 2025 releases and established catalog titles appearing among the most demanded programs.
The leading Indian titles released in 2025 were Khakee: The Bengal Chapter, Gram Chikitsalay, Dabba Cartel, Khauf and Black Warrant. The all-time release list included Mighty Little Bheem, Beyhadh, Paatal Lok, Mirzapur and The Jungle Book.
The selected markets shown for Indian content were Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Morocco, the UAE and Qatar. These locations reflect the aggregate travelability of Indian programming. They do not establish that every named title performed strongly in every marked market.
For Turkish programming, the leading 2025 releases were Eşref Rüya, Sustalı Ceylan, Istanbul Encyclopedia, The Fall of the King and Bet Your Life. The all-time release ranking featured Kuruluş: Osman, Kurtlar Vadisi, Eşkıya Dünyaya Hükümdar Olmaz, Resurrection: Ertuğrul and Forbidden Fruit.
The selected markets shown for Turkish content were Iraq, Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon and Tunisia. As with the Indian map, these locations demonstrate aggregate content travelability rather than title-by-title performance in each country.
The presence of both new and established releases widens the set executives should benchmark when evaluating Ramadan programming. New Arabic series are competing for attention not only with one another, but within a market that also contains imported premieres and enduring international catalogs.
Four analyzed markets produced four different Ramadan leaders
Among 2025 season-one releases, no single title ranked first across all four markets shown. Fahd The Hero led Egypt, Al Ash Street led Saudi Arabia, Afou Aam led Iraq and Jarah Qadim led Morocco.
The wider rankings reveal different forms of success. And You Meet Your Lover ranked second in Egypt at 18.79x and second in Morocco at 8.85x, while placing sixth in Saudi Arabia at 9.06x and fifth in Iraq at 7.74x.
Fahd The Hero ranked first in Egypt, fifth in Saudi Arabia, sixth in Iraq and tenth in Morocco. Esh Esh ranked third in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but tenth in Iraq and eighth in Morocco.
Executives should therefore separate three questions:
- Where does a title achieve home-market leadership?
- How many markets place it among their leading releases?
- How sharply does its demand change from one territory to another?
A regional average can blur these differences. Market-specific rankings show whether a title is a local breakout, a consistent regional performer or both. That distinction can inform where to increase marketing support, pursue distribution, evaluate another season or explore related concepts.
What Ramadan 2025 audience demand means for executives
The strategic takeaway is to combine local precision with regional and international optionality. Growth is clear, but commercial decisions should match titles, dialects and markets rather than treating MENA as one uniform audience.
Four actions follow:
- Build slates at the dialect-market level. Local dialects led in each analyzed country, while Egyptian and mixed-dialect content showed different patterns of regional reach.
- Separate home-market strength from travelability. A local leader and a title that ranks consistently across several countries may play different portfolio roles.
- Benchmark imported content and libraries. Indian and Turkish demand included both new releases and established programming.
- Use audience demand as an input, not a financial outcome. Demand can identify relative strength and market potential, but it does not directly measure revenue, profitability or investment return.
For investors, a high-demand title may still face an unattractive acquisition price, limited rights or weak monetization. Conversely, a property with moderate but consistent demand across several markets may provide more strategic flexibility than a locally dominant title with limited travelability.
For programmers and distributors, audience demand helps prioritize where to investigate further. Commercial decisions still require analysis of rights, cost, platform fit, distribution and execution.
Investor section: How can investors distinguish content and IP with durable, cross-border audience demand from assets whose popularity is concentrated in a single market, audience segment, or release window?
Investors should test each asset across four dimensions: home-market strength, cross-border breadth, market-level intensity, and persistence beyond the initial release window. Durable content maintains meaningful audience demand across multiple territories and audience groups, while concentrated popularity depends on one market, language segment, seasonal event, or short-lived peak. Title-level rankings should therefore be compared by market and over time, not reduced to one global average.
This strengthens content investment underwriting by separating local breakouts from properties with repeatable international appeal. For entertainment IP valuation, a title with a lower peak but consistent demand across several markets may offer more strategic optionality than a dominant domestic hit that decays quickly. Audience demand should identify where deeper analysis of rights, distribution, costs, and monetization is justified, rather than being treated as a financial outcome on its own.
Ramadan 2025 revealed several winners, not one regional formula
Ramadan 2025’s clearest signal is that Arabic content demand is growing while becoming more differentiated by territory. Local dialect leadership, regional title breadth, international market rankings and imported-content travelability each describe a different part of the opportunity.
The next advantage will come from connecting those signals. Executives who analyze demand by market, dialect and title can make more precise choices about development, acquisition, distribution and investment than those relying on one regional total.
- Download our presentation from CABSAT 2025.
- Explore Parrot Analytics’ DEMAND360 to analyze audience demand across titles, markets and portfolios.
- Reach out to the Parrot Analytics team to discuss how these insights can support your content strategy.
