Servy illustrated how studios, creators, talents and brands are reshaping the future of storytelling together, often meeting in hybrid spaces where scale, innovation and audience engagement merge into new entertainment models. Case studies from around the world showcased how today’s hits increasingly originate outside traditional TV, but can be successfully adapted and amplified into cross-platform IP.
Trending Formats of the Season: Simple Ideas, Legendary IPs, and Digital-First Hits
According to Servy, the breakout format of the summer has a very clear profile: digital-first, high-energy, and rooted in simple, universal ideas.
The clearest example is Let’s Play Ball—a format born on YouTube and later expanded for broadcast. Its success confirms a wider trend: the combination of strategy games, evergreen mechanics, and intemporal legends. These formats resonate deeply because they blend global familiarity with fresh competitive dynamics, while remaining scalable and cost-effective. Across markets, broadcasters continue to seek straightforward concepts with broad appeal, while producers increasingly look at creator-led content to identify the next big crossover hit.
NextGen Dating: Reinvention Through Recycling and Disruption. The dating genre, long considered saturated, is undergoing rapid reinvention.
1. Traditional Broadcasters: The “Recycling Contestants” Trend
In markets like Germany and Austria, broadcasters are experimenting with formats that revisit familiar reality personalities. Match My Ex exemplifies this approach: contestants arrive expecting new couples but instead find themselves face-to-face with their ex-partners. The emotional tension and loyalty twists fit perfectly into the current appetite for relationship games with a strong character backbone.
2. Digital-Native Dating: Fast, Chaotic, and Built for Gen Z
On the opposite end of the spectrum, platforms like ReelShort are pushing micro-dating concepts such as Love Bombing, where ultra-short episodes, accelerated narratives and gamified romantic strategies speak directly to a younger, mobile-first audience. These digital-native dating shows abandon the villa-and-rose formula to embrace a more disruptive, high-turnover structure.
Major Digital Content Trends: The Rise of Creator-Driven Entertainment
One of the core insights of Servy’s presentation was the expansion of creator-led formats into global entertainment pipelines. What once lived exclusively on social platforms is now shaping broadcaster strategies, streamer commissioning, and even brand storytelling.
Supersized Digital Formats: Bigger and Bolder Than TV. Creators are increasingly building large-scale, high-production-value formats rivaling—or surpassing—traditional television. Stop the Train, created by French star Squeezie, traps influencers inside a moving train where each wagon hides a challenge. These supersized digital originals demonstrate that the next blockbuster might emerge first on YouTube.
Live Sports Events Led by Influencers. Creator-led sporting spectacles, such as GP Explorer in France or Latin America’s Stream Fighters, are breaking records and attracting younger audiences that traditional sports broadcasters struggle to reach.
Social to Streamers: Talent Migration Becomes Strategy. Broadcasters and VOD platforms are increasingly adapting the formats, humor and personalities of social media creators. From cleaning influencers to comedic pranksters and travel vloggers, creators are now part of professional production pipelines, with streamers embracing their authenticity to drive engagement.
TV IPs Reinvented: Creators-Only Editions. Classic franchises such as The Farm, Shark Tank and MasterChef are being reimagined with creator-only casts. These editions refresh familiar IPs with digital-native energy, reaching younger and more diverse audiences.
Creators as Brands vs. Brands as Creators. Servy highlighted a significant shift: Creators are now full-fledged brands, developing merchandise, live events, tours and experiential content. Brands, meanwhile, increasingly operate like studios, producing original shows that align with their values and commercial strategies.
This dual movement is reshaping monetization models and expanding the value chain of entertainment IP.
Hot Topics on YouTube: Comedy, Pranks, Food, and Survival
Servy outlined the dominant genres currently emerging from YouTube’s creator community:
Comedy challenge shows
Undercover pranks
Food battles and cultural food clashes
Survival and adventure narratives
These formats are fast, engaging, and highly exportable—qualities that are now influencing broadcaster development teams worldwide.
Survival of the Future: “AI Love You”
One of the most intriguing new concepts is AI Love You, a hybrid format that explores digital immortality, emotional resilience and artificial intelligence. The show follows couples as they use AI to create digital versions of themselves or their partners—a premise that reflects today’s intersection of technology, ethics and human connection.
Scripted: Microdramas, AI Integration, and Branded Storytelling
On the scripted side, Servy highlighted two major trends reshaping the global market.
Scripted & Vertical: The Microdrama Revolution Accelerates. Starting in 2025, ReelShort will begin regionalizing its microdrama IPs in Latin America, while local broadcasters are preparing to join the competition.
At the same time, MyDrama is emerging as a next-generation platform relying heavily on AI—not only to support script creation, but also to enhance interactivity between viewers and characters. These microdramas, often 1–2 minutes long, are designed for mobile consumption and optimized for rapid emotional engagement.
Scripted, Branded and Animated: Toyota and Samsung Lead the Way. Two standout case studies illustrate the growing presence of brands in short-form scripted content:
Toyota has launched a futuristic, anime-inspired mini-series aligned with the global rise of animation fandom.
Samsung is producing a Brazilian short-form romantic series in the style of K-dramas, leveraging its own smart-home ecosystem as both narrative setting and brand showcase.
These examples confirm a new strategic direction: brands are no longer just sponsors—they are storytellers.
Across unscripted, scripted, and digital-native content, Carolina Servy’s presentation made one thing clear: the future of the global formats industry lies in hybrid storytelling models where creators, broadcasters, streamers and brands collaborate across platforms and audiences.
Formats increasingly travel between ecosystems—TV to TikTok, YouTube to linear primetime, branded fiction to global fandoms.In this evolving landscape, the most successful ideas remain the simplest, the most adaptable, and the most attuned to audience behavior.
