Arafta goes global: TRM launches a multilingual strategy on YouTube

Turning Red Mediaworks (TRM) continues to capitalise on YouTube’s global growth with a new international venture: the Turkish drama Arafta. The company announced that it has acquired the multilingual distribution rights for the series, following the strong performance of Kuma in various markets.

TRM currently manages the official Turkish channel for Arafta, which in just four months surpassed 600 million views, 1.5 million subscribers and 100 million hours watched. A key factor is that a large proportion of this audience comes from non-Turkish-speaking territories, which drove the decision to expand its reach.

In this new phase, the company will dub the series into Urdu, Arabic, Hindi and Spanish, with launches on language-specific channels. The rollout will be phased and guided by performance metrics, which will help determine future language expansions.

The agreement reflects YouTube’s growing influence in the audiovisual industry: in 2025, it generated USD 62.3 billion in revenue, surpassing even Disney’s media business. Furthermore, according to Nielsen, it has led in terms of viewing time for eleven consecutive months.

“Today, YouTube is impossible to ignore for any company with a catalogue,” said Smita Agrawal, CEO of TRM, highlighting the firm’s expertise in recommendation algorithms as key to its success. For his part, Rinku Basu confirmed that production of the first dubbed versions is already underway.

FF