FlareFlow chief marketing officer Timothy Oh, who is set to appear on an APOS microdrama panel on June 18, called the launch  the true dawn of our Vertical 2.0 strategy,  a major push to lure in male audiences.

COL Group is a Beijing-based digital publisher listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange that moved into microdramas in 2021. Its most significant investment in the sector is a 49 percent stake in California-based Crazy Maple Studio, maker of ReelShort - the app credited with bringing vertical microdramas into the U.S. market. FlareFlow is COL's own international platform, launched in April 2025. The company says it now carries some 5,200 series in 14 languages and has 33 million registered users, having climbed the entertainment app charts in the U.S., Germany, Australia and Canada over the past year.

Like the scores of microdrama apps launched worldwide in the past few years, most with Chinese backing, COL has been burning cash in its pursuit of lucrative North American users and market share. COL's net loss for the first half of 2025 widened by roughly half to 226 million RMB ($31 million), due to the cost of overseas marketing and content creation. ReelShort, despite revenue of around $400 million in 2024, also remains in the red, according to research from Media Partners Asia, the organizer of APOS.

The Way Back to Glory premieres on FlareFlow on June 19 - the same day Brazil faces Haiti. Should Neymar make his first appearance of the tournament, the company may have bought a viral moment.