WEBTOON, the New Home of BL
Big Green slow-rolled their entry into the BL market.
Back in October, I saw a new launch by WEBTOONS that caught my attention.
Words Left Unspoken launched on October 24th and in just under 3 days had attracted over 600,000 views with 3 free episodes and 7 paid episodes. Currently (December 30th, 2025), it has 18 episodes published (11 free) and somewhere north of 1.8 million views.
It’s categorized as a “supernatural” title, but it’s the unnamed genre that really interests me. Because Words Left Unspoken is, unabashedly, a Boy’s Love (BL) title. Of course, being on WEBTOON, it’s an all-ages BL title which makes it a rarity in today’s webtoon market.
But before I get too ahead of myself, let me backtrack a bit.
A Bit of History
One of the bigger issues I ran into at a previous publisher was an initiative to drop all-ages titles. A segment of our editorial staff saw all-ages titles as “unnecessary” as the vast majority of our revenue came from adult content.
And thus, the editorial staff reduced the number of all-ages titles and went for more adult content. Revenue increased (as we were releasing more high-quality adult titles) and ROI increased as less profitable all-ages webtoons were reduced.
At the same time, our new user sign-ups dropped and the growth in viewership zeroed out.
Overall views dropped, app use lessened, and then app/page activity dropped. We were running promotions and sales, but banner clicks were trending downwards. It took months for me to figure out why, but the answer was simple: a lack of all-ages titles.
By the time I was promoted to US Publisher, I had already spent months bringing back all-ages titles. That included BLs, romance, drama, and even action. We used multiple promotions, set up Wait-Until-Free timers, and pushed out ads with the intended purpose of increasing app use, viewership, and banner clicks.
It worked.
Viewership peaked with banner clicks hitting an all-time high. Adult titles consistently earned more revenue, but all-ages titles made up the majority of views.
And then I left.
Not All BLs are Made Equal
LezhinUS, the king of BLs, has been on a hot-streak of adult BLs. It doesn’t hurt that the Korean platform Bomtoon (owned and operated by the company that owns Lezhin, Kidari Studios) has, themselves, a massive catalogue of BLs.
But that only extends to adult BLs.
From what I can gather, in September, LezhinUS published 3 all-ages BLs, 2 in October, none in November, and 4 in December.
WEBTOON can’t (and likely won’t) compete with Lezhin’s massive catalogue of lightsaber art, launching one or two all-ages BLs a month would be enough to dominate that space in their own favor.
Based on the rankings that LezhinUS provides, it’s unlikely that any of September or October’s new launches have anywhere near 600,000 views. And as most of the promotional activities for LezhinUS are firmly focused on their adult content, it’s not likely that any of their new launches have performed at that level in recent history.
While all-ages BLs do not earn as much revenue as their censored counterparts, they are widely popular amongst audiences of all-ages, that includes adults. And, due to the financial factors favoring adult BLs, they’ve become somewhat of a rarity in Korea. It’s very much possible that LezhinUS hasn’t launched all-ages BLs from Korea because… there aren’t any all-ages BLs in Korea.
One is Not a Pattern, but Three is Certainly a Trend
Currently, WEBTOON has been fishing BLs out of their CANVAS pond for the Originals audience for at least a year. In addition to Words Left Unspoken, there’s Chocolate Snow and Hazeshift along with several others which are getting ready to make the jump.
Chocolate Snow and Hazeshift launched in November 2024 and May 2025, respectively. And both are sitting north of 10 million views.
To be honest, during my time at Toptoon and Lezhin, I had two major fears: (1) Naver Webtoon (Korea) starts publishing adult content and (2) WEBTOON (US) starts publishing BLs.
The first somehow came true during my first year at Toptoon when Naver Series began hosting adult webtoons on their service. Of course, the major caveat there was that most of the titles were composed of vanilla sex and relatively tame compared to what you’d find on either Lezhin or Toptoon.
But BL publishing on WEBTOON is a massive step into Lezhin’s own frontyard. It will no doubt put pressure on the publisher if an entire subsection of the BL publishing market is suddenly taken over by a competitor.
Time will tell how this will impact the market as a whole, but considering that Lezhin has taken a step away from publishing with non-Korean creators, this might result in longterm effects that Jaymee doesn’t see coming.