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Anime/Manga Market Value Estimate

posted on by Garry Berryhill
Anime Market Stagnant? No.

In its new retailer's guide, ICv2 estimates the annual retail value of anime to be in the range of 500 million dollars. Meanwhile manga's significantly smaller market share is estimated at between thirty and sixty million, but growing faster.

Over a year ago, Craig O'Connor of ADV told Video Store Magazine that Anime was an estimated 500 million dollar a year business. Back in fall 1999, Pioneer and ADV reps told Fred Patten that the Market was then worth less than 100 million dollars (printed in Manga Max). So where's the growth? Well, according to Ken Wiatrek, also of ADV, the North American Anime market did not grow very much this past year. Both numbers are estimates, so to assume that the market has become stagnant would be too much, but to quote Wiatrek, "It didn't grow as much as we would have liked." Wiatrek also points out that during the 1999-2001 period, the Pokémon explosion caused a huge ammount of growth in the market.

Pokémon has now pretty much died off, but Yu-Gi-Oh! has replaced it. According to Jerry Chu of Bandai Entertainment Yu-Gi-Oh! is definitely the biggest title in the mainstream Anime market right now, but it isn't as big as Pokémon was. So if the Yu-Gi-Oh! / Pokémon piece of the pie is shrinking, the more "core" part of the industry would be growing.

According to Gen Fukunaga, the president of FUNimation, the anime industry is growing at a rate of about 20% per year right now, and expects the rate of growth to remain the same for the next two years. FUNimation happens to distribute Yu-Gi-Oh! for 4Kids Entertainment (along with other 4Kids titles such as Fighting Foodons, & Ultimate Muscle), and Fukunga puts the retail value of the title's home video sales at between $20 million and $40 million.

John O'Donnell, Managing Director of Central Park Media(CPM), held a panel At the Big Apple Anime Festival earlier this year covering this very topic. He stated that the value of the anime marketplace at the wholesale level was $250 million. The wholesale marketplace is what the retailers pay the publishers, after markup this translates to almost exactly $500 million at retail level(what the consumers pay the stores). When we spoke with O'Donnell earlier this week he also spoke of consistent growth in the industry, "Looks like about 15-20% growth this year, in total. Should stay in the double digits for the next two years."

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