2010 American Anime Market Worth $160-200 Million
Comic culture retail observation website ICv2 has estimated the 2010 retail sales of anime DVDs and BDs in North America to range from $160-200 million, down from a peak of $550 million in 2003. ICv2’s estimate is a rough estimate because the Walmart retail chain does not reveal its anime DVD sales statistics.
In 2009, anime DVD & BD sales in Japan earned 77.7 billion yen ($865 million USD). Remember that Japan is roughly the size of California.
Related Posts
About The Author
john
6 Comments
Add a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
That’s fairly high, considering all the rampant piracy. (argh) And Busheconomics results.
Has Japan’s anime sales dented cause of piracy or only over here?
Considering what disc sales could, or should be, given the circumstances… who knows what the figures might have read.
In any case, disc sales may or may not be an indicator of industry health. This is a little rougher to gauge for the manga/anime subculture in the U.S. considering that DVD sales account for so very, very little of the greater “market worth” — about one-eighth, I would say. Character goods are where the money is at. Character licensing and related products sold account for eight to ten times that of DVD sales here in the U.S.
The problem is, without those disc sales, you don’t get new properties to so exploit.
If, Aaron, you want to believe that, then I have one sentence for the entire anime industry, here and in Japan.
Go away; You’re Doing It Wrong.
At that point, the toy companies should have control over what gets released AND who releases it.
Japan may be physically approximately the size of California, but its population (what counts in sales) is 127,704,000. This is much larger than the population of California and is more than a third of the population of the US. This makes the disparity in the sales much less impressive, especially considering the fact that anime is a cultural export of Japan and that many otaku in the West are marginilised. This makes the disparity in sales quite understandable and not surprising at all.