AT-X Executive Discusses the Anime Marketplace

Keisuke Iwata, the executive in charge of the Japanese AT-X animation only television network (a subsidiary of the TV Tokyo television network) spoke about the international state of the anime marketplace and his predictions for the future at the Anime Business Forum + 2009 held in Tokyo yesterday.

Iwata theorized that the international market for Japanese animation has reached its saturation point and, “It is easy to imagine the global marketplace shrinking from 2010 onward.” As a result, the Japanese anime industry, “may have to go back to the way it was in the past — back to selling Japanese animation only to the Japanese marketplace.” Iwata asserted that the American market for anime has weakened, the European market is even worse, and the Middle East, Asia, and other regions cannot be relied upon as new markets.

American television networks are reducing their anime broadcasts, and the American DVD market has become so stagnant that some American release anime DVDs have sold fewer than 400 copies nationwide.

In order to sustain its market presence in the US, the TV Tokyo network has begun distributing its “strongest media content” online to American viewers to great success. In just over a month, the Crunchyroll website gained over 10,000 paying subscribers accessing new TV Tokyo anime. TV Tokyo’s own AT-X television network took ten years to gain 10,000 subscribers. A Naruto episode receives an average of 160,000 accesses from three American sites where it streams for free a week after its Japanese broadcast.

Source: Anime News Network