Anime Studios Are Earning More Money Due to Growing Overseas Demand

The anime industry has found itself faced with more demand than ever before, and the money studios are bringing in per episode have started reflecting the need. Fans have kept tabs on how well anime is earning, so you can see why this growing demand has piqued their interest. And thanks to a recent update, fans know some studios are pulling in close to $150,000 USD.

The new information comes from Yoshitada Fukuhara, a producer at 8 Million. Over the weekend, the producer corrected a previous statement he made about the earnings an anime studio can expect to make.

Last year, they took to Twitter to update fans about the average sums any one episode of a show will provide an anime studio. And according to their estimates, studios were earning roughly $142,000 USD per episode. That sum provided a studio with about $2.0 million for a 12-episode series.

In his most recent tweet, Fukuhara said it would be more accurate to say anime studios make about $48,000 more per episode than before. They are even more likely to get royalty revenue from the anime should it be a hit. This means anime studios are able to inflate their budgets a bit, so any episode can cost upwards of $190,000.

In another tweet, Fukuhara went on to say the most tenuous part of studio negotiations comes down to royalties. The producer says smaller studios must have a proven record of hit series to request extra royalties. This extra demand has also prompted Fukuhara to predict a rise in in-home productions. This would give the studios better room to negotiate with production committees.

You can read Fukuhara's full tweet below courtesy of Crunchyroll for all the technical details:

"This Tweet is from a year ago, but recently the market price for an anime episode has been around 20 million yen. This is because overseas distribution sites are focused on the popularity of the original work, the studio and the creator when they license the series at a high price, so a majority of the orders are concentrated on the more popular studios. Furthermore, the bigger studios tend to be able to claim royalties easily.

On the contrary, it is difficult for smaller studios to claim royalties. Overall budgets are increasing, but the royalties made through domestic broadcast TV licensing are changing and are gradually disappearing. The new idea is that once an original work has a proven track record, the studio will be able to claim royalties. In order to achieve this, the trend in the future will be for production studios to not only produce works, but also to create a system that allows them to do their own copyright business, to merge or be acquired by a major company, or to work with a production company. The number of original works is decreasing and it would be nice if there were more original anime created by studios."

What do you make of this anime report? Do these results surprise you? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!