For a generation, the show was Pokémon. The television series began in Japan in 1997, and the first film took about ¥7.2 billion at the Japanese box office the following summer. Children who never owned a Game Boy knew Ash and Pikachu from television. The show has since aired in 192 countries and regions, and its first twenty-five seasons ran to more than 1,200 episodes.
Its job was always reach rather than revenue. TPC says its Kids TV channel is where many children first meet Pokémon, though no survey measures it, and the anime brings TPC little money of its own. It was also built as a shared asset, and that is now starting to change.
Seven owners
The show is not owned by a studio or by TPC alone. Every dated copyright credit the research read, from the 2003 film to ShoPro’s 2026 page, carries the same seven names: Nintendo, Creatures, Game Freak, TV Tokyo, ShoPro, JR Kikaku and Pokémon. This is a production committee, the usual Japanese way of sharing the cost and the rights of a series among the companies that will profit from it. How the seven split the money has never been disclosed.
The clearest view of what it earns comes from a partner. TV Tokyo, the broadcaster, books its Pokémon income as royalties, and in one recent year it reported that its Pokémon royalty income had grown at home and abroad. Pokémon has been the fourth-largest title in TV Tokyo’s anime business by sales in each of the last three years, and third by gross profit in the years that ranking was published.
One of TV Tokyo’s top titles
TV Tokyo’s anime sales by year, ¥ billion. Pokémon ranked fourth or fifth among its titles every year.
For TV Tokyo, Pokémon is a top-five title in a fast-growing business.
Built from .Show the numbers
| Year | TV Tokyo anime sales, ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | ||
| 2023 | ||
| 2024 | ||
| 2025 | ||
| 2026 |
TV Tokyo anime sales. TV Tokyo’s own anime sales, advertising excluded; up 50.9% from 2022 to 2026. How much is Pokémon is not disclosed: Pokémon ranked 4th among its titles every year except 2023, when it was 5th. Earlier years included streaming and are not comparable.
Small money, wide reach
For TPC itself the anime is a small line. Working back from TV Tokyo’s share, our model puts TPC’s own animation income at ≈¥4.5bn a year, within a wide range of ¥1.2–14.2bn. Even the top of that range is under three per cent of the Tokyo company’s revenue.
The films have faded. From 1998 to 2020 Pokémon released 23 animated features, one every summer, and 10 shorts, and none since; the next, Wild Card, is due in 2027. Films released from 2016 to 2020 took, on average, 45% less at the Japanese box office than those of 1998 to 2002.
The films’ long fade
Japanese box office of Pokémon films, by period.
- Japan box office per film
- Average a film, 1998–2002
- Average a film, 2016–2020
The films earned much less in their last five years than in their first, and none has come out since 2020.
Built from , and .Show the numbers
| Release year | Japan box office per film, ¥bn | Average a film, 1998–2002, ¥bn | Average a film, 2016–2020, ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | – | |||
| 1999 | – | |||
| 2000 | – | |||
| 2001 | – | |||
| 2002 | – | |||
| 2003 | – | – | ||
| 2004 | – | – | ||
| 2005 | – | – | ||
| 2006 | – | – | ||
| 2007 | – | – | ||
| 2008 | – | – | ||
| 2009 | – | – | ||
| 2010 | – | – | ||
| 2011 | – | – | ||
| 2012 | – | – | ||
| 2013 | – | – | ||
| 2014 | – | – | ||
| 2015 | – | – | ||
| 2016 | – | |||
| 2017 | – | |||
| 2018 | – | |||
| 2019 | – | |||
| 2020 | – | |||
| 2021 | – | – | – | |
| 2022 | – | – | – | |
| 2023 | – | – | – | |
| 2024 | – | – | – | |
| 2025 | – | – | – | |
| 2026 | – | – | – |
Japan box office per film. Box office takings, not the producers’ share or the company’s income. 2014 and 2015 rest on a lower-grade source. Koko (December 2020) is plotted at 2020. The next film, Wild Card, is due in 2027.
Average a film, 2016–2020. The 2016–2020 average is 44.5% below the 1998–2002 average.
The weekly series has lost much of its broadcast audience at home. Video Research’s weekly tables for the Tokyo area list only the ten highest-rated anime. In 2015 Pokémon made that list in 21 of 52 weeks, at an average household rating of 4.0% in the weeks it was listed. In 2025 it made the list in 1 week, and in the first 42 weeks of 2026 no regular episode made it; one hour-long special did, in March.
Out of the weekly top ten at home
Weeks each year in which a regular Pokémon episode was among the ten highest-rated anime in the Tokyo area, from Video Research’s weekly tables, 2015 to late October 2026.
The series made the list in most weeks of 2017. Since 2019 it has made it in fewer than a third of weeks each year, and in 2026 not at all.
Built from and .Fewer households watch, but more children say they like the show. In Video Research’s Kids/ex panel, in which Tokyo-area parents tick the characters their child aged three to twelve likes, the TV series rose from 19th, liked by 44.0%, in 2017 to 6th, liked by 53.1%, in 2025. The top of the list fell over the same years, so this is not the whole list moving up. It is one panel survey and the character list changed between the two years, so the size of the rise is approximate.
Outside Japan the audience has moved to streaming and free video. On Netflix it is large but smaller than it was. Netflix’s own reports put worldwide Pokémon viewing at 483m hours in 2023, 402m in 2024 and 417m in 2025. Hours in the first half of 2026 were 15% below the first half of 2025. The older series have lost more than half their viewing in three years, and the new Horizons seasons fill only part of the gap.
The older library has halved, new series fill part of the gap
Worldwide Pokémon hours viewed on Netflix, millions, by half-year.
- Older library, excluding XY
- XY series
- Titles first released on Netflix from Dec 2023
Show the numbers
| Half-year | Older library, excluding XY, m hours | XY series, m hours | Titles first released on Netflix from Dec 2023, m hours | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H1 2023 | ||||
| H2 2023 | ||||
| H1 2024 | ||||
| H2 2024 | ||||
| H1 2025 | ||||
| H2 2025 | ||||
| H1 2026 |
Older library, excluding XY. Pokémon series and films first on Netflix before December 2023, other than XY. Worldwide hours, summed from Netflix’s half-year reports; Netflix rounds each title to 100,000 hours.
XY series. XY titles returned to Netflix’s reports from the first half of 2025; whether that was a new licence or a re-listing is not stated.
Titles first released on Netflix from Dec 2023. Horizons and Concierge.
Free video is where the audience is still growing, notably in South Asia. TPC’s Hindi, Bengali and Tamil YouTube channels, which show the anime dubbed into those languages, drew ≈1.55bn views in the twelve months to October 2026, 48% more than a year earlier, against ≈0.41bn for its Indonesian channel. These are an analytics vendor’s estimates, and language stands in for country. The reach runs ahead of the products. Indonesia has had its own edition of the card game since 2019; India has none, and TPC’s own guide to Pokémon in India lists free anime and apps, but no cards, consoles or shops.
Nothing yet links this viewing to a first purchase: no platform publishes the age of its Pokémon viewers. The likelier reading, and it is only a reading, is that children meet Pokémon through the current series and the library serves fans coming back.
That pattern runs across the franchise. Since 2016, TPC’s revenue has grown several times over, while the measures of its audience have grown far less. The anime keeps Pokémon in front of people; it did not make TPC’s revenue grow. So the committee can keep the broadcast. What TPC is taking back is the new work, as “Moving outside the committee” below shows.
Money grew faster than reach
TPC’s revenue against measures of Pokémon’s audience, each as a multiple of its own starting year (2016–2018).
- The Pokémon Company group revenue, estimated range
- Audience measure
- Audience measure, range (Worlds players)
Revenue grew six to eight times. Audience measures grew one to two and a half times.
Built from .Show the numbers
| Measure | The Pokémon Company group revenue, estimated range, × starting year | Audience measure, × starting year | Audience measure, range (Worlds players), × starting year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group revenue (estimate) | (5.9–8.1) | – | – | |
| Worlds online viewers | – | – | ||
| Japan league players | – | – | ||
| Worlds players | – | – | (1.5–1.7) | |
| Launch sales: Scarlet / Violet | – | – | ||
| Japan launch week | – | – | ||
| Launch sales: Sword / Shield | – | – |
The Pokémon Company group revenue, estimated range. Year to February 2026 against 2017, nominal yen. A range because the group’s accounts are not published; the least-supported reading of the 2017 base is left out. Cards printed are not drawn because the count changed from shipped to produced in 2021.
Audience measure. Each row has its own base year: launch sales against Sun / Moon (Nintendo shipments to 31 March); Japan launch week against Sun / Moon (first three days, Famitsu, a floor); online viewers against 2017 (Esports Charts estimate); Japan league players against 2018 (scope widened).
Audience measure, range (Worlds players). Worlds players in 2025 against 2016, when 1,500–1,700 competed.
After Ash
In 2023 the show replaced its hero of twenty-six years with two new leads, Liko and Roy (see Characters). The change did not dent its standing with TV Tokyo: Pokémon kept its fourth place in the broadcaster’s anime sales ranking. The seven companies behind the series stayed the same.
Moving outside the committee
What is changing is how new work is owned. The Netflix series Pokémon Concierge, made with a TPC producer, carries a copyright line naming only TPC and the three founders. So does Wild Card, the 2027 film and the first Japanese Pokémon film since 2020: TV Tokyo, ShoPro and JR Kikaku are not on it, and it is made by a new production vehicle with a different animation studio. In the West, every video licence since 2006 has been TPC’s Western arm’s to sign; in Asia TPC signs itself, as it did for the whole library’s exclusive 2023 streaming deal in India.
A wider count points the same way. Of 14 Pokémon screen works announced for 2016 to 2027, from YouTube mini-series to the Detective Pikachu film, 3 carry a visible copyright line on the work itself, and none of the three names TV Tokyo or ShoPro. Only Detective Pikachu, financed by Legendary, names a partner: Legendary and Warner Bros. beside Pokémon. TPC or its Western arm announced 9 of them on their own channels. The rest carry no line we could read, so this is a floor, not a census. The three web series whose pages we could read credit a hired studio: Studio Colorido for Twilight Wings, WIT STUDIO for Hisuian Snow and Paldean Winds, with no committee, TV Tokyo or ShoPro on the announcement pages. Netflix says it made Concierge together with The Pokémon Company, yet the copyright line on the 2025 episodes names only Pokémon and the three founding companies.
Who is on the credit
Companies named in the copyright line of each Pokémon screen work. Every credit names Pokémon, Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak.
Filled dot = named.
The newest film and Netflix series leave TV Tokyo, ShoPro and JR Kikaku off the credit.
Built from and .The money involved is small, so the reason is probably control rather than income. Who invests in the new vehicle and who books its revenue is not disclosed.
What it adds up to
The anime is Pokémon’s widest reach and one of its smallest incomes. For three decades it has been owned by a committee of seven, and most of what it earns is booked by partners. The films have faded, the Japanese broadcast audience has shrunk and Netflix viewing has fallen since 2023, while free viewing grows in South Asia, ahead of any official card game, console or shop in India. The current series is still, on TPC’s account, where children meet Pokémon, and in Tokyo more children say they like it than in 2017; the back library serves fans coming back. No measure yet links any of this viewing to a first purchase. What is shifting is control. The newest work carries only TPC and the founders on its credit, which looks like the same move TPC made with cards and licensing: taking its own business in-house.