In February 2001, at the bottom of the first Pokémon bust, The Pokémon Company set up a small American subsidiary called Pokémon USA. Its job was to bring in-house the Western work that outside companies had done during the craze. That happened in stages: the English card game in 2003, then US card distribution and all licensing outside Asia from 2006. In 2009 it was renamed The Pokémon Company International, or TPCi.
Today TPCi runs Pokémon outside Asia: it publishes the cards, signs the licences, runs the online Pokémon Center and stages the World Championships. It is the largest of the subsidiaries that together book about half of the Pokémon group’s revenue (see The Pokémon Company). And it is the least visible large company in the franchise. No registry, court or regulator anywhere shows its revenue.
The Western group on record
Pokémon companies outside Japan, by year formed or acquired.
The records show the Western company owning only one other business: a US card printer.
Built from , and .A big company with no accounts
TPCi is a Delaware corporation, the same legal entity formed as Pokémon USA in 2001. Nintendo stopped listing it among its affiliates in 2005, so TPCi reaches Nintendo’s accounts only inside The Pokémon Company’s group figures. Its UK establishment has made 38 filings, none of them accounts, so the register shows no turnover, profit or dividend for it. The only sales figure in any court record is a floor from a counterfeiting case: US merchandise sales that “exceeded $6 million in 2014 alone”.
So its size has to be worked out by subtraction. Nintendo’s filings imply the whole group’s revenue; take away the Tokyo company’s own accounts, and TPC’s subsidiaries book at least ¥488–516bn a year, about as much as Tokyo itself. TPCi is by far the largest of them.
Profit is hidden the same way. On our estimate, about half of the group’s net profit for the year to February 2026, ≈¥129–140bn, sits outside the Tokyo parent’s own accounts, in its subsidiaries. That is a residual, the group less the parent, and it cannot be split company by company: with no TPCi accounts, nobody outside the group can see how much of it TPCi earns, what it keeps or what it pays out.
Half the group is outside Tokyo
Revenue of TPC’s Tokyo parent against its subsidiaries, latest year, ¥ billion.
- Adds
- Not Pokémon
- Total
About half of the group’s revenue is booked outside the Tokyo company, mostly by TPCi, which publishes no accounts.
Built from and .Show the numbers
| Part | Revenue, ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Japanese parent company | ||
| Its subsidiaries | ||
| Pokémon Company group | ||
| Mariners’ operator and PUX | ||
| Nintendo’s affiliate total |
Revenue. A build-up from the parent to Nintendo’s figure. Filed: the parent (year to February 2026) and Nintendo’s total for its three equity-method affiliates (year to March 2026; the periods overlap by eleven months). Estimated by subtraction: Nintendo’s total includes the Seattle Mariners’ operator and PUX (¥55–83bn together); without them the Pokémon Company group is ¥1,020–1,048bn, so the parent is 51–52% of it and its subsidiaries are what is left. The subsidiaries are not split by region.
Not all of Asia sits in that outside half. On the one Traditional Chinese box label read, the maker is the Tokyo parent and the importers in Taiwan and Hong Kong are outside the group, so that edition is sold by the parent and its revenue is the parent’s, not a subsidiary’s.
Splitting that total into Western cards, licensing, the online store and the rest is a model. What the model cannot place runs anywhere from an overshoot to a gap of about two hundred billion yen, depending on two numbers nobody publishes: TPCi’s share of each card’s list price, and its licensing rate. The width of that range is the finding.
Europe is invoiced from America
The one European TPCi company that files accounts shows how the West is run. TPCi Ireland, in Dublin, is wholly owned by TPCi Inc., the American company, not by the Tokyo parent. It has a single revenue line, “provision of services”: €6.19m in 2025, about ¥1.05–1.06bn, all of it charged to TPCi Inc. The work is customer service support and logistics coordination, done by 21 staff, every one classed as administration.
Its accounts say who does sell in Europe. TPCi Inc. is the company that contracts with customers in their sales territories and carries their credit risk; Dublin’s only customer is TPCi Inc. So European sales are not booked in Dublin, and which TPCi Inc. registration invoices them is not in any filing read.
A service desk, paid at cost plus a little
TPCi Ireland’s revenue, all of it a fee from TPCi Inc., against its own running costs, € million.
- Fee charged to TPCi Inc. (its only revenue)
- Its own running costs
The fee rises and falls with Dublin’s costs. It runs a few percent above them every year, the pattern of a cost-plus service company, not a seller.
Built from .Show the numbers
| Year | Fee charged to TPCi Inc. (its only revenue), €m | Its own running costs, €m | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | |||
| 2023 | |||
| 2024 | |||
| 2025 |
Fee charged to TPCi Inc. (its only revenue). Revenue as filed, one line, “Provision of services”, all of it charged to TPCi Inc. The 2022 figure is the comparative in the 2023 accounts.
Its own running costs. Administrative expenses, which are all of its operating costs: it books no cost of sales. The fee runs 2.2–4.6% above them.
What is missing tells the rest. Dublin holds no stock and books no cost of sales, has no trade debtors, and has no royalty or licence line, in income or in cost. It pays no dividend. In 2025 its fee ran 3.8% above its costs. Pokémon Korea, whose accounts are also on file, pays card royalties and licence costs up the chain; Dublin does the opposite, charging its parent for work done. Pokémon Korea paid no dividend in 2017–2025 and had kept ₩83.8 billion of profit by the end of 2025; its operating margin fell from 41% in 2022 to 18% in 2025, more than half of the fall from advertising, which rose from 2.5% to 21.4% of revenue.
Pokémon Korea paid no dividend in 2017–2025, and ₩84 billion of profit piled up
Profit kept at the end of each year, ₩ billion, from Pokémon Korea’s audited accounts. No dividend in any of the nine years.
The pile grew every year and jumped from 2021. None of it has gone up the chain as a dividend.
Built from .What it keeps from a card
In the West TPCi is the card publisher, so it keeps the wholesale price, not a royalty. How much of the list price that is depends on the route to the shelf: under half through hobby distributors, a little more through GameStop, which buys direct, and all of it in its own online store.
What TPCi keeps, by route
Estimated share of a card’s list price that reaches TPCi, by sales route. A store can use more than one route. No company publishes this.
- Estimated range
- Own stores: the publisher keeps all of it
- Most likely, all Western sales
Through distributors it keeps well under half of list. In its own store it keeps all of it.
Built from and .Show the numbers
| Route to the shelf | Estimated range, ¢ of each $ | Own stores: the publisher keeps all of it, ¢ of each $ | Most likely, all Western sales, ¢ of each $ | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pokémon Center, own stores | – | – | ||
| GameStop, buys direct | (50–65) | – | – | |
| Via a distributor such as Excell | (38–59) | – | – | |
| Hobby stores, via distributors | (38–50) | – | – | |
| Europe, via Asmodee | (35–50) | – | – | |
| All Western card sales | (35–59) | – | – | |
| All Western, most likely | – | – | (46–49) |
Estimated range. No route’s share is published, so every bar is a bounded estimate. Hobby: store cost of 50–56% of list less an assumed distributor margin (ceiling 56¢). Excell: wide because its margin is assumed, and whether Excell takes title to Target’s or Walmart’s cards, rather than managing the category for a fee, is not confirmed. GameStop says in its annual report that it buys directly from manufacturers; a store can also use more than one route, so the bars are routes, not stores. Europe: derived from Asmodee UK’s filed margin. The all-Western blend uses illustrative weights.
Own stores: the publisher keeps all of it. Pokémon Center is 100¢ by construction; how much it sells is not published.
Most likely, all Western sales. The central part of the blended range. Excell was signed in February 2026 with no closing on record, so it has not changed the latest year’s share.
That share is worth a great deal. Every five points of it move TPCi’s US card revenue by ¥17.5–22.8bn. On our two independent estimates, Pokémon cards sell between two and two and a half billion dollars a year at list in North America and Europe, which puts TPCi roughly level with Magic: The Gathering’s publisher in the West (see Pokémon against Magic).
Two estimates, one overlap
Estimated retail value of Pokémon cards in North America and Europe, 2025, $ billion, built two ways.
- Estimated range
- Where both could be right
One estimate from shop sales and one from the print count overlap at the top of the print range.
Built from .Show the numbers
| Build | Estimated range, $bn | Where both could be right, $bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Counting what shops sold | (2.05–3.87) | – | |
| Counting cards printed | (1.41–2.59) | – | |
| Overlap | – | (2.05–2.59) |
Estimated range. Both are our derived ranges, at US-list-price-equivalent dollars for North America and Europe, not what the publisher books. Shop sales: Circana’s US toy figure times an assumed 60–85% card share, plus Canada and Europe. Cards printed: ex-Japan print, 60–85% of it going West, at $0.449 a card times a price factor of 1.0–1.3.
Where both could be right. An overlap of two wide ranges, not a convergent estimate.
Licensing marks it does not own
TPCi signs the West’s licences, but the American Pokémon trademarks are not its own. Every core Pokémon word, logo and Poké Ball mark read on the US register belongs to Nintendo of America, and TPCi’s one Pokémon design mark, for POKKEN, was assigned to Nintendo of America; the POKKÉN TOURNAMENT mark TPCi registered also now stands in Nintendo of America’s name, with one assignment recorded whose detail was not read. No licence, consent or assignment letting TPCi license those marks appears in the records read, and the US assignment records that might hold one could not be opened. What exists is a declaration to US Customs, by Nintendo, that TPCi and its licensees are authorised users (see The brand).
In court TPCi relies on what it does own. It sues counterfeiters for copyright, which it owns, and names no trademark licensor. The trademarks are defended by Nintendo of America in its own name. In the one US trademark challenge read in full, a 2026 opposition to a “POKÉDADS” filing, Nintendo of America is the only party, pleads that “Nintendo owns numerous United States trademark registrations covering the POKÉ Marks”, and never mentions The Pokémon Company, TPCi or a licence. Two other recent Pokémon challenges at the trademark board show Nintendo of America acting alone as well. That fits the split above, Nintendo’s company on the marks and TPCi on copyright, but it does not say whether TPCi uses the marks as Nintendo’s licensee or its agent. No royalty from TPC or TPCi to Nintendo has been found in any document searched, an absence rather than a filing. Nor has any payment from TPCi to Tokyo for the rights or the cards. An Australian court in 2017 described TPCi as wholly owned by the Tokyo company and as the licensor of Pokémon outside Asia since 2001, but named no fee between them. The Tokyo company’s accounts leave room for such a charge of anywhere from about ¥2bn to about ¥47bn, depending on how TCG Pocket is booked, so it is bounded, not measured.
Buying the chain
TPCi has been buying into its own supply line. In 2022 it agreed to buy Millennium Print Group, the North Carolina company that had printed Pokémon cards since 2015, which was to keep running as a separate company and printing for others.
The latest step is Excell, a Des Moines distributor that manages the trading-card shelves of big US chains. TPCi called it its “largest U.S. distribution partner” and signed to buy it in February 2026, subject to regulatory approval. No closing is on record at the end of October.
Three things are clear. Excell is mid-sized: a few hundred staff, with Target, Walmart and Amazon among its customers. How much Pokémon passes through it is not known: no source says which chains buy their Pokémon from it. And it also sells Pokémon’s rivals. At Target, its best-documented customer, dozens of One Piece, Digimon and Upper Deck products carry Excell’s name, while Target’s Pokémon products carry no Excell label.
Who Excell supplies
Retailers shown as customers on Excell’s website. They do not show where each chain gets its Pokémon cards.
Target, Walmart and Amazon are among Excell’s customers. GameStop buys from Pokémon direct.
Built from , and .So the deal matters less for this year’s numbers than for who sits between the big chains and the card games. A distributor earns a thin margin: the one with public accounts keeps an operating margin of 15.2%. With no closing by October, Excell can add at most a few billion yen to TPC’s revenue this year, against TCG Pocket’s fade (see Mobile). What would change is that a Pokémon-owned company would stand between America’s biggest chains and the card games competing with Pokémon.
Excell against the Pocket fade
From last year’s group revenue to this year’s, counting only Pocket’s fall and Excell, ¥ billion. The axis starts at ¥900bn.
- Adds
- Takes away
- Total
- Estimated range
Even a December closing adds a fraction of what Pocket’s fade takes away. A full year of Excell would still offset less than half of it.
Built from .Show the numbers
| Step | Revenue, ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Group revenue, last year | (1,020–1,048) | |
| TCG Pocket’s fall | (-84–-59) | |
| Excell, if it closes in December | (0–6.1) | |
| This year, before any other change | – |
Revenue. Axis starts at ¥900bn to show the changes. Last year is the group’s revenue from Nintendo’s annual report. Pocket’s fall is its spending at the current run rate against last year: ¥84bn before app-store fees, ¥59bn after. Excell adds about ¥1.75bn if its purchase closes in December, up to ¥6bn, and nothing if it has not closed by February 2027. The last bar adds these up and ignores every other change.
What it adds up to
TPCi began in 2001 as the company that would take the West back, and it did. It now publishes the cards, signs the licences and runs the shop and the tournaments outside Asia, and it is the biggest part of the half of the group’s revenue booked outside the Tokyo parent. Yet it is visible only by subtraction: its revenue and profit appear nowhere, and every figure for it rests on two numbers it has never published. Its one filing company in Europe is a service desk paid by TPCi Inc., so even Europe’s sales are booked by the American company. Its licensing rests on Nintendo’s trademarks under terms nobody has published. Meanwhile it is quietly buying the chain beneath it, from the printer to, if the deal closes, its biggest distributor.