How Do Anime Studios Make Money? Record Streaming Sales vs. 0.3% Studio Margins

How do anime studios make money? Mostly from a fixed fee for producing each show, while the biggest profits go to the companies that own and license the rights. Results published on October 15, 2026 show the gap clearly. Toho, the company behind TOHO animation, booked a record ¥9.0 billion in overseas anime streaming sales in six months. On the same day, IG Port, parent of Production I.G and WIT Studio, forecast an operating profit of just ¥27 million on ¥9.57 billion of anime production revenue this year, a margin of 0.3%. Here's how anime studios make money, how much they actually keep, and why the rest of the business feels squeezed.

How Much Revenue Does the Anime Industry Make?

A record amount, and more of it now comes from overseas than from Japan. The Association of Japanese Animations put the 2024 anime market at a record ¥3,840.7 billion, and for the first time the overseas share (¥2,170.2 billion) was bigger than the domestic one (¥1,670.5 billion). Toho's latest results show where that overseas money comes from. TOHO animation's streaming revenue for the six months to August 2026 split like this:

Toho credits Jujutsu Kaisen and Dorohedoro among the titles that did well, and most of the growth came from older shows, not new releases. Overseas streaming is now the biggest single line in TOHO animation's revenue, and it is still growing. That makes the next number look strange.

Why Did Toho's Anime Profit Fall 44%?

Toho's IP and anime segment grew its revenue by 15.6% to ¥43.1 billion in the half, but its operating profit fell 44.2%, from ¥10.7 billion to ¥5.97 billion. Toho's presentation gives three reasons:

• Spending ahead of growth: more staff and investment for its overseas business, which Toho says is pulling down the segment's margin for now.
• A one-off charge linked to revaluing payments it owes on an earlier deal, about ¥1.4 billion in the second quarter.
• Timing: since March 2026, the overseas subsidiary TOHO Global books overseas sales directly, which pushed part of the July and August revenue into the next quarter. TOHO animation's half-year revenue was ¥24.8 billion on the new basis. Toho estimates it would have been ¥30.1 billion under the old method.

In other words, Toho's profit dip is a choice to invest and an accounting delay, not a sign that anime stopped selling. Even after the drop, the segment kept about 14 yen of every 100 as operating profit. The studios that make the shows are in a very different position.

How Much Do Anime Studios Make? The 0.3% Margin

Very little. IG Port is one of the few listed companies built around anime studios: it owns Production I.G (Haikyu!!, Ghost in the Shell) and WIT Studio (Attack on Titan seasons 1-3, Spy x Family). Its October 15 results split the business by activity, which shows exactly where the margin is:

The studio side is finally expected to break even after a ¥1.34 billion loss, and it even made ¥276 million in the first quarter (June to August). IG Port says that came from bigger budgets it negotiated on shows already in production, booked earlier than planned, so the full year stays near zero. Meanwhile the rights business, which earns from the studio's share of past hits, makes far more on far less revenue. The merchandise drop is partly a one-off: last year included a fee for licensing a store opening. That leaves the obvious question of where the streaming money goes.

Do Anime Studios Make Money From Crunchyroll?

Usually not directly, and that is built into how anime is financed. Most studios are paid a fixed fee to produce a show by a production committee of investors, who then keep most of the streaming, licensing and merchandise income. When Crunchyroll, Netflix or another platform pays to stream a show, that money goes to the rights holders, such as Toho for its TOHO animation titles, not to the studio that animated it. A studio only shares in a hit if it owns part of the rights, which is exactly what IG Port's licensing business earns from. We explained this model, and why studios are closing during a record boom, in why anime studios are going bankrupt. It's also why entry-level animators still earn so little. Publishers, who own the source material, sit closer to the money.

Do Manga and Light Novel Publishers Make More?

Yes, by a wide margin, though they feel the pressure too. Overlap, the light novel and manga publisher behind the Overlap Bunko label, reported results for the year to August 2026 on October 15:

• Revenue was flat at ¥8.52 billion (-0.2%).
• Operating profit fell 20.9% to ¥2.39 billion, still a margin of about 28%.
• Overlap says sales of its earlier volumes got less of a boost from anime airings than the year before. It also published more books and spent more on game development.

The bigger bet is overseas. In March 2026, e-book distributor Media Do agreed to buy Seven Seas Entertainment, a leading U.S. publisher of translated manga and light novels, for $80.0 million (¥12.4 billion). Its acquisition notice says the whole amount would come from bank borrowing. Seven Seas already publishes more than 1,000 titles a year, and Animenomics and Nikkei report that Media Do wants to take that past 2,000 by 2030. Media Do's results for March to August, released October 14, show the early cost: revenue rose 8.3% to ¥58.3 billion, while net profit fell 61.6% to ¥0.5 billion, partly because of acquisition costs. Bets like that need the rest of the pipeline to hold up, and right now it's under strain.

Why Does the Whole Anime Business Feel Squeezed?

Because costs and risks are rising at every level, even as overseas sales grow. A few examples from October 2026 alone:

• Printing: Nikkei reported on October 14 that soaring printing costs are pushing up doujinshi prices for Comic Market sellers, under the headline 「1000円では無理」 ("¥1,000 isn't possible anymore").
• Digital stores: Comic CMOA and Renta! went offline after cyberattacks, and Animate and Melonbooks blocked overseas visitors. We covered that wave in our Capcom data breach explainer.
• Studios: IG Port's return to profit depends on clients agreeing to raise budgets mid-production.

The money from the boom is real, but it pools at the companies that own rights and distribution, while studios, printers and stores absorb the costs. Here's how I see it.

Kairo's Take

It feels like the whole anime and manga pipeline is getting squeezed from every direction right now. Seeing platforms like Comic C'moA and Renta! knocked offline by cyberattacks, and stores like Animate and Melonbooks geoblocking overseas IPs, shows just how vulnerable digital distribution is when global demand spikes. Between raw printing costs driving up Doujinshi prices at Comiket, companies taking on massive debt to double translation output, and studios still operating on paper-thin margins despite record international streaming numbers, the entire ecosystem is being pushed to its limits.

Keep reading with why anime studios are going bankrupt, how much anime animators make and how much of anime Sony owns, or browse all our industry news.

Sources: Toho, financial results presentation (October 15, 2026) and segment data; IG Port, Q1 results presentation (October 15, 2026, Japanese); Overlap Holdings, full-year results presentation (October 15, 2026, Japanese); Media Do, Seven Seas acquisition notice, integrated report 2026 and first-half results (Japanese); Animenomics (Seven Seas output goal, dollar conversions); Nikkei (doujinshi printing costs, Japanese); Association of Japanese Animations (2024 market). Cover photo: Godzilla Square, Hibiya, by Wpcpey, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.