The results are in! The Pokémon Company is one of the best toy selling companies out there!
UBM’s License! Global publication released its list of the Top 150 Global Licensors in 2016. The report “ranks owners of intellectual property by annual retail sales of licensed products.” The Pokémon Company ranked highly on the list, boasting #19. It surpassed competitors such as Toei Animation at #28 with retail sales of US$2.5 billion and Cartoon Network Enterprises at #31 with retail sales of US$2.1 billion. The Pokémon Company had retail sales of US$3.3 billion, for comparison.
So what exactly caused this success for the Pokémon Company? The report attributes the success to the release of Pokémon GO to jump start the franchise’s popularity again, with Pokémon Sun and Moon and the Pokémon Trading Card Game able to ride on this hype to have high sales and success. The magazine stated that the trading card game has 21.5 billion cards shipped globally as of 2016. The report also stated Pokémon GO has been downloaded more than 650 million times, and that the Pokémon video game franchise has sold 280 million copies before Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon went on sale in November.
This ranking is quite the jump from where the Pokémon Company stood last year. License! Global stated that The Pokemon Company earned US$2.1 billion in 2015, ranking it at #29 on the 2015 list. Given the growth the increase in sales that the company has shown in recent years, one can only expect for them to expand further in the future.
Source: Anime News Network
