Home video sales in Japan decreased 0.4% compared to 2022

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The Japan Video Software Association (JVA) released a report this month on home video sales from January to December 2023. Home video sales for animated films, including anime and other titles foreign animated films, amounted to 26.8 billion yen (about 173 million USD), down 8% from 29.2 billion yen (about 189 million USD) last year. This is the second year in a row that animated home video sales have declined.

Home video sales for anime, which account for more than 80% of animation revenue, fell 4.5% from last year to 22.4 billion yen (about $145 million). Home video sales for anime outside Japan were down 23.7%, children's anime were down 23.2%, and children's anime overseas were down 38.6%. Rental revenue also decreased 17.8% compared to last year, with total animation rental revenue reaching 2.4 billion yen (about 15.5 million USD).

The total annual revenue of the physical DVD and Blu-ray Disc home video market amounted to 115.235 billion yen (about US$744 million) with a total of 26,806,000 discs sold, a decrease of 0.4% compared to the previous year. with last year. About 41.324 billion yen (about 267 million USD) of that revenue was from DVD with 14,397,000 discs and Blu-ray Disc releases accounted for the remaining 73.911 billion yen (about 477 million USD) with 12,410,000 discs. DVD sales decreased 5.3% year-over-year, while Blu-ray disc sales increased 3.8% year-over-year.

Revenue marks the 18th consecutive year of decline for the Japanese home video market, since the market peaked in 2004 at 375.4 billion yen (about $2.42 billion at current conversions). ). This year's decrease is narrower than last year's.

In 2019, revenue from paid digital video content surpassed physical home video sales for the first time. 2020 marked the first time the digital video content market surpassed the value of the combined home video and rental market.

Japan's overall video market was in decline until falling to 480.2 billion yen (about 4.416 billion USD) in 2012. However, JVA (with DEG Japan) began bringing technical content paid numbers into the report in 2013 and reports that the market has been mostly growing since then.

Source: JVA, Animation Business Magazine (Tadashi Sudo)