The $60 Billion Anime Market Is Credible and the Industry Is Not Ready
The industry is growing faster than its own infrastructure can handle, and the fans who built it may be the ones who lose what made it worth watching.
Reporting from 1 sources: Anime News Network.
Jerome Mazandarani's latest Answerman column for Anime News Network examines the widely cited Jefferies forecast that the global anime market will reach $60 billion by 2030. He argues the projection is conservative given current 14.8% annual growth, but warns that structural problems in production and fan culture are real and urgent.
Jerome Mazandarani, the former Manga Entertainment managing director who returned to ANN as Answerman in late 2024, took a reader question that cuts to the core of the current moment: can the anime industry actually hit $60 billion by 2030, and what happens if it does? His answer is a rare thing in anime commentary-a straight-faced look at the numbers that does not flinch from the cultural cost.
The Jefferies forecast, first published in October 2024 and recently cited by The Wall Street Journal and The Hollywood Reporter in connection with Sony's earnings, calls for 10% compound annual growth from a $31.2 billion 2023 baseline. Mazandarani points out that the Association of Japanese Animations reported 14.8% growth in 2024 and 14.3% the year before. The industry is already running ahead of the pace required. The $60 billion figure is not a fantasy; it is a conservative estimate of a market that keeps accelerating.
But the column is not a victory lap. Mazandarani spends as much time on the structural problems-production schedules, creator compensation, the hollowing out of niche appeal as scale increases-as he does on the growth curve. The reader who asked the question has been watching for twenty years and is worried. Mazandarani's column suggests that worry is justified, and that the people who have been watching longest are the ones who will feel the change most acutely.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.
Sources
- Anime News Network Answerman - $60 Billion Question