Licensed goods take most of the spending and return a few cents on the dollar

Most of the money fans spend on Pokémon goes on licensed goods, the toys, clothes and everything else made by other companies, and very little of it comes back. Licensed goods are 55–68% of fan spending and return about 5.5–8.7¢ on the dollar to Pokémon’s side, on our estimate. Estimate Estimate The famous figure for them, $15.7bn of shop sales in 2025, is the Western arm’s own submission to a trade magazine, marked as an estimate. Reported A yen spent on a card that Pokémon publishes itself is worth 4–11 times as much to it as a yen spent on a licensed toy. Estimate

The headline figure is the company’s own count of shop sales

Each year the trade magazine License Global ranks licensors by the retail sales of their licensed products, using figures the companies send in. The Pokémon Company International (TPCi), the Western arm, submitted $8.5bn for 2021 and $12.0bn for 2024. Filed Filed The 2025 entry is printed with the magazine’s mark for an estimate. The magazine tags its own estimates of companies that did not resubmit, and TPCi’s page carries no such tag, so the estimate is most likely TPCi’s own. Filed Estimate It counts what shoppers paid at the till, which is a different quantity from the revenue of The Pokémon Company (TPC).

Set against everything fans spend, the figure is large but incomplete. We put counted spending on Pokémon at ¥2.8–3.2tn for the year to February 2026, once cards, games, apps and Pokémon’s own shops are added. That is between a fifth and two-fifths more than the magazine’s figure at the year’s average exchange rate. Estimate Estimate Fig. 1 shows the series as the ranking has printed it.

At least three-fifths of that figure cannot be traced to a product

The magazine’s form asks each company “which business divisions and/or categories are included”. Reported TPCi’s answer has never been published, so the composition has to be worked out from the outside. One TPCi profile places the card game “In the toys and collectibles category” of its licensing programme, which suggests the cards are counted. Reported If they are, at shop prices they make up 13–25% of the figure. Estimate Toys other than cards, the category with the best outside tracking, are 3–11%. Estimate

That leaves 62–83% of the figure in clothing, food, homeware, publishing and everything else, categories for which no outside measure exists. Estimate The same holds for the growth. The figure rose by 31% in 2025, and Western cards can explain between a sixth and a half of that rise. Estimate Fig. 2 sets the two measurable parts against the whole.

Pokémon’s side keeps a few cents of each dollar

A licensor is paid a percentage of what the licensee charges the shop, which we take to be half of what the shopper pays. No Pokémon licence has a published rate, so we apply two benchmarks to the reported sales: the merchandise industry’s average, and the rate that toy makers with public accounts pay. The result is 5.5–8.7¢ per shopper dollar. Estimate Estimate

One figure from inside the company exists. In an Australian court in 2017, TPCi’s licensing manager put its average royalty at 7.5%. Filed The judgment does not say whether that is a share of the shop price or of the wholesale price. On the shop price it sits inside our range; on wholesale it is 3.75¢ per shopper dollar, below it. Estimate Estimate The court rejected the damages claim built on the figure. Filed Fig. 3 puts the three readings on one scale.

Applied to the Western figure, the rate gives licensing income of ¥99–204bn a year. Estimate With an allowance for Japan and Asia, merchandise licensing comes to 11–25% of group revenue, from the line that takes more than half of fan spending. Estimate How little of that income can be matched to a named payer is the subject of The licensees.

Two companies sign the licences, on different terms

In Japan the licence is signed by ShoPro, the Shogakukan group company that acts as Pokémon’s merchandise window, in its own name. Filed Takara Tomy, the Japanese toy maker, has named ShoPro alone as its licensor in eleven annual filings in a row, since the year to March 2016. Filed Each term lasts 14 months, a year’s licence plus two months to sell off stock, and twelve such terms now run end to end to May 2027. Filed Filed The filings never show more than about eleven months of cover ahead.

Outside Asia, TPCi has handled all licensing itself since January 2006, when the agency agreement with 4Kids ran out (that history is in The thin years). Reported Its terms are longer. The master toy licence it gave TOMY International ran 77 months, 5.5× the Japanese term. Filed The seat passed to Wicked Cool Toys in 2018 and to Jazwares, which bought that company, in 2019; LEGO began a multi-year deal in February 2026. Filed Estimate Fig. 4 compares the two term lengths.

A Western royalty reaches TPC’s group directly. A Japanese royalty passes through ShoPro first, and what ShoPro keeps is not disclosed.

A yen spent on a card is worth four to eleven yen spent on a toy

TPC publishes the cards itself, so it books its share of the list price as revenue, which is ¥35–59 of every hundred yen spent, against ¥5.5–8.7 for licensed goods. Estimate The gap narrows once the cost of printing and shipping cards is counted, since a royalty costs little to collect. At the Tokyo parent’s blended gross margin, a card yen still earns 1.7–5.5× the gross profit of a merchandise yen, and licensing would win only if the card line’s own margin were below 9–25%. Estimate Fig. 5 shows the two lines side by side.

What it adds up to

License Global’s next ranking is due in mid-2027 and will print the 2025 figure again beside the new one.