Pokemon TCG Earned Record $857 Million in Japan for 2023, More Than Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic, and Others Combined!

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The Pokemon TCG was the #1 selling card game in Japan from April 2023 to March 2024, earning a record $857 million in revenue. This is as much as the next eight trading card games combined, including Yu-Gi-Oh!, Magic the Gathering, One Piece, and more.
The Pokemon TCG also grew its revenue by 37% between 2022 and 2023. Meanwhile Yu-Gi-Oh! saw only 3% growth while Magic the Gathering was down 6%. One Piece‘s revenue tripled (due to an increase in production), but its total revenue only accounted for 20% of Pokemon’s.
These numbers are according to a private report published by Media Create, a Japanese company that tracks and analyzes data for Japan’s gaming market. We were able to obtain a copy of the report, which I’ve translated below. Note that the Japanese toy industry starts their fiscal year...
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Not really surprising, because what is really there to compete with it? YGO is big in Japan (definitely bigger than overseas), but nobody would think it compares to PTCG. Magic is actively doing everything to lose as many players as possible, as fast as possible. The new alternatives - Lorcana, F&B, Sorcery - are definitely strong, but they're still in early stages and I don't know if they're even in Japan yet.
If there's any surprise on this list for me, it's that Duel Masters is STILL in the top. I'm sad that the game was cut off from the non-Japanese markets, the mechanics are actually quite good.
 
Don't get scared for YtoY growth of some games (One Piece, UA_TCG), Japanese market is really diverse sometimes, but the supremacy belongs to either PokéCard or Yugioh OCG.
Overseas market... I think it needs a lot of more data to be collected, but we need to make some clarifications in how to handle it. For example, getting the data (or an estimated) will be quite hard to collect in some regions, except NA.
 
I wonder what the numbers are for player bases outside Japan.

Also…Weiss Schwartz is still a thing?
 
Yaginku said:
Not really surprising, because what is really there to compete with it? YGO is big in Japan (definitely bigger than overseas), but nobody would think it compares to PTCG. Magic is actively doing everything to lose as many players as possible, as fast as possible. The new alternatives - Lorcana, F&B, Sorcery - are definitely strong, but they're still in early stages and I don't know if they're even in Japan yet.
If there's any surprise on this list for me, it's that Duel Masters is STILL in the top. I'm sad that the game was cut off from the non-Japanese markets, the mechanics are actually quite good.
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Yugioh is bigger overseas than in Japan. YCS japan events (last two were 4000 people), are just twice per year, so people goes, but it generates way more revenue overseas and every non latam YCS is close to 2000 attendees and they are hosted multiple times per year. While having regionals (leagu cups), with as many as 1000 players in some places every 2 months.

Yugioh held a 1500 people event as far as 2009 (numbers pokemon is barely meeting) and has a 4500 people event as far as 2012 in Long Beach. Something IMPOSSIBLE for pokemon atm, as they are not only not meeting that kind of demand outside of Japan, they are quite bad at tournament logistics and competitive settings.

Pokemon generates much more revenue in the casual market from people buying random packs at walmart (is the #1 game at retail stores, but not in hobby stores according to icvs), but yugioh is a game rooted on hyper competitive settings, so attendances are higher.

Depends on what you consider "bigger": the game with more people playing it at tournaments or the game selling more packs. Mtg is the one that seems having issues atm, grand prix attendances are flat and pokemon already broke their avg attendance in the last 6 months.
 
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TheNidoKing said:
I wonder what the numbers are for player bases outside Japan.

Also…Weiss Schwartz is still a thing?
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I suppose, I had to decide on which game to go back to physically owning, and went with wasting my money on a card game where card games happen. Not sit across a sociopath where I can't do anything.

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afr1234 said:
Yugioh is bigger overseas than in Japan. YCS japan events (last two were 4000 people), are just twice per year, so people goes, but it generates way more revenue overseas and every non latam YCS is close to 2000 attendees and they are hosted multiple times per year. While having regionals (leagu cups), with as many as 1000 players in some places every 2 months.

Yugioh held a 1500 people event as far as 2009 (numbers pokemon is barely meeting) and has a 4500 people event as far as 2012 in Long Beach. Something IMPOSSIBLE for pokemon atm, as they are not only not meeting that kind of demand outside of Japan, they are quite bad at tournament logistics and competitive settings.

Pokemon generates much more revenue in the casual market from people buying random packs at walmart (is the #1 game at retail stores, but not in hobby stores according to icvs), but yugioh is a game rooted on hyper competitive settings, so attendances are higher.

Depends on what you consider "bigger": the game with more people playing it at tournaments or the game selling more packs. Mtg is the one that seems having issues atm, grand prix attendances are flat and pokemon already broke their avg attendance in the last 6 months.
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While is true that more people play Yu-Gi-Oh! you have to consider two things:

You don't have to reserve your place at a YGO event, for most you only go and the same day you can register for the event.

In Pokémon, there is limited space for each game (VGC, TCG, GO, Unite) because all are held on the same location and same day, being TCG the most overcrowded and letting many people outside of entering the tournament because of the registration that is several weeks prior to the actual event.

Plus, YGO is having a lot of crap for not hosting, even announcing a YCS in EU so far for this year.

I cannot agree on saying that Pokémon is not as demanded and is bad at logistics while in YGO many players across different regions have had bad experiencies at logistics and judges (YCS Las Vegas for example). Pokémon is light years ahead of YGO in terms of organizing events, logistics, presentation and streaming featured matches. You can see a video from Solemn YuGiOh talking about that.

But yes, Pokémon sells more and YGO has the most actual players.
 
Saur17 said:
While is true that more people play Yu-Gi-Oh! you have to consider two things:

You don't have to reserve your place at a YGO event, for most you only go and the same day you can register for the event.
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Putting an attendance cap makes you awful at logistics. It shouldn't even be a thing, is quite easy to assess demand; they are unwilling to which is different.

You can't call pokemon good at logistics when they are terrible at the seats and registration phase. Look at what happened for NAIC, it is a DISASTER.

Also, it isn't an isolated event. I registered like a month ago for a special event; i was in the queue an hour before and managed to buy my seat, but the cap was at 250 amd was sold out in 5 minutes, while there were over 1000 people in the queue. How is that good planning? How is that good at logistics?

Is not caring enough by giving a large event to a local tournament store and giving them limited budget (and TPCI has an office in this same CITY). I don't even know the prize pool 3 weeks before the event.

Events in latam are a disaster (Brazil too) and attendance caps in Europe are a big issue. People forgot because of EUIC but it was awful before that (Lyon, for example).

Also, don't get me started on "bad experiences" because that is subjective and happens on pokemon too: bad judges and weird stuff like what they pulled on Makani.
 
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afr1234 said:
Putting an attendance cap makes you awful at logistics. It shouldn't wven be a thing, they aree failing to calculate demand and they are unwilling to.

You can't call pokemon good at logistics when they are terrible at registration. Look at what happened for NAIC.

I registeres like a month ago for a special event. I was in the queue aan hour before and managed to buy my seat, but the cap was at 250 and there were over 1000 people in the queue. How is that good planning?

Events in latam are a disaster aswell and attendance caps in Europe are a big issue. People forgot because of EUIC but it was awful before that.

Also, if we had unlimited attendance cap, i doubt pokemon would pull 4500 players at NAIC. Demand is not there yet, it won't take long, but the mere fact they are putting caps speak volumes of their incapacity of organize events.

Also, don't get me started on "bad experiences" because that is subjective and happens on pokemon too. Just look at the crap they pulled on Makani.
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You are only complaining about the registration process, not logistics, plus, Pokémon is not the only game doing that. Digimon, One Piece and many other games does the same thing reserving spaces for the events, so is not an only Pokémon issue in such case.

You are mixing your terms and issues with the events.
 
Saur17 said:
You are only complaining about the registration process, not logistics, plus, Pokémon is not the only game doing that. Digimon, One Piece and many other games does the same thing reserving spaces for the events, so is not an only Pokémon issue in such case.

You are mixing your terms and issues with the events.
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That's your definition of logistics.

Logistics refers to the overall process of managing how resources are acquired, stored, and transported to their final destination.

Logistics is not only what happens at the venue, is the experience you provide since they register until the event is finished: making sure everything works. You are the one mixing up terms.

If registration phase is bad, your logistics is failing at assessing demand & acquisition phase. You are not meeting customers expectations by failing to supply a venue for all the players that want to go.

Also, digimon and one piece are super small games when compared to yugioh, magic or pokemon, so them unwilling to improve their tournaments at this stage is actually understandable, their budget should be in R&D mostly atm.

We should stop being apologists.
 
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afr1234 said:
That's your definition of logistics.

Logistics refers to the overall process of managing how resources are acquired, stored, and transported to their final destination.

Logistics is not only what happens at the venue, is the experience you provide since they register until the event is finished: making sure everything works. You are the one mixing up terms.

If registration phase is bad, your logistics is failing at assessing demand & acquisition phase. You are not meeting customers expectations by failing to supply a venue for all the players that want to go.

Also, digimon and one piece are super small games when compared to yugioh, magic or pokemon, so them unwilling to improve their tournaments at this stage is actually understandable, their budget should be in R&D mostly atm.

We should stop being apologists.
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You act like yugiohs logistics are better. If the horror stories I've heard over the years are true then yugioh is far worse than pokemon in that regard. Noting have a set limit for attendance or advance sign ups has a long list of issues.
 
TheNidoKing said:
I wonder what the numbers are for player bases outside Japan.

Also…Weiss Schwartz is still a thing?
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I just bought a bunch of assorted cards from Japan to try and complete my Donkey Kong TCG collection and there were a lot of really inappropriate Weiss & Schwarz cards in there, but also Disney's 100th anniversary? Japan is weird and I don't respect a card game that doesn't have borders on its cards.

Not surprised MTG is down. Wizards over there milking their dead cow like its the dust bowl and they're the last Okie to leave the great plains.
 
At this point we just playin a Non Fungible Card Game, heckin' scalpers.
I love that the first comment is Goldengho, I love all that dude represents about this post and the company in general.
 
afr1234 said:
and has a 4500 people event as far as 2012 in Long Beach. Something IMPOSSIBLE for pokemon atm, as they are not only not meeting that kind of demand outside of Japan, they are quite bad at tournament logistics and competitive settings.
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I was at that Long Beach YCS (the 100th one), the last non-local level Yugioh tournament I participated in so far. I think they underestimated the number of participants given that it was in SoCal, so each round went for over 2 hours, and we got to round 5 or 6 by like 7 PM and the first day was looking to go past midnight, so me and my buddies decided to just leave after round 6 as we had a long way back.

Yaginku said:
Magic is actively doing everything to lose as many players as possible, as fast as possible.
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Yugioh had a moment like that too with Master Rule 4 back in 2017, which killed 11/12 of my decks in viability immediately and made me drop the game after almost 15 years of playing mostly non-stop (locally anyway). They have since went back on it (mostly), and I don't know if they've done anything as bad in recent years, but I far prefer the pace of Pokemon even in Expanded format over where Yugioh is now.
 
I bet one piece will be second by pokemon 30th anniversary... from that point, if bandai managed this astonishing rise correctly, it can become a serious contender to the throne
 
Yaginku said:
Not really surprising, because what is really there to compete with it? YGO is big in Japan (definitely bigger than overseas), but nobody would think it compares to PTCG. Magic is actively doing everything to lose as many players as possible, as fast as possible. The new alternatives - Lorcana, F&B, Sorcery - are definitely strong, but they're still in early stages and I don't know if they're even in Japan yet.
If there's any surprise on this list for me, it's that Duel Masters is STILL in the top. I'm sad that the game was cut off from the non-Japanese markets, the mechanics are actually quite good.
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One piece?
 
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