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Japan's Digital Video Market Topped Combined Physical Video, Rental Sales for 1st Time in 2020

The Japan Video Software Association (JVA) and Digital Entertainment Group Japan (DEG Japan) released on May 11 their report on the video market in Japan from January to December 2020. The report revealed that the Japanese video market was worth a total of 687.4 billion yen (about US$6.19 billion), a 21.9% increase from 2019. The increase was the largest increase year-on-year since at least 2007. The market encompasses physical home video sales and rentals as well as paid digital content, including streaming, digital sales, and digital rentals.

The DVD and Blu-ray Disc physical home video market's annual revenue amounted to 186 billion yen (about US$1.67 billion), a 5.9% decrease from the previous year. The rental market amounted to 104.1 billion yen (about US$938 million), a 17.3% decrease. The paid digital video content market amounted to 397.3 billion yen (about US$3.59 billion), a 65.3% increase. 2020 marked the first time the digital video content market has surpassed the worth of the combined physical home video and rental markets (which was 290.1 billion yen or US$2.61 billion).

Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Hulu formed the the top three services in terms of subscription base for subscription streaming. Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and U-NEXT were the top three for digital rentals. Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and FANZA were the top three for digital video purchases.

In 2019, paid digital video content's revenue overtook physical home video sales for the first time.

Japan's overall video market had been declining until it fell to 480.2 billion yen (about US$4.416 billion) in 2012. However, the JVA (with DEG Japan) began including paid digital content in the report in 2013, and has reported a mostly growing market since then.

Sources: JVA's website, Animation Business Journal (Tadashi Sudo)