Rainbow Club and Hololive generated 1.4 billion yuan in revenue in half a year.2023 is coming to an end, and there have been a lot of changes in the field of IP-related creation and revenue generation.
For example, the development of AIGC and the cost reduction and efficiency increase of large domestic and foreign manufacturers have had a profound impact on the production of comics, animations, games and other content.
Changes in the economic situation in all walks of life have had an impact on the operation and derivation of IP, and the top companies are still moving forward, and there are many "players" who are hardly optimistic.
Wenchuangchao has launched a series of articles on "IP Yearbook", trying to record some industrial contexts of the current era for reference.
Not long ago, we reviewed the 50 most profitable IPs in the world, as well as the TOP10 of the year measured by the publication sales dimension.
In this article, let's take a look at the situation of the IP form of virtual idols.
This year, there are fewer new trends in domestic virtual idols and virtual anchors, and many practitioners have shifted their focus to AIGC, and the cultural and creative tide will be reviewed and interpreted in the future. The Japanese VTuber industry is much more "lively".
According to the Yano Institute of Economic Research, the size of the Japanese VTuber market will reach 80 billion yen in FY2023, a year-on-year increase of 1538%。
In March 2023, Hololive's Cover was listed, and so far, the two major VTuber operating companies in Japan have been listed.
Among startups, there was a round of financing of 31100 million yen (about 1.)5.6 billion RMB).
In addition, large companies such as Bandai, Sony, Kadokawa, and Sanrio are also entering the VTuber industry across borders.
Author:
vtuber top20
As of December 23, the top 20 most popular vtubers in Japan are shown in the figure below.
Compared with last year's TOP20, the list in 2023 has not changed much. Review of last year's article on the cultural and creative tide: From anchor to IP, Vtuber has high growth in 2022: Anycolor has a half-year revenue of 6300 million yuan Hololive still dominates the list, occupying 14 seats.
Among them, Gawr Gura continues to hold the top spot with 4.41 million followers, and its fans have maintained steady growth this year. The third-ranked Bao Zhong Marlene fans are about to exceed 3 million, and they are expected to catch up with the second place in the list. Hololive ID (Indonesia) super celebrity Kobo Kanaeru ( has also maintained steady growth and has been in the top 10.
According to Streams Charts, Marlene is the VTuber with the highest average number of co-connections (the number of people in the same time) in 2023.
At the same time, 7 of the top 10 VTuber live broadcasts in 2023 are from Hololive, including Pekra Rabbit, Akuya Minato, Sakura Shrine Maiden, Comet Star Street, Gawr Gura, etc., all of which are on the 2023 VTuber Popular TOP20 list.
Last year, the super newcomer of the Rainbow Club, Yibai Mantianyuan Salle, ranked 15th with 1.8 million fans, and was also the only member of the Rainbow Club to enter the TOP20. The average number of live broadcasts of Rainbow Club Ge Ge Ye ranks 8th, and the number of fans ranks 21st.
However, Wenchuang Chao noticed that according to playboard data, the top 5 reward income in 2023 will be hololive-Boyi Xiaoyeli (income 7818.).43.7 million yen), Rainbow Society-VOX AKUMA (income 6647..)10,860,000 yen), Hololive-Shahuapo Kuloai (income 6,191.)73,520,000 yen), Rainbow Society-Bu Sato (income 5,203.)15,170,000 yen), Aodo High School - Chiyoura Temi (income 4,995.)11,950,000 yen), and none of them entered the top 20 of popularity.
It can be seen that the reward income cannot be completely equated with the number of fans and the average number of live broadcasts, and the number of fans is not the only criterion for measuring the value of vtuber.
At the same time, compared with 2022, VTuber's overall tipping revenue shows a decreasing trend, and the total revenue of the top 10 tipping in 22 years is 851.7 billion yen, 5116.7 billion yen, a year-on-year decrease of about 4%.
This trend is influenced by the expansion of VTuber's circle of activity.
Compared with relying only on YouTube tips to obtain revenue, the key development direction of VTuber operating company is to expand revenue such as product sales, performance activities, and IP licensing.
There are also some new faces in this year's TOP20, such as Akemi from aka virtual, Hetto from Owozu, and Ichitoki Yumo.
Akemi joined AKA Virtual in September 2022 (engaged in 3D content production and virtual image technology development), and the number of followers in January this year exceeded 1 million in May, surpassing Kuzuha in October to become the world's No. 1 male vtuber in terms of followers.
Hetto is from Chile, debuted in August 2021, and surpassed 1 million followers in July 2022, mainly streaming games and chatting on Twitch.
Shiyu Yui is a Japanese illustrator who has been working on YouTube since May 2019 as a personal vtuber, and is also the first domestic personal vtuber in Japan to exceed 1 million YouTube followers.
Next, the cultural and creative tide first interprets the recent performance of the two giants of virtual anchors, and then reviews the dynamics of other large factories and startups.
Rainbow Society: The business business continues to expand, driving rapid growth
Rainbow Club anycolor's latest release of the 2024 April 2 quarter cumulative (2023.5.1-2023.10.31) The financial report shows that its sales in the first half of the year were 1548.7 billion yen (up 29.9 billion year-on-year.)4%), operating profit 648.2 billion yen (up 50. year-on-year.)4%), with a net profit of 449.8 billion yen (up 50.0 percent year-on-year.)6%）。Since 2023, it has continued to maintain rapid growth.
At the same time, the number of employees of Rainbow Club has increased by nearly 100 year-on-year, and it is actively absorbing content production, engineers, and project management talents to continuously expand its business career.
Rainbow Society VTuber news
At present, Rainbow Club has 124 Japanese vtubers, an increase of 12 year-on-year, 34 English vtubers, an increase of 8 year-on-year, and 28 Indonesian and Korean vtubers, a total of 186 people.
As for Nijisanji En, which is oriented to the English-speaking world, many Japanese fans have turned their interest to Japanese vtuber since the beginning of this year, resulting in a continuous decline in fan consumption, with sales of 262.6 billion yen, down 14 percent year-on-year7%。
In this regard, Rainbow Club said that it will continue to introduce new talents, expand the existing production system, and strive to expand the overseas fan base. In June and October of this year, they debuted two groups, Krisis and TTT, with a total of 6 new members, and a new round of English VTuber recruitment began in November.
Sales of Nijisanji in Japan were 1264.7 billion yen, a year-on-year increase of 47%, accounting for more than 8% of the total, is the main revenue pillar of Rainbow Club Anycolor.
In the same period last year (May-October), the Rainbow Club held a large-scale offline event "Rainbow Club FES2022" to boost revenue, and this year the event was held in December.
The high percentage of growth was maintained even in the absence of large-scale events, mainly due to the expansion of business and IP licensing.
In terms of newcomers, the Rainbow Club debuted 8 male vtubers this month, and debuted the new 3-member group " 団 in November.
The cultural and creative tide should be particularly pointed out to the VTA turmoil in August, the artist training program "Virtual Artist Academy VTA" of the Rainbow Club, which removed more than a dozen students for violating information management, which caused a lot of commotion among fans.
In November, Rainbow Club restarted the recruitment and selection of VTA newcomers, and adjusted the selection system, which was divided into three types of selection: VTA, VTA super elite anchors, and VTA mascot anchors, and targeted recruitment of reserve troops. For example, VTA super elite anchors are mainly for professional talents with doctors, lawyers, beauty and other qualifications.
Rainbow Club business highlights
Cultural and creative tide has explained that the business model of Rainbow Club anycolor is mainly divided into four major sections: live broadcast business, business business (content sales), performance activities, and advertising.
Among them, the business business is the pillar of revenue, and the advertising business has also maintained continuous growth, becoming the key business of its development.
Since the beginning of this year, on the one hand, the Rainbow Club has focused on strengthening its business business, adopting combination planning tactics to boost business income, and new and old combinations such as Chronoir, Rof-Mao, Voltaction, and Krisis have all contributedOn the other hand, with the continuous improvement of its VTufer's popularity and IP commercial value, the IP licensing cooperation business has continued to expand, becoming the second largest revenue**.
Product planning highlighted by the Rainbow Society
The 5th anniversary merchandise of Chronoir, a popular group composed of Kudzu and Ye of the Rainbow Society, not only included very commemorative content, but also held the first anniversary pop-up store event at Shibuya 109 in collaboration with ABEMA for more than half a month, which was quite successful and contributed to sales (in the previous article, the cultural and creative trend was described in detail, so I will not repeat it here).
The four-member group Rof-Mao has released the Four Gods-themed merchandise, 2nd anniversary merchandise, and the first ** "Overflow".
The image design of the four gods theme peripherals adds Chinese style elements. In addition to the regular contents such as Aggreko stands, badges, and folders, the products have been specially equipped with tassel charms and brooches with Chinese-style elements, which have been well received by fans.
The members of the group include the top 4 of the reward income, the group is very popular, and the first ** on sale also achieved good sales results, and it won the first place on the ORICON list ** sales day list on the first day of sale, and about 55,704 copies were sold on the first day of the first move.
The newcomer combination product also performed well.
A total of 11 male vtubers, including the group Oriens and Dytica, and the English group Krisis, have teamed up to launch the "Nijisanji Nijisanji En Heroes Half Anniversary" commemorative goods for the sixth half of their debut, including stands, random cards, badges, character puppets, towels, and more, and they have also participated in the large-scale women's event "Idol Dream Festival AGF2023" hosted by Animate 。
In addition to the above-mentioned combinations, large-scale events and special holidays are also a time when a large number of products are sold.
This year's events held by the Rainbow Society, such as "Rainbow Koshien", "Rainbow Society Summer Festival 2023", "Asia Tr**el 2023", "Halloween Special Merchandise & Voice Pack", "Winter Date 2023 Special Merchandise & Voice Pack", etc., have all driven the sales of related merchandise.
In December, it also held the annual large-scale event of the Rainbow Club "Rainbow Club FES2023", during which a 5th anniversary concert was held, during which more than 150 VTubers participated in the performance, attracting a large number of fans to attend, and the sales of goods driven by it will be reflected in the next quarter's financial report. As can be seen from the picture above, the current top 5 sales of the official ** peripherals of the Rainbow Club are all from the periphery of this event.
Rainbow Club has a special list of advertising projects
With the continuous improvement of its VTuber popularity and IP commercial value, the IP licensing cooperation business has been continuously expanded, and the external cooperation of Rainbow Club is no longer limited to conventional co-branding with other brands, but also actively seeks cooperation in TV, movies, streaming and other aspects, so as to gain more and enhance the IP value and open up the fandom.
Rainbow Society's regular collaborations include collaborations with Sanrio, Paragure, Salonia (a brand of American generators), Bliss (hot springs), Calbee Chips, McDonald's, Love Liner (eye makeup), the reality escape game "Escape from the Intersection of Dimensions", "Street Fighter 6", Marubeniya Foods, etc., covering all aspects of food, clothing, and transportation, and reaching out to new fan groups through cross-border co-branding.
In addition, Rainbow Club actively carries out multi-level cooperation to increase the rate of its virtual anchors and reach consumers in different circles.
For example, as previously introduced by the Cultural and Creative Tide, the global live broadcast project jointly launched by Rainbow Club and miHoYo's "Honkai: Star Dome Railway", and the participation of Jia Fei Tian Qing and Schelling Burgundy in the Japanese dubbing of the Chinese animated film "The Peak Glory of Full-time Masters".
In the anime "The End of the World and Shiba Inu", which was broadcast on YouTube in July, Zhou Yang Sango and voice actor Koichi Yamadera co-starred in the voice of W.
The animation "Good Night World", which began to be broadcast exclusively on Netflix in October, OP and ED are all played by members of the Rainbow Society, OP is sung by Ge Ye, and ED is sung by the ** group NONNIS.
"Ahamo", a brand for young users under the Japanese mobile communications operator NTT DOCOMO, used a team composed of Kuzuba, Shiina Yuka, and Lilim of the Demon World to serve as special online ambassadors, and carried out a long-term co-branding ** activity with the Rainbow Society, and launched a total of 6 bullets by December. This also fully shows that manufacturers are optimistic about the role of VTuber in the promotion of young people.
This year, there is another business focus of the Rainbow Club, which is to actively participate in overseas exhibitions for publicity.
The exhibitions in which the virtual anchors of the Rainbow Society participate include "Bilibili World 2023", "*Con UK 2023 (British Comic Con)", "Expo 2023 (Los Angeles Comic-Con)", etc.
In addition to actively carrying out activities in China and stabilizing the income of Station B, Rainbow Club has also participated in Korean exhibitions many times this year, such as participating in the "Seoul PopCon 2023 (Global Pop Culture Exhibition)" in August, and participating in the comprehensive exhibition "Korea 2023AGF" focusing on animation and games in December.
It is worth mentioning that Rainbow Club and STU jointly developed the virtual anchor remote motion capture technology, which was used for the first time in the "Korea 2023AGF" stage performance, which can realize the effect of live performances without the presence of artists.
Hololive: Focus on building ** anchors and expanding the fan base
Hololive Cover's latest release for the March 2024 quarter quarter (2023.)4.1-2023.9.30) The financial report shows that its sales in the first half of the year were 1227.6 billion yen (up 57.7 billion year-on-year.)5), operating profit 596.6 billion yen (up 77.7 billion year-on-year.)1%), the net profit for the current period was 165.7 billion yen (up 154.4 y/y.)5%）。This year, it has maintained a good growth trend.
Currently, the total number of subscribers to HoloLive on YouTube is 83.19 million (as of the end of September 2023), up 5.37 million year-over-year. By language region, there are 51.23 million in Japan, 28.12 million in English, and 9.3 million in Indonesia.
As of the end of September, HoloLive had a total of 82 Vtubers, 36 of whom had more than one million YouTube subscribers. The top of the Vtuber popularity list has long been dominated by Hololive.
In July and September 2023, Hololive launched the 5-member women's English group Advent and the first group Regloss of the new VTuber project Hololive Dev IS, respectively, which has attracted a lot of discussion from the beginning of their debut.
As of the end of October, the number of subscribers of both groups exceeded one million, and the first live broadcast gathered more than 100,000 people at the same time
As explained by the cultural and creative trend, Hololive's business is mainly composed of four parts: live broadcast content, performance activities, marketing, and copyright cooperation.
Among them, marketing accounted for the largest proportion of 437% and sales of 53600 million yen (up 69.com year-on-year.)03%), followed by live content accounting for 281%, sales 34500 million yen (up 14.com y/y.)16%）。
The third is copyright cooperation147% and sales 180.1 billion yen (119.9 y/y.)37%), and the fourth was performance activities, with sales of 166.1 billion yen (up 114.4 y/y.)6%）。
It can be seen that the marketing business has always been the main pillar of Hololive's revenue, and with the growth of popularity and IP value, the copyright cooperation business has grown rapidly, with the largest year-on-year increase.
Hololive's business focus for this year
The first is a marketing career. This year, Hololive is working hard to open sales channels beyond e-commerce, aiming to reach a wide range of consumers through retail stores. At the same time, we are actively developing fixed products that can be sold throughout the year, and the proportion of sales is increasing.
For example, focusing on the promotion of the first official brand product "Hololive Friends with U" launched in December last year, the puppet with the image of a virtual anchor has become the main year-round sales fixed product, and has now sold 10 bullets of more than 50 character puppets, and the e-commerce channel has sold nearly 100,000 yuan.
It also participated in the Tokyo Toy Fair and the Licensing Expo with "Hololive Friends with U", with a booth focused on promoting the merchandise brand.
HoloLive is also actively cooperating with various stores to open offline sales channels, such as in-depth cooperation with Animate throughout the year.
From May to June, it collaborated with Japanese Animate stores to launch the "Hololive Animate Exhibition Travel Season", which combined with "Shiranui Construction" special collaboration products.
Starting in September, Hololive will first release limited edition items in collaboration with the English group "-myth-" at the Animate Los Angeles store, and will gradually expand its sales to overseas stores.
At the same time, HoloLive sells related products in 120 Animate stores nationwide and affiliated stores in Asia and North America throughout the year.
In January, HoloLive also collaborated with Aniplus Café and Animate JMA Cafe Bangkok Satellite Branch to launch themed café events, and 16 popular members, including Gawr Gura and Star Street Comet, participated in the collaboration.
On the one hand, relying on the participation of popular vtubers to drive sales, on the other hand, they can also increase exposure and reach more potential fan groups.
In November, the HoloLive pop-up store was opened in the Tokyo Station underground shopping mall "Tokyo Character Street", and in addition to selling some of the products of the official store, we also produced new original goods of the three VTubers who served as "Tokyo Tourism Ambassadors".
Like Rainbow Club, Hololive is also developing its overseas marketing business through active overseas activities.
For example, in the past two quarters, we have participated in 18 overseas events in the overseas event program "Hololive Meet", including comic conventions held in Vancouver, South Korea, the United States, Canada, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and many other countries. During the event, its artists participated in the performance to promote the brand, and also brought the latest peripheral goods to boost sales.
Let's take a look at Hololive's largest growing copyright partnership. Due to the low cost investment of this business, the profit margin has been greatly improved, and the proportion of revenue has been increasing.
In addition to regular product cooperation, HoloLive is also actively expanding multi-** cooperation channels, increasing **rate, and attracting attention outside YouTube.
This year's regular co-branded partners include Bandai Takuma Utako, Ito-Yokado, Gokuraku-yu, Yamaha, Akeri, Asara Shuzo, Marion Crepe Shop, Fujiya, Hokkaido's specialty **Yoshidaya, games "Sky Tower", "Call of God's Domain", etc.
HoloLive has also partnered with Busiroad to promote the 15th anniversary of its game Wei Schwarz by four VTubers, including Starstreet Comet, as special ambassadors for the 15th anniversary of its game Wei Schwarz.
In addition to some traditional collaborations, HoloLive is also actively seeking diversified collaborations.
For example, in the Japanese tokusatsu "Kamen Rider Gokuko" and "Kamen Rider Gotchard" released in December, the joint theatrical version of "Kamen Rider The Winter Movie Gatchard &Geets", Fukiyuki Shirakami participated in the dubbing work, dubbing the cute and mysterious White Fox Kemi in the film.
This IP itself is a big hit, with a loyal fan base, and being able to participate in this kind of project is a good opportunity to expand the development platform and open up the popularity of other circles.
Another thing worth mentioning in particular is the live content business. This year, Hololive has focused on building the best virtual anchorsI hope to break down barriers and expand the fan base by **
Hololive is accumulating experience in production and publicity, and has created an exclusive production platform, and there is a lot of room to expand consumer groups in the future.
In July, it partnered with Universal ** to establish the label "Holo-N", which is operated by HoloLive and EMI Records. The first ** project "Blue Journey", composed of Hololive's female vtubers, held their first concert in September.
In August, we collaborated with Honeyworks, a popular creative team that contributed to anime submissions such as Niconico and YouTube, and launched a new ** project "Hololive Honeyworks", in which its members participated in original songs and cover hit tracks.
In addition to the cooperation project, Hololive's popular artist Bao Zhong Marin released a new original song "Beautiful Girl Innocence Pirates" in July, and the official MV set a ** record of 10 million within 39 days of its launch.
Hololive's main singing Vtuber Star Street Comet is also remarkable this year's event. For example, as a guest lead singer, he participated in the original songs of the popular VOCALOID P (a producer who uses VOCALOID software to create songs and post them in **).
In July and September, he also participated in Nippon TV's terrestrial wave program "The Music Day 2023" and the outdoor festival "Aso Rock Festival 2023" held in Aso City, Kumamoto Prefecture, respectively, and gained widespread popularity across the virtual and the real.
Hololive's streamers have also participated in overseas performances many times this year, including "**NYC", the largest comic convention on the east coast of North America, and "**Festival Asia 2023" in Singapore.
Other company updates
In addition to AnyColor and Cover, the two major VTuber operators, more and more Japanese companies are choosing to join the virtual idol business.
BR**e Group, which started its business in October 2017, has conducted two rounds of Series D financing this year, raising a total of 31100 million yen, bringing the total amount raised to approximately 5.8 billion yen.
At present, the BR**e Group has many projects under its umbrella, such as Riot Music, Porpo Esports, Palette Project, Mugen-Live, V4Mirai, and Hinaka Tanaka Suzuki.
Among them, the total YouTube subscribers of the Porphy e-sports group exceeded 7.69 million, which is the third largest VTuber group in Japan after HoloLive and Rainbow Society.
This year, in order to accelerate global business expansion, BR**e Group has set up 5 overseas bases in 4 countries: Thailand, China, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and has also held global auditions for the English-speaking market, Greater China, Europe, etc., and launched a number of overseas projects, with a total of 20 overseas VTubers debuting.
In addition, Br**e Group has expanded its IP, platform, e-sports, and XR businesses through the integration of Studio Lara, Virtual Entertainment, and MateReal.
Sanrio has partnered with Nippon Television's Clan Entertainment to launch a new VTuber project, "Nyantasia!".(This is also Sanrio's first foray into the virtual idol business.)
The visual design of the original anime was carried out by popular artist Riri Shimo. It tells the story of a witch who casts a spell in order to play a game with the cat in her house. The character design of the vtuber was handled by Sanrio.
They auditioned for 3 initial members and made their official debut on December 1.
After the group's debut, they participated in Sanrio's metaverse event "Sanrio Virtual Festival" and Clan-related TV programs, and will continue to operate activities centered on games, and will continue to operate by leveraging the resources of both companies.
In July, Shueisha Dena, an entertainment company jointly established by Shueisha and Dena, planned and launched the first VTuber project, "GR** Girls" (with the theme of "VTuber, Save the World!!").A brand new heroine virtual idol was built.
In September, Bandai Namco Music Live, a subsidiary of Bandai Namco, also launched a new VTuber box "Mewlive" which transcends the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds and aims to realize a world where artists are free to play an active role.