At least for now, Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG sales are growing in the hobby and not as strong at mass, according to Konami Vice President Card Business Yumi Hoashi in an interview at San Diego Comic-Con. "The hobby market is really robust,” Hoashi said, “and with all the new products that we’re coming out with and the new themes and the new game mechanic I think it’s going to grow even more." This jibes with ICv2’s report on the state of the hobby game market for the first four months of the year in the recently released Internal Correspondence #85, which found strong sales in the hobby on Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG.
But on the mass side, things are different. "The mass market has been a little slower," she said. "We don’t have as much exposure on TV."
Current Yu-Gi-Oh! TV exposure includes two airings weekly (one original series, and one Zexal) in the Vortexx block on Saturday mornings on the CW, and two episodes of Zexal on Nicktoons on Sundays. While this gives four airings a week in good time slots on the weekend, it’s less than the recent peak, when Yu-Gi-Oh! was also stripped daily on Nicktoons.
And one important venue for animated programming is going away this fall, when the Saturday morning Vortexx block on the CW (programmed by Saban Brands, see "'YGO!,' Big Two, WWE") is ending. Beginning in September, the animated block will be replaced by “One Magnificent Morning,” which will be live action programming.
Of course, in some ways, TV is less important than it used to be, even for stimulating sales in mass merchants. Streaming is rapidly overtaking television in importance for kids, with YouTube now ranked as the second highest rated channel for kids (see "Streaming Passing TV"). Streaming can have an impact on sales of other products just like TV can (see "Streaming Drives Manga Sales"), and anime producers are taking note (see "'Pokemon' on Netflix"). Five seasons (236 episodes) of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series are currently available on Hulu.
Yu-Gi-Oh! exposure on TV could expand again; programming on the prime venues for animation typically changes when school starts, and there are a lot of episodes for the various Yu-Gi-Oh! incarnations, a proven success record for the property.
As TV Shifts
Posted by ICv2 on July 29, 2014 @ 1:07 pm CT
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