Inside Japan's VTuber Economy: Super Chat, Merch and How Brands Design Collabs

VTubers, or virtual YouTubers, perform as animated avatars, and their income comes from more than tips during a stream. Merchandise, events and corporate tie-ups matter too. The paid comments that stand out on screen and the businesses that carry a company’s revenue have to be read separately.

In the ten years since Kizuna AI, who billed herself as the world’s first virtual YouTuber, appeared in 2016, VTubing has grown into an industry where two listed companies compete at the scale of tens of billions of yen. Its revenue structure looks quite different from the impression super chats give, so we start with the earnings figures.

Market Size: ¥126 Billion in Fiscal 2025, and Merch Leads

According to Yano Research Institute’s “VTuber Market Survey” (in Japanese; announced April 28, 2025; survey period November 2024 to March 2025), Japan’s domestic VTuber market was ¥80 billion (roughly $530 million) in fiscal 2023, up 153.8% from the previous year. It was forecast to reach ¥105 billion in fiscal 2024 and ¥126 billion in fiscal 2025, or 120.0% of the previous year.

The breakdown is what matters.

¥80B

Fiscal 2023 market size

+153.8%

Growth over the previous year

¥126B

Forecast for fiscal 2025

A market that has expanded quickly and is forecast to keep growing.

Source: Yano Research Institute (in Japanese)

More than half the market is merchandise. Live streaming, which includes super chat (paid comments), is only a fifth. Understand VTubing as a business that earns from tips and you miss 80% of its scale. For companies, the more important fact is that B2B, meaning corporate projects and tie-ups with VTubers and their agencies, already stands at ¥13.1 billion on its own.

Two Earnings Reports: Streaming Is the Doorway, Merch Is the Body

Japan’s two big forces are COVER Corporation (TSE Growth, 5253), which runs the hololive production, and ANYCOLOR Inc. (TSE Prime, 5032), which runs Nijisanji. Both are talent agencies. ANYCOLOR listed in 2022, and COVER listed in 2023. Their disclosures since then have put numbers on the revenue structure.

By segment, COVER’s fiscal year ended March 2026 (in Japanese; announced May 14, 2026) was led by merchandising at ¥23.747 billion, up 15.6%. Live and events followed at ¥9.247 billion (up 18.7%) and licensing and tie-ups at ¥7.198 billion (up 25.3%). Streaming and content came to ¥9.137 billion, down 2.0%. About half of sales is merchandise, and streaming is the only segment that lost revenue.

¥23.747B

Merchandising, up 15.6%

¥9.247B

Live and events, up 18.7%

¥7.198B

Licensing and tie-ups, up 25.3%

¥9.137B

Streaming, down 2.0%

Streaming is the only segment that shrank.

Source: Mogura VR (in Japanese)

The main causes of the 45.7% drop in net income were an impairment of about ¥3.2 billion on software assets after a change of direction for the metaverse project Holoearth, and about ¥1.8 billion in inventory write-offs and valuation losses.

ANYCOLOR’s fiscal year ended April 2026 (in Japanese; announced June 10, 2026) saw commerce, its merchandise business, drive growth across the company, with an operating margin above 36%. It has 179 VTubers under contract, nine more than a year earlier. For the year ending April 2027, it has guided to higher sales but lower profit because of rising personnel costs.

Corporate planners should take away three things. First, what is growing is not streaming but merchandise and tie-ups. Second, as COVER’s inventory write-down shows, this is an ordinary retail business that takes losses when it misjudges demand. Third, tie-up revenue grew at both companies, up 25.3% at COVER and 11.5% at ANYCOLOR, so corporate collabs are a priority for the agencies too.

What the Super Chat Economy Really Looks Like

Tips are not the star of the market, but they are essential to understanding the psychology of oshi-katsu. In a survey GO TO MARKET conducted in April 2024 (in Japanese), 14% of respondents used super chat, and the most common amount per use, at 33.3%, was ¥500 to under ¥1,000. Viewers send a super chat during a livestream, and its color depends on the amount; the top tier is red. The big red super chats leave the strongest impression, yet the typical price band is not much different from a convenience-store purchase.

Super chat therefore works two ways: a few large supporters hold it up, and many small participants build it up. A company borrowing this psychology should copy the design in which small contributions stay visible on screen, not one in which only those who can pay a lot stand out. A comment that scrolls past and vanishes is not the same as a name shown for a set time. The essence of super chat is not the amount but visibility.

Four Design Patterns for Corporate Collabs

In an industry where merchandise and tie-ups are growing, collabs are built to match. Line up the public cases and the designs sort into roughly four types.

Corporate collabFour patterns

• SeriesRepeat the same frame
• Multiple sitesReach fans in the regions
• Nationwide chainWin on touchpoints
• Made-to-orderSell without holding stock

Each pattern answers a different risk.

1. Make It a Series: Don’t Do It Just Once

“Furo Life: Healing Hot Springs Tour,” from the bathhouse chain Gokurakuyu Holdings, is a series of collabs with hololive that continues by swapping in different talents each round. The 8th installment, featuring hololive GAMERS, ran from March 5, 2026 (in Japanese). After that, “Hitomeguri” ran August 6 to 25, 2026, and “Futameguri” ran from August 27 to September 29 (in Japanese).

• Aim: Keep giving people a reason to visit, with newly drawn goods, collab baths and collab menus
• What they did: Swap the featured talent each round and repeat the same framework
• The Lab’s take: Running to an 8th installment is itself the achievement. A one-off collab has to build its announcement cost from zero every time, while a series lets you share the premise with fans that there’s a next one. Someone who missed their oshi’s round can wait for the next, which suits VTuber fandoms with many hako-oshi, fans who support a whole group

2. Multiple Sites: Create a Route for Fans in the Regions

CA SEGA Joypolis, an indoor amusement-park chain, has confirmed a sixth installment of “SHINY PARTY,” its collab event with hololive. According to the official announcement (in Japanese), the next one features the secret society holoX (Hakui Koyori, Takane Lui, La+ Darknesss and Kazama Iroha). The event period is October 16 to December 27, 2026. The participatory feature “Holo x Match” is planned at three venues: Tokyo Joypolis, COCONO SUSUKINO in Hokkaido, and Amagasaki Q’s Mall in Kansai.

• Aim: Spread the sites to give fans in the regions a chance to take part, and raise spend per customer with experience-based programs
• What they did: Launch at three sites at once, with participatory content that uses the facility’s play elements
• Result: Not yet held. The sixth installment in the series has been confirmed
• The Lab’s take: Many VTuber fans have supported their oshi without any physical travel. That is why “it’s happening near me” may work more strongly here than at existing idol events. Spreading the sites makes sense as a device for turning a relationship that stayed online into a genba, a live event, for the first time

3. Nationwide Chains: Win on the Number of Touchpoints

From April 16, 2026, Ichibanya Co., Ltd., the company behind the CoCo Ichibanya curry chain, rolled out (in Japanese) its “CoCo Ichi hololive stores” collab, featuring Ozora Subaru and Otonose Kanade. The Otonose Kanade set went on sale from April 16, followed by the Ozora Subaru set from May 1. A social media posting campaign with the hashtag #SubaNadeMimamoriChu ran alongside.

• Aim: Use a nationwide chain’s store network to reach both fans and ordinary customers
• What they did: Split the period in two with a menu per talent, linked to social posts
• The Lab’s take: Splitting the period and switching menus is the same idea as the multi-round bonuses at movie theaters. Give a tan-oshi fan, someone devoted to a single oshi, their own round and one visit is enough; set up periods for two talents and some people come for both. Building the hashtag from both names also makes kirinuki, fan-made clip videos, and fan posts easy to gather in search

4. Made-to-Order: Sell at a High Price Without Holding Stock

The phone-case brand RHINOSHIELD ran a limited-period made-to-order sale for one month from November 1, 2025 (in Japanese), offering collab cases and accessories with Nijisanji in Japan and Taiwan.

• The Lab’s take: Given the inventory write-down in COVER’s earnings, made-to-order matters more. VTuber merch is hard to forecast, and sales swing widely from one oshi to the next. A limited-period order sale gives fans a sure way to buy and gives companies no overproduction

Designs That Work and Designs to Watch

Across the four types, the difference between designs that work and designs that trip up becomes clear.

In Practice: Who to Negotiate With, and What to Confirm

What most sets a VTuber collab apart from hiring an entertainment talent is where the rights sit. For VTubers who belong to a company, the operating company often manages the rights in one place, so negotiation goes through the agency as a single channel. A contract with an independent VTuber is closer to dealing with a sole proprietor. We sort out that difference in our article on independent and corporate VTubers.

Points to confirm:

• You have shared the featured talent’s no-go expressions (politics, religion, excessive risqué humor and so on) in advance
• You have confirmed who holds the rights to the character design (there may be a separate illustrator, called a VTuber’s “mama” or “papa”)
• You have put in the contract whether collab products may keep being sold if the talent goes on hiatus or graduates
• You have decided how to handle leftover stock
• You have agreed whether, and how often, the collab may be mentioned during streams
• You have sorted out how to handle fan-made kirinuki videos and social posts
• You have set the contact point for resale and counterfeits

On cost, individual talent fees are not disclosed as a rule. But since the B2B segment had reached ¥13.1 billion as of fiscal 2023, it is reasonable to assume fees at or above the level of hiring other talent. For merchandise collabs, the main costs are manufacturing lots and rights fees, on the same footing as character goods generally. Allow months of lead time when manufacturing is involved; multi-site café and amusement-facility collabs tend to take longer because operations must be coordinated.

The risks around hiatus and zensei and tensei, a performer’s past identity and rebirth under a new persona, are often described as unique to VTubers. In practice they are the same general question as what to do with products when a talent’s contract ends. The one unique feature is that the character can remain while the performer changes, and that alone needs its handling decided in the contract.

Notes From The Oshi Lab: VTubing Has Become a Character IP Business, Not a Streaming Business

Line up the earnings and one fact emerges: this industry has already moved away from streaming. At COVER, the only segment with falling revenue was streaming and content, while merchandise, live shows and tie-ups grew. Commerce also drove ANYCOLOR’s growth. Streaming works less as a source of revenue than as the place where you can touch a character every day.

From an oshi-katsu point of view, that is natural. Fans watch the stream daily, and the attachment born there is spent on merchandise and events. With traditional anime IP, new touchpoints stopped when the work ended. With VTubers, touchpoints don’t break as long as streaming continues, and the cost per touchpoint stays extremely low for the agency. We think this structure has pushed the two companies to the scale of tens of billions of yen.

What companies should borrow is less the collab technique than the sequence: everyday touchpoints build attachment, and it is collected on an out-of-the-ordinary occasion. A one-off collab buys only the out-of-the-ordinary, and the everyday touchpoints stay with the agency. That Gokurakuyu and Joypolis moved toward series can be read as an effort to build an everyday of their own, one where there is always a next time. A plan fired once and finished won’t accumulate effect, even in a growing market.

Related articles: What Is Super Chat? / What Are Independent and Corporate VTubers? / What Is Oshi-Katsu Marketing? / How Big Is the Oshi-Katsu Market?