Over half of Netflix subscribers now watch anime
The once niche genre is now a battleground in the modern streaming wars.
Anime has officially gone mainstream on the world’s biggest streaming service. According to Netflix, over 50% of its global members now watch anime on the platform, with viewership tripling over the past five years and subscribers watching anime content over 1 billion times in 2024.
Last year, 33 anime titles made Netflix’s weekly list of global top 10 non-English shows, more than double the figure from 2021. That boom has helped Japanese content become the world’s second-most-watched non-English category on Netflix, just behind South Korean shows and movies.
Netflix’s new report on just how well the genre is doing comes as its rivals in the streaming space aggressively look to expand their own anime libraries. Still, as the home to huge hits like “Sakamoto Days,” Netflix remains the go-to for anime fans around the world.
Recent research from ad agency Dentsu shows that 48% of global anime viewers subscribe to Netflix for its anime content, compared to 32% for Disney+ and 29% for Prime Video. Netflix leads across all major regions, with its strongest presence in the US, where 63% of anime viewers turn to the platform — some way ahead of Hulu (46%) and Disney+ (46%).
That fan frenzy is reportedly translating to a boost for the streamer’s top line, too. Per estimates from Parrot Analytics, anime generated over $2 billion in global revenue for Netflix in 2023, accounting for 38% of all anime streaming revenue worldwide.
That perhaps explains why the company is doubling down on international content, where spending is up 7x in the past seven years, roughly matching what Netflix splashed out on North American TV and film in 2023.
