From Star Wars to Barbie, there are a handful of instantly recognizable franchises that dominate global media — but which of them are the most successful when it comes to all-time revenue?
Using the latest available data from Fandom, Visual Capitalist ranked the highest-grossing media franchises in the world, and broke down the sources of revenue for each.
The highest-grossing media franchise of them all is Pokémon, with an estimated revenue of $147 billion. Of that sum, the majority ($103 billion) comes from merchandise sales, followed by video games, trading cards, box office and manga/comics.
The second-biggest franchise is Hello Kitty, whose $89 billion revenue comes almost entirely from merchandise, followed by Star Wars, whose revenue stands at an estimated $70 billion.
More than half of the franchises included in the graphic originate from Japan.
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Via Visual Capitalist.