Most anime series are financed by a committee of companies rather than by the studio that animates them. The structure exists because the risk on any single title is too concentrated for one participant to absorb.
The risk on one title is severe
A season costs a substantial sum and its reception cannot be predicted, since audiences for a genre do not reliably transfer to a specific show.
A company funding a series alone would face the full loss on failure, and losses of that size can end a business that has several in a row.
Spreading the investment across participants converts a potentially fatal exposure into a manageable one, which is the same logic that governs film co-financing. Each member funds a slice of many titles rather than all of one.
Each member takes rights it can already use
A committee typically includes a publisher, a broadcaster, a merchandise company, a music label, a distributor and sometimes a game developer.
Each contributes capital and receives rights in its own field, so the merchandise company controls goods while the label controls the soundtrack.
The arrangement works because every member monetizes a different aspect of the same property through infrastructure it already operates.
The animation studio is usually a contractor
The studio producing the work is frequently paid a production fee rather than holding an ownership share, which decouples its income from the show's success.
A studio can therefore make an enormously popular series and receive nothing beyond its fee, which is a long-standing structural criticism of the model.
Studios that have accumulated capital increasingly join committees or self-finance in order to take a position in what they make.
Committee composition shapes the show
Members influence content in the direction of their own interests, so a merchandise participant favors designs that sell and a music participant favors soundtrack opportunities.
An adaptation is also expected to serve the source publisher, since a major purpose of many series is driving sales of the manga or novels.
That is why some adaptations end without resolution: the series has done its job of returning readers to a source that is still running.
Streaming money changed the balance
International streaming services now pay significant sums for rights, which has increased budgets and given global distributors a stronger position in negotiations.
Some services commission directly, bypassing the committee entirely and taking worldwide rights in exchange for carrying the full cost.
The committee persists alongside that because it still solves the problem it was built for, which is that nobody knows in advance which series will find an audience. Risk sharing survives whatever else changes around it.