i don't know if i would consider an agreement with a known IP troll to be low effort. Nor does this relationship seem that lucrative.
Then you don't really know how these things work.
Or you do and you're doubling down anyway.
It's profitable because it's not costing Tatsunoko anything to take HG's distribution rights payola. And HG is getting money from those that want to make Robotech products (currently board games, card games and the SMG RPG and Savage Worlds source books.)
This recent proliference of Robotech products so close to the Tatsunoko re-up was not a coincidence.
Companies pay licensing fees to HG to make Robotech merchandise.
HG also gets a royalty, of sorts, for units sold.
Companies must be able to make enough to justify renewing the license every X years. (Whatever the agreed upon terms are. By way of example, Palladium lost the license because the miniatures game was such a colossal failure that it actually cost them money. The profits they would have made from a successful campaign would have earned them the money to renew the license.
HG pays Tatsunoko for the global distribution rights for anything Macross. They can afford this because of the licensing money they made from other companies. The contract wasn't, to my understanding, contingent on a 'per year' profitability.
When the terms were set to expire recently, Tatsunoko had to make a decision. Let it expire and get in bed with Big West and have to broker an all new deal that most certainly wasn't going to gain them anything, maybe even cost them in distribution, production and other fees since there was no way BW was going to give them the same sweetheart deal HG was giving them. ESPECIALLY considering BW will probably want to make new series to revitalize the IP.
OR just reup with HG with the current deal and receive money for a song and not have to share anything with Big West.
Big West's deal with HG may or may not involve Tatsunoko. Or it may. I don't know. But even if the Tatsunoko profits of Macross through this new deal with BW are a windfall of increased interest in Robotech, they still win.
The only ones getting screwed here are Big West, ad they are most certainly going to have to share profits with HG, some of which will go to Tatsunoko.