I read an article a while back how Sailor Moon herself somewhat dethroned Super Sentai. She successfully combined the sentai theme with the magical girl genre which was a rising trend in the 90's. It was the boom and had everything that little girls wanted. The merchandise sales were through the roof.
And then the fad started to decline and attention shifted elsewhere toward a new innovative method. Pretty Cure seems to be the perfect formula. While, Toei is sometimes the Dark Agency in my eyes, they are the ones who made Sailor Moon popular, however, they lost control of it and were left to come up with their own series that surpassed Sailor Moon and is still making money and getting more attention. Toei's treatment of Sailor Moon is not deliberate...
They probably didn't have much faith in Sailor Moon and most likely have good reason to. For one, they know what sells and what doesn't. They have the financial profit results and two: Sailor Moon brings nothing fresh to the table to keep kids interested or attract new fans. You can pretty much read the manga and watch the 90s (or Crystal which is a mutated Sailor Moon Kai). I'm not a Pretty Cure expert but the show combines so many elements that Sailor Moon touched on but PC expanded on them much more with action and so many magical weapons and items kids could purchase.
Sailor Moon once again is the only show with nothing new. Saint Seiya, Dragon Ball, Digimon, Pretty Cure all have new adaptations and/or spin offs to attract new fans. Thankfully, we might finally get to see something "new" with the Eternal Senshi but if I remember correctly, they don't last that long in StarS which is unfortunate.
However, I honestly still don't know why most of everyone is concerned about the box office numbers though when it's the merchandise that saves most series and Sailor Moon is so niche now in Japan, the numbers are still okay but there is still a second movie and the international fan base which will probably rescue it from getting canned for another 10 years.
Hopefully, Netflix invests in it and requests a new anime series since it is considered a classic anime and is well-known.