I have not looked into fan-subs in a few years so you could be right. However, I have not seen a significant increase in the amount of anime translated so are you talking about 'rights' or the 'option' to buy said rights. Because, it seems odd if companies are paying significant amounts of money for distribution rights just to sit on it.
PS: Though if there is some great streaming service for anime I don't know about feel free to fill me in on that one.
Crunchyroll[1] is the big name in streaming nowadays, and they simulcast a substantial portion of each season. Funimation licenses for retail, simulcast and library streaming, and I believe they do their streaming via Hulu. Anime on Demand is a newer player, and Neon Alley is a PS3-exclusive (for now) service run by Viz that airs dubs on a schedule like a TV station. Some of the older players (Sentai Filmworks does a lot of this) will split a license with Crunchyroll, so one has retail and the other streaming. I'd say that the English-language market has generally switched to streaming, and that DVDs and BDs are almost an afterthought now.
Edit: Almost forgot, a bunch of the Japanese studios just announced their own English-subbed streaming service named Daisuki[2], but it won't launch until April. Will be interesting to see what impact that has on the foreign companies.
PS: Though if there is some great streaming service for anime I don't know about feel free to fill me in on that one.