The American telecoms giant AT&T has reached a deal to sell its anime streaming service Crunchyroll to the Japanese tech and entertainment conglomerate Sony for a price of $1.175 billion. The popular anime streaming service will be sold to the Funimation Global Group, a division of Sony that’s based in the US.

With Funimation and now Crunchyroll set to be under its control, Sony would have major control over the anime streaming market globally. Crunchyroll is a streaming service with 90 million users globally, 3 million of whom are paying subscribers. Likewise, Funimation is another popular anime streaming service with millions of users, with the two now owned by Sony.

The sale of Crunchyroll comes two years after AT&T acquired the entirety of the streaming service and housed it under its WarnerMedia division. Crunchyroll was acquired as part of the digital media company Otter Media in 2018 for a reported price of over $1 billion, whereas Otter Media had acquired Crunchyroll for a reported price of $75 million in 2013.

From a price of $75 million in 2013 to $1.2 billion in 2020 represents a very big jump that’s propelled by Crunchyroll’s growth over that period. By 2013, Crunchyroll reported having 200,000 paying users compared to 3 million now, indicating rapid growth. 

Crunchyroll originally started in 2006 as a website for uploading and sharing anime video content, mostly illegally, before removing copyright-infringing content and pivoting to legal distribution in 2009. Ever since, it’s been on a tear, growing rapidly to now with 90 million users globally, most of whom use it for free, whereas it makes money from 3 million paying subscribers. 

Now with its sale to Sony, Crunchyroll will continue its run under one of the biggest technology and entertainment conglomerates globally. 

Photo: WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar by rsepulveda is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Share this...

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Linkedin

Whatsapp

Email

Print