Sony has now officially bought the anime company "Crunchyroll" from AT&T for a whopping $1.175 billion! Did the company overpay for this anime company or was the $1.175 billion deal worth it?
Sony Pictures to Expand Its Anime Horizons
It's finally official, Sony has expanded their anime horizons owning now both Crunchyroll as well as Funimation, as seen on Sony's post. The company's very own Sony Pictures division has just recently completed a massive $1.175 billion acquisition that took place on August 9, 2021.
According to Engadget, With this new deal finally closed, Tony Vinciquerra, the CEO of Sony Pictures, noted that the company's current goal for this acquisition is to be able to create a sort of unified anime subscription experience. The key phrase in Tony's statement was that they wanted to create a unified anime subscription experience for their users "as soon as possible."
Sony Owns Funimation and Crunchyroll
Sony, however, did not note how soon could fans and audiences see this happen as well as what form that the "experience" will officially take. As of the moment, both Funimation as well as Crunchyroll will continue to exist as different streaming platforms. There were only a few details regarding what this could actually mean for the company's subscribers.
CEO Tony Vinciquerra noted that with the addition of Crunchyroll, the company has an unprecedented opportunity for them to be able to serve anime fans like they have never been able to do before. The company also wants the opportunity to deliver the anime experience across any platform that they would officially choose stretching from theatrical, home entertainment, events, games, streaming linear TV, and more.
Sony Pictures Crunchyroll Plans
Sony Pictures' CEO also noted that the company wants to provide their anime fans the experience across any platform as well as every way that anime fans would want to experience their anime. Sony had initially announced that the company was trying to acquire Crunchyroll from AT&T before the end of 2020.
Although the deal was just recently made into reality, it was actually previously talked back in December, 2020 and Sony was already set to purchase Crunchyroll during that time. The price at that time was still $1.175 billion which hasn't changed and has been actualized by the deal itself.
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Crunchyroll Subscribers
During that time, the service noted that it already had a whopping 3 million subscribers as well as about 90 million registered users stretching over 200 countries. Just less than a year after that, Crunchyroll had reported that the number has increased significantly growing from 3 million subscribers to 5 million, and 90 million registered users to 120 million!
HBO Max has actually had a previous partnership with Crunchyroll in order to provide additional content to its subscribers. As of the moment, however, with Sony's purchase of the anime streaming company, it remains to be seen if HBO Max will partner with Crunchyroll once again.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian B.
