Funimation to Acquire Crunchyroll (Crunchyroll to swallow Funimation content)

[WeaponX2099]

There are rumors that Crunchyroll will be added to the PlayStaion Plus package.

[disneywildcat]

Originally Posted by WeaponX2099

There are rumors that Crunchyroll will be added to the PlayStaion Plus package.

If it indeed turns out to be true, it may suggest that Crunchyroll may remain to some degree as a brand.

I understand Animelab shutting down and being replaced by Funimation, Manga UK becoming Funimation UK, and Funimation expanding into Latin America may be a sign of things to come, but Crunchyroll operates in many countries and regions where Funimation or Wakanim does not operate. I don't think Sony/Funimation would eliminate the Crunchyroll brand as its too valuable to let go, but I admit its still a open question which video player survives or if a new player is developed to accommodate the merged catalog of both services across all regions.

I do think that Wakanim as a brand is least likely to survive. But I wouldn't be surprised if it survives somehow.

[neoz]

Originally Posted by InuYashaCrusade

Crunchyroll Confirms VRV as Part of Sony Following Acquisition

Crunchyroll confirmed with ANN on Friday that since Ellation's VRV bundle streaming service is a Crunchyroll brand, VRV is also now part of Sony following Sony's Funimation Global Group's acquisition of Crunchyroll from AT&T.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/new...sition/.176220

Yep figured that was coming. Sucks for HiDive because I'm sure it'll get the boot now from VRV.

[BigOnAnime]

The antitrust division of the Department of Justice is completely clueless.

Sony Has Yet to Win Anime Fans to Its Post-Crunchyroll Strategy, but Opportunities Remain Strong

Sony Pictures Entertainment announced earlier this month that it had completed its $1.18 billion purchase of anime streaming company Crunchyroll from AT&T, but it has done little to calm the nerves of the anime genre’s most dedicated supporters.

“Our goal is to create a unified anime subscription experience as soon as possible,” said SPE chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra in a statement. He gave no details of how or when Crunchyroll would be merged with Funimation, a similar streamer that SPE already owns, nor of how the Sony Group might enable anime streaming through its PlayStation gaming consoles.

Fans and industry insiders have expressed a range of concerns, such as the threat of jobs cuts for Funimation and Crunchyroll employees, or increased pressure on Japanese animators to tone down their work for Western consumption.

Other fans are worried about the impact on their own anime viewing: “My memberships for both services are going to renew this month and since y’all are now one company, what is going to happen to my subscription?” tweeted one fan. “Will people like me still have to pay for both services?”

Getting the deal done involved overcoming a U.S. Department of Justice probe into the takeover. The organization was concerned that a combined Funimation and Crunchyroll, which has five million paying subscribers and almost 120 million registered users, would become the dominant player in anime streaming outside Japan. But in the end it determined that Sony would not have a monopoly.

Data from market researcher Parrot Analytics shows that other players may be much larger. Its figures for content demand among subscription streamers in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2021 showed Hulu as the market leader with 21.4% share of viewing time, followed by Netflix with 18%. Disney Plus had a 4.6% share. Crunchyroll and Funimation claimed 3.5% and 2.7% shares respectively, despite being specialists in the genre.

Jonathan Clements, a veteran anime blogger and author of the book “Anime: A History,” says that Sony bought Crunchyroll less for its current subscribers than for the potential of its 120 million registered users.

“On paper, that looks like an asset with the power to greatly multiply its value,” he said. “The risk is that it’s a junk bond of cobweb accounts and people who’ve already moved on, but I presume that Crunchyroll has private metadata that favors the positive end.”

Another possible downside to the deal, says Clements, is that “Sony may have bought a competitor to streamline the market and cherry-pick the talent, but the talent leaves because they don’t like the new environment.”

Alejandro Rojas, director of applied analytics at Parrot, views the deal as a win for Sony if it can attract “a larger number of paid subscribers and, with its larger scale, justify further investments to supply more quality content to an ever-expanding set of fans.”

Rojas noted that global anime consumption has nearly doubled since 2017, but he makes a critical distinction between the high volume, subscription-renewing “super fans” that Sony is targeting versus more casual users.

If it is the occasional consumers that are driving the growth, Sony’s deal may not be a game changer. General streaming services such as Netflix and HBO Max that “offer the genre as part of a more complete catalog of programming may capitalize growth expectations,” Rojas said.

The solution for Sony, says Rojas, is “to extract consumption behaviors from millions of users to determine the actual split between ‘super fans’ and ‘casual fans’ on a market-by-market basis.”

Highlighting the importance of understanding national trends is the example of Japan itself.

Teikoku Databank, a Tokyo-based data collection and analysis company, recently released a survey on the Japanese anime biz in 2020. Despite the monster success of “Demon Slayer” (co-produced through Sony’s Aniplex unit) and “Evangelion,” the Japanese anime market shrank for the first time in ten years. Total earnings dropped by 2% and, of the anime companies surveyed, 49%% reported drops in revenue, year-on-year.

Teikoku concluded that the Japanese domestic market, particularly terrestrial TV, is declining, while Japanese producers are facing increased competition from Chinese animation suppliers.

Parrot’s Rojas says that (globally) “consumers are hungry for more anime content,” but industry supply is not keeping up.

According to Parrot data, in the May 2020 to April 2021 period, 4.7% of global viewer demand was for anime, while only 3.2% of shows offered fell in this category. The gap, he says, “represents an expansion opportunity for more anime titles.”

Japan remains the biggest supplier, despite the rise of vendors from China, South Korea and, even, the West. “Analyzing the content genome of strong anime titles, we constantly find links to manga intellectual properties,” Rojas said. “Japan, being such a powerful force in the creation and commercialization of manga, has a unique content engine to keep its supremacy in the near future.”

https://variety.com/2021/global/asia...on-1235048576/

This really gets me...

Getting the deal done involved overcoming a U.S. Department of Justice probe into the takeover. The organization was concerned that a combined Funimation and Crunchyroll, which has five million paying subscribers and almost 120 million registered users, would become the dominant player in anime streaming outside Japan. But in the end it determined that Sony would not have a monopoly.

Data from market researcher Parrot Analytics shows that other players may be much larger. Its figures for content demand among subscription streamers in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2021 showed Hulu as the market leader with 21.4% share of viewing time, followed by Netflix with 18%. Disney Plus had a 4.6% share. Crunchyroll and Funimation claimed 3.5% and 2.7% shares respectively, despite being specialists in the genre.

Where do I even begin with this nonsense? They looked at viewing time instead of the number of titles or how licensing even works. An anime blogger did more research than this "market researcher".

[Show spoiler]

At the tail end of 2020, Sony set out to purchase Crunchyroll.

AT&T, Crunchyroll’s owners, wanted to shed debt, and Sony wants to dominate the anime space. It’s a match made in business heaven.

The US government, however, has some questions.

It came out recently that the acquisition has come under antitrust scrutiny. (Update: Sony and Crunchyroll officially announced closure of the deal on August 9th) In a nutshell, the US government wants to make sure that Sony won’t own too much of the anime market. In response, Sony and AT&T are arguing that anime isn’t a distinct market. They’re instead asserting that it’s just one part of a broader range of animation geared toward adults, comparing anime to the likes of The Simpsons.

Discounting the differences in consumer habits, business model, and marketing, the argument does a disservice to the medium. Sony and AT&T are willing to throw anime under the bus to do this deal. It’s a win for both sides, but could be a loss for the consumer.

The initiation of the antitrust inquiry, however, implies that the DoJ does see anime as a distinct market. Assuming that’s true, do they have a case? How much of the market would Sony own by buying Crunchyroll?

Market Share: Crunchyroll & Funimation

I went through AniChart’s lists of TV anime for 2020 to find the streaming license distribution. I’d initially estimated an 80% market share between both Crunchyroll and Funimation. That turned out to be mostly accurate, if a bit underestimated.

Crunchyroll and Funimation own 85.6% of the 2020 anime market. Sony Pictures would be gaining almost 35% of the market by purchasing Crunchyroll. Factoring in Aniplex of America (owned by a different Sony division than Funimation) the total percentage reaches 92.4%.

(As an aside, Bushiroad’s D4DJ First Mix launched as a non-exclusive license. The series premiered simultaneously on Crunchyroll, Funimation, HIDIVE, and other services.)

These are quick-and-dirty statistics, but they’re eye-opening. A single company owns half of the anime market. The next company in line owns a further 35%. And both of those companies are owned by massive parent companies.

Unless 2020 is a particularly anomalous year in terms of anime licensing, the numbers show that Sony stands to control a massive market share in anime.

Which explains why Sony and AT&T are so quick to compare anime to The Simpsons.

https://www.otakuentrepreneur.com/cr...rket-takeover/

[Edit]Someone on Reddit pointed out to me it seems that quote was about ALL content, not just anime. Though, if the DoJ was looking at CR and FUNimation combined vs. ALL content, that's still a problem, and if they really believed Hulu directly licenses anime when they don't... New anime is where the bulk of the money and interest is, and Sony now will control around 90% or more of that market. Sentai has been struggling to license even 3-4 anime per season for a while, Amazon is done (Evangelion is the first anime they got in 1.5 years). VIZ licenses new anime once in a blue moon, and Netflix gets only a few shows per season. It's painfully obvious that Sony has effectively created a "monopoly" and the DoJ just let it slip by. Sure there's multiple companies handling catalog shows but those don't make as much money. There are 48 new titles next season and nearly all of them will be on FUNiroll. This will already immediately show how apparent the situation is.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/season/2021/fall

[Tylerfan]

[Show spoiler]

What’s next, they fold Aniplex US into Funimation?

[BigOnAnime]

There's been that power struggle for a while as Sony doesn't see a reason to keep both Aniplex USA and FUNimation around. Also added something to the bottom of my post as I seem to have misread something.

[neoz]

Nah Disney is going to buy Sony. Disney want control of Spiderman so if they buy Sony they can get that back. Sadly Disney would probably not want the anime section considering the copious amounts of fanservice it has haha.

[unberechenbar]

Originally Posted by neoz

Nah Disney is going to buy Sony. Disney want control of Spiderman so if they buy Sony they can get that back. Sadly Disney would probably not want the anime section considering the copious amounts of fanservice it has haha.

Would the Justice Department allow that so soon after Disney just bought Fox?

[neoz]

Originally Posted by unberechenbar

Would the Justice Department allow that so soon after Disney just bought Fox?

I would say no but then again that didn't stop the DOJ from allowing Sony to buy CR.

[psychopuppet]

I personally think they just pushed it through with many others that did not get the review they really needed to clear the pandemic backlog out .

Either that or to focused on trying to shut Facebook down .

[gloomranger]

https://twitter.com/wtk/status/1435745372425572353?s=21

HIDIVE will no longer be available on VRV after September 30, 2021

https://www.hidive.com/news/2021/9/8...t-with-our-faq

[neoz]

Figured as much since CR owns VRV and started it as their streaming platform. Once Sony bought CR they pretty much owned VRV as well.

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by WTK

A couple updates to note here:

- HIDIVE will no longer be available on VRV after September 30, 2021
https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...e18#post800032

- Anime on Demand (Germany) will be shutting down December 8, 2021. AoD has been adding titles throughout this year on Crunchyroll. There is no mention of Funimation on the article (in German).
https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-ne...ei-crunchyroll

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...roll-from-at-t

[vap]

And another reason why I never have and never will stream anything.

[bigzgod]

Originally Posted by neoz

Figured as much since CR owns VRV and started it as their streaming platform. Once Sony bought CR they pretty much owned VRV as well.

So VRV is going to bleed subs soon? $3 more expensive than CR premium itself and without Hidive, the other channels aren't really adding much for the majority of subscribers.

[neoz]

Originally Posted by bigzgod

So VRV is going to bleed subs soon? $3 more expensive than CR premium itself and without Hidive, the other channels aren't really adding much for the majority of subscribers.

Unless they add Funimation back to the line up then imo yes. If they do end up added Funimation then I would say it would get more subs. Although I feel that VRV doesn't have the entirety of said streamers content. Wasn't there things missing from the CR catalog on VRV?

[Footlong Shoe]

Originally Posted by neoz

Wasn't there things missing from the CR catalog on VRV?

I don't think so, but I know if you have a VRV subscription, you automatically have a premium sub on Crunchyroll as well, so if there is missing content, it's a moot point.

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by Snorlax

To add here:
Wakanim's FAQ (all languages) claims:

Both Wakanim and Crunchyroll subscription services will continue to operate separately while our teams work on creating a unified subscription experience. There is no need to take action.

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...roll-from-at-t

Originally Posted by WTK

^ I didn't think check their FAQ

https://www.wakanim.tv/sc/v2/support/faq

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...roll-from-at-t

Also, here's something that's going to be relevant.

Typesetting in Anime: Crunchyroll, Funimation & Wakanim - YouTube

[vap]

All that this massive consolidation by sonianifuni does is give me really bad heartburn.

[omarchafa]

Man, I wonder if Crunchyroll will remain for free for about 99% of their content? I streamed a lot from there without paying a subscription and keeps me from torrenting at all. If everything is locked behind paid wall, there is going to be a ton of piracy again.