Sony Plans to Buy Crunchyroll for $1 billion

Sony plans to buy Crunchyroll, a popular US-based anime streaming service. It hopes to finalise the deal soon for nearly $1 billion.

This acquisition will give Sony access to Crunchyroll's 1,000 titles and 30,000 episodes.

Crunchyroll was founded in 2006 and has been owned by US telecoms giant AT&T since 2018. This anime streaming service provides its specialized anime content to around 70 million free and 3 million paying subscribers.

Although Crunchyroll is not as large as Hulu or Netflix, it has had great success with its animated movie called the Demon Slayer, which became the highest-grossing movie in Japan.

Moreover, the anime market was worth $21 billion globally in 2018, indicating 1.5 times increase of what it was five years before that. With the audience for anime increasing steadily, Sony has the opportunity to expand its loyal audience through this purchase.

Currently, Sony owns another anime service called Funanimation, which has a million subscribers. However, by acquiring Crunchyroll, Sony can develop a strong foothold in the anime market by expanding its offerings in Japan and abroad.