‘Crunchyroll will soon be taken over by Sony’

If we are to believe the latest rumors, Japanese electronics giant Sony is about to take over Crunchyroll.

Sony wants to acquire Crunchyroll – rumor

This is evident from reports from the Japanese website Nikkei Asia. Crunchyroll is a video streaming service that only shows anime. Anime is a term that refers to Japanese cartoon and animation films. Popular anime’s are Pokémon, Dragonball Z and Attack on Titan. According to reports, Sony wants to pay a maximum of 822 million euros for this.

Nikkei writes that Sony has already started bidding for the video streaming service and its three million paying subscribers earlier this year. It would also be the case that both companies are now in a final phase of negotiation. The price that Sony offers is not officially known yet, but the Japanese company would pay about 100 billion yen for it, which amounts to 822 million euros.

Crunchyroll is currently owned by the American AT&T. That company would like to sell that video streaming service for a while, so that the debt can be reduced a bit. AT&T has a huge debt of 150 billion dollars. According to The Information the American company would like to have about 1.5 billion dollars for the service – that was asked to Sony in August. But the PlayStation owner thinks that is too much money. Currently, the content of the service is offered separately as a subscription, but some of the content is also available to Americans with an HBO Max subscription.

Should Sony become the new owner of Crunchyroll, it will strengthen the position the company has acquired in the anime market. For example, Netflix has been investing heavily in anime in recent months, so that can be an important factor for the success of your video streaming service. Many companies are now fighting for the rights of all kinds of anime, so the offer is spread across different services. That is not good news for every fan of the Japanese cartoons. Because to view everything legally, you have to subscribe to all kinds of services.

Sony already owns Funimation, a distributor specializing in anime, which includes popular shows like Attack on Titan, Fullmetal Alchemist, and One Piece. With the Crunchyroll shows in the portfolio, Sony could therefore offer much more content than ever.

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