Forum - View topicNEWS: Sony's Funimation Global Group to Acquire Crunchyroll for US$1.175 Billion in Cash
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Vannil
 Posts: 240 |
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I wonder if this is going to be reviewed by the FTC since this is going to kill competition for streaming services
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FlowerAiko
 Posts: 223 |
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Extremely pessimistic about this, but I guess all we can do is wait and see. I wonder if the sites are going to merge, and if so, under CR or Funi, since both are big names in the anime world. Crunchy's site is better, imo.
You could argue Hulu, Netflix, HiDive, etc. prevent this from being a monopoly. Also that these are genre-specific and thus Sony is controlling streaming on the whole. Personally, I disagree, but I digress. Last edited by FlowerAiko on Wed Dec 09, 2020 7:29 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1440 |
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Almost certainly not. This may be a consolidation of a specific niche of streaming services, but it's far from what just about any government entity would consider a "monopoly" when there's dozens of other megacorporation-owned streaming services already and more being developed for launch in the coming year. It'd be very, very difficult to convince anyone at the FTC that anime is a distinct and bespoke enough medium from the rest of film/television that one company owning most of the simulcast market counts as a monopoly. |
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Nick4x
Posts: 32 |
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I'm split on this. One the one hand, monopolies are bad, and it's not hard to foresee a slow (or even sudden) drop in quality for anime subs and dubs. I hope that doesn't happen, but it shouldn't be assumed that it's out of the question.
On the other hand, it wasn't long ago that many of us (myself included) were griping about having to have a subscription to Crunchyroll, Funimation, Hulu, Amazon Plus, Netflix, etc. in order to watch the full season of anime as it aired, leading many to turn to pirating the shows they were most interested in because it wasn't financially feasible to pay for all those options at once. People were saying "Why can't we have just one place to watch anime?" Personally, I'm leaning more towards "cautiously optimistic". I'm doubtful we'll see any huge drop in quality going forward (I hope, at least), and now I don't have to worry about telling my friend to watch a series, only to find out that he doesn't have a subscription to the streaming service that licensed it... which turns out to be the case too often. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4597 Location: New York |
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I am admittedly worried because of the usual reasons, censorship, lack of competition for shows driving down prices and demand which hurts output, etc.
This is also probably the end of the Crunchyroll Originals line. Webtoons and Avatar clones don’t fit FUNi’s market strategy. |
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scowler
 Posts: 93 |
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That price amounts to $392 per subscriber, which I believe is a decent number.
HIDIVE could be the biggest winner here, with two big competitors merged to one. With less bidding competition, then can win more streaming rights to more shows. |
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PurpleWarrior13
 Posts: 2034 |
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Well, the Department of Justice probably doesn’t care about anime anyway, so...
Besides, Netflix and (to a lesser extent) HiDive offer a tiny bit of competition. Bizarre how much control Sony has gotten over the anime industry over the last couple years. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16963 |
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Speaking of streaming it will be interesting to see what happens with VRV being CR crunchy controlled. They have CR and Sentai on there, and the other channels. Funi had been on there until their first divorce. Now that they're basically a couple getting re-married (which that always ends up well
 ) where does that leave Sentai? Hi-Dive is now a competitor again so I would expect VRV to drop them. Which is a shame as Hi-Dive's own internal streaming service was far spottier I found. The layout was nicer as the layout on VRV has always been it's weak point in my mind. I'd rather take a bad layout and better streaming quality though. I suspect Funi might pop back onto VRV and Hi-Dive goes back to being it's own service. Glad I signed up for it with that special introductory deal last year for 2 years.
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Ryujin99
 Posts: 199 |
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I totally share the concerns about the reduction in competition. But if there's one benefit I hope to see from the merger, it's that more series CR licenses for streaming get physical media releases within a reasonable timeframe. I could see it going either way on the Crunchyroll Originals. It may not fit Funi's market strategy, but that doesn't mean that it clashes with Sony's strategy, which is what actually matters in this case. If the CR Originals are sufficiently successful, then Sony may want to keep the line going. I think it's worth remembering that Sony paid 5-10x the amount they paid for Funi to acquire Crunchyroll, so I wouldn't be surprised if the end result is more like CR swallowing Funi instead of the other way around. |
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Telu
 Posts: 130 |
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Well, rip LATAM.
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Lynx Raven Raide
 Posts: 412 Location: Central Coast, AU |
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Best case scenario I see here (at least in my eyes) FGG drop Funimation Now, keep the Wakanim service in Europe and AnimeLab in ANZ and switch to CR to cover the rest of the territories they can cover. I do wonder how the property shuffle will work, though, but I cant see them having competing platforms in markets, and personally don't want to see AnimeLab die
As for the FCC, yeah, its not going to happen. Facebook these days is pretty ubiquitous these days, especially them owning IG and WhatsApp, while Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sentai and Viz Media are still in the market to compete against Sony/FGG, plus yeah, niche streaming vs broad streaming, so they wont touch it |
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LegitPancake
 Posts: 1311 Location: Texas, USA |
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I hope CR can stream the Funi shows that Funi has rights to worldwide minus Asia.
Also guessing the "Crunchyroll Collections" section on AT&T-owned HBO Max will get deleted sometime in the future, or they just start a new anime section since they do have some Aniplex and Viz stuff on there that CR doesn't have (Hunter x Hunter dub, Promised Neverland dub, etc). Finally, I hope some of CR's back-catalog like Place Further than the Universe, Laid-Back Camp, Gabriel Dropout, and Planet With can get dubbed and home video releases with this new development, since CR themselves don't seem interested in dubbing anything but the new seasonals. |
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micah007
Posts: 205 |
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Good(?) news. I appreciate any content consolidation that can take place between streaming services given the rapid proliferation of streaming services as of late. I have questions about potential changes to VRV and FunimationNow. Also, I wonder what will happen to the Crunchyroll Originals? Will any current agreements, or upcoming agreements, be honored? I hope that the Crunchyroll Originals can continue.
Last edited by micah007 on Wed Dec 09, 2020 8:11 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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MCAL
Posts: 182 |
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Hopefully this will mean Crunchyroll translators will actually get paid well.
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killjoy_the
 Posts: 2475 |
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Funi was already announcing several plans to expand into LATAM before. If anything, since CR already has a big LATAM audience, all I can assume they'll do is change the name branding to keep it all CR in here. |
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