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NEWS: Sony's Funimation Global Group Completes Acquisition of Crunchyroll from AT&T

MagicPolly wrote:

I feel bad for Sentai in this situation, as it is now they were barely getting licenses with ecchi shows, massively obscure ones like Getter Arc and Tsukipro, or sequels like Non Non Biyori. Now they have to compete with both Netflix and a FuniRoll conglomerate.

Honestly, the only real hope there is now is for Japanese licensors to be against having to work with Sony & instead deciding to work with Sentai/Hidive.

However, this will (eventually) result in essentially only having two major options for anime simulcasting (Netflix likes doing its own thing): A combined "Funiroll" conglomerate & Hidive. Two options is nowhere near enough to handle the sheer glut of new content that's always being produced for simulcasting.

The only thing this won't really affect, from my guess, will be catalog licensing, but that's obviously not as large a market as simulcasting.

Yippee for even more market/power consolidation, (western corporate) control.... and even greater ability to dictate.. well... over anything they want.

Here's hoping SPE doesn't pull an SCE/SIE like their other CA based sibling did.

In the end though.. It's Crunchyroll, the people still wasting anime fans money on trash like HGS. So it's not like we are losing outright. But at the same time, it guarantees even less dubs not handled by funi... ugh

DrewH90 wrote:

how is this not a monopoly

Because Netflix, Sentai Filmworks, Viz, Right Stuff/Nozomi, Discotek etc still exist.

So did the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice sign off on the merger? Did they end their investigation? Didn't see anything about this in the story.

animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-03-24/report-u.s-justice-department-extends-antitrust-review-of-sony-proposed-acquisition-of-crunchyroll/.171049

The crunchyroll staff will likely be gone. High Guardian Spice was likely their last ditch effort to create anime-like productions since Crunchyroll doesn't have dedicated anime studios like Sony. Their website has been lagging for like a year now because they likely pushed the overloaded server problems to Sony.

The purchase price was US$1.175 billion, and the proceeds were paid in cash at closing.

The announcement did not reveal how or if the individual streaming platforms would merge or plans for subscription costs for users.

Our goal is to create a unified anime subscription experience as soon as possible.”

how is this not a monopoly

I wonder how this will affect Crunchy's attempts at "originals"? They've largely flopped, but the recent pirate princess one seems hopeful. Would be a shame if they totally gave up on trying after acquisition, IMO.

Honestly speaking, when it comes to streaming services, "monopolies" in the traditional sense are indeed good for the consumer where one company holds the rights to a ton of shows.

Technically, because of exclusive streaming rights, there's no way one streaming service can compete with another because each service already has a monopoly over the shows it has. Viewers are not choosing streaming services for their features or functions, they're choosing them for their exclusive content. That's why streaming services don't care to improve their functionality. That's not what they're competing on.

The only way to have a fair market is to really remove any sort of exclusive streaming rights. Let every streaming service stream the same shows. That way, consumers not only have far easier access to content and not have to pay hundreds of dollars for multiple services. They can choose the service they like the best (based on the features and functions) and still have access to all their favorite content. This way, streaming services will have to compete based on who has the best streaming experience instead of the best content.

This guy covers the issue in more detail here.

Exclusive licensing isn't going anywhere. Copyright gives ownership of media to the rights holder. This include the ability to license or sell the rights to a show to anyone under their terms. In order to end exclusive licensing in this country you would have to extensively modify copyright for everyone. Anyone who thinks that Disney or other rights holders would permit that is dreaming. The only alternative that I can see would to be convincing each individual Japanese rights holder to not offer exclusive contracts. I really doubt that would happen.