Forum - View topicNEWS: Variety: AT&T Asks at Least US$1 Billion for Crunchyroll From Multiple Buyers
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Ryuji-Dono
 Posts: 1238 |
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Who could be the other buyers for Crunchyroll apart from Sony? Netflix, Amazon, Disney, any company with a streaming service?
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el_morris
 Posts: 270 Location: Tijuana, México |
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I would add Comcast, they were bidding against Sony on the sale of Funimation, and it's subsidiary Universal it's on the anime industry. |
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AJ (LordNikon)
 Posts: 515 Location: Kyoto |
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NBCUniversal (Comcast), Viacomm. If some smaller players, Cox Media Group, Nexstar Broadcasting and Sinclair Broadcast Group want to expand in to stream, this one avenue. |
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Ryuji-Dono
Posts: 1238 |
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I see then. Viacomm has Nickelodeon too, so it would be interesting to see how they produce Anime content. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4597 Location: New York |
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Keep it the hell away from Viacom. The other buyers are...Eh.[/code]
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5935 Location: Virginia, United States |
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I don't see this as good news for Crunchyroll.
I see why AT&T is doing it, but now with this further news, it makes it seem like they are desperate to unload Crunchyroll. This is sure to make Crunchyroll's position unstable. |
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Beatdigga
Posts: 4597 Location: New York |
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To be fair, Crunchyroll is not the only target of this mass culling. Warner fired 1/3 of DC Comic’s staff, completely gutted the DC Universe streaming service in preparation to shut it down, and numerous television executives at TBS and TNT have been sacked, in particular the guy who greenlit All Elite Wrestling for TNT. WarnerMedia has made their position perfectly clear. No sacred cows, no one is safe. The farm is being bet on HBO Max and if you’re not part of the HBO Max hierarchy, you should probably update your resume. |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5935 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Think it is a poor bet, there are already so many HBO channels already. |
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Ushio
Posts: 635 |
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No way ViacomCBS bids on Crunchyroll they are looking to sell assets to get enough money together for bidding on the next round of NFL games. So Comcast, Sony, Amazon, Google and Netflix are probably it outside of some new company. Maybe some Chinese company will bid. |
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Ushio
Posts: 635 |
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HBO Max is a streaming service not a channel and is being prepared for when cable basically dies. Paid TV in the US (cable/satellite) has lost 11 million subscribers in just the last 2 years and it's accelerating. Within this decade cable TV will be like radio something that exists but isn't really something anyone cares about. That's one reason HBO Max is important it's going to be where all Time Warner content will be after most cable channels are gone and cinema's are for only MCU size blockbusters. I honestly don't expect the HBO channels to be around in 3 years. |
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Panoptican
Posts: 160 |
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AT&T reportedly tried to sell their Warner Bros video game business recently for $4 billion. There seemingly hasn't been any takers. People have speculated that $4 billion is a pretty high price for what's on offer. Now we see them trying to sell Crunchyroll for $1.5 billion to Sony or at least $1 billion to others. It looks like another situation where the price seems high. For comparison, remember that Sony bought a 95% stake in Funimation for $143 million in 2017. I think it's fair to say CR is worth more than 2017 Funimation, but are they really six to ten times more valuable?
It makes me wonder if AT&T is only willing to sell their stuff if they can find someone willing to overpay. Maybe that's the only way they think it'd actually be worth it to offload these pretty successful parts of their business. |
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matt78
Posts: 262 |
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That pricing for for WB Games is crazy when you consider the fact that Disney paid $4 billion each for Marvel and Star Wars. I don't see how AT&T thinks that WB Games is worth anywhere near the same as either property. I have heard that AT&T has quite a bit of debt and that is why they are looking to sell off parts of the company that they think are non essential. |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5935 Location: Virginia, United States |
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The streaming services have a long way to go, before they are going to replace cable. The streaming services have to become like cable, before they have any hope of replacing it. Streaming still has buffering issues and other peculiarities. Streaming is a nice addition to cable, but it doesn't replace it yet. Streaming is more interested in movies, TV shows, and original content. That is missing a lot that cable provides.
You might be right about this, it would seem logical. But I don't think that will happen, until cable is truly dead. Why give up all that revenue from older customers who are not big on streaming. |
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bennyl
Posts: 123 |
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Of any of the likely buyers, I hope Sony gets them. They could roll Funimation, Crunchyroll, and aniplex into a super company, and start to reorganize Funimation into a dub platform, Crunchyroll into production of non Japanese shows and their main streaming library, and aniplex into licensing and production of Japanese shows. I'm normally not a fan of less competition, but having American anime stretched out across six different platforms in not useful (Crunchyroll, Funimation, Amazon, Netflix, HiDive, and Hulu).
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4627 |
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Some of that could be that they are starting high to give themselves room to negotiate on price. But I also think that some if it is they are hurting for cash and need a big influx to help deal with that debt. They took on a lot to make acquisitions not long before COVID started cutting off the usual entertainment revenue streams. Asking for so much comes with a couple of big drawbacks. Potential buyers might not take the offers seriously. Sony recently bought FUnimation for about a tenth of what ATT reportedly wanted for Crunchyroll. What are the chances they would see that as a good bargain? The other big problem is that other entertainment companies are probably looking at ATT's situation and are not going to be eager to get in the same boat. Shelling out a bunch of money and/or taking on lots of debt when their own revenue streams are questionable probably isn't real tempting. |
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