Sony is reportedly in talks to buy Crunchyroll for nearly $1 billion
Sony is apparently betting heavily on streaming services, more specifically, anime-streaming. A recent report from Nikkei broke the news that Sony has entered into "final negotiations" to acquire Crunchyroll, the U.S. anime-streaming service. While the deal's exact value is not specified, the report mentions that Sony could end up spending more than 100 billion yen ($957 million). U.S. telecoms and Crunchyroll parent company AT&T was previously rumoured to ask Sony to pay $1.5 billion for the streaming service back in August. The deal apparently did not go through due to the steep price.
Sony already owns the anime distributor Funimation, which it acquired in 2017, which added 1 million paying subscribers to its userbase. Adding Crunchyroll to its portfolio would expand this number as the streaming service already has 70 million free members and 3 million paying subscribers in over 200 countries and regions. Moreover, this would mean serious competition against other popular streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu.
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