Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll, LLC is an American production, distribution, licensing, and streaming company dedicated to anime, manga, and dorama (a type of Japanese drama similar to American television soap operas). It is a joint venture between Sony Pictures Entertainment and Aniplex, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc., both of which are subsidiaries of Sony Group Corp.

Founding and early years

Crunchyroll was founded as a for-profit website where fans of East Asia videos, specifically Japanese anime, could download and watch their favorite shows and chat with like-minded users. Although popular with fans, the company was criticized early on by some content distributors and licensors for allowing users to upload illegal copies of certain licensed properties.

Crunchyroll, named after a type of crispy-coated sushi, began the march to legitimacy in 2008 with a $4.05 million investment from Venrock, a California-based venture capital company. A year later, it announced a commitment to hosting only content for which it held the rights and removing anything that infringed on a copyright. The pledge followed a deal with TV Tokyo to stream episodes of the popular anime show Naruto: Shippuden.

In 2013, The Chernin Group, a holding company founded by former News Corp. President Peter Chernin, acquired a controlling interest in Crunchyroll for an estimated $100 million. TV Tokyo continued to have a large stake in the company. A year later, the Chernin Group partnered with AT&T Inc. to launch over-the-top (OTT) video services—also known as streaming—through a new company called Otter Media, which became the majority owner of Crunchyroll. The collaborative investment is believed to have been about $500 million.

Crunchyroll achieved 700,000 paid subscribers by 2015, surpassed one million in 2017, and exceeded 15 million in 2024.

Continued growth and expansion

Two events important to the growth of Crunchyroll occurred in 2015. In August, it launched Ellation, an umbrella company for its subscription-based video services, which included VRV, a video streaming service that premiered in 2016. Also in 2015, Crunchyroll and Sumitomo Corp., a Japanese trading company, collaborated to invest in the production of anime series. Similarly, in April 2016, Crunchyroll entered into a relationship with Kadokawa Corp. that gave Crunchyroll worldwide digital distribution rights, except in Asia, for the next year’s Kadokawa anime shows, as well as the opportunity to cofinance future Kadokawa productions.

Also in 2016, Crunchyroll established a partnership with the streaming service Funimation, established in 1994, in which the companies would stream each other’s content. As part of the deal, Funimation and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment would distribute Crunchyroll’s video catalog. Two years later, the agreement was canceled when Sony Pictures Television bought Funimation and AT&T acquired Otter Media, Crunchyroll’s parent company.

Otter Media became the sole owner of Crunchyroll in January 2018 when it purchased the remaining shares of the company from TV Tokyo and a handful of side investors. Seven months later, AT&T became the sole owner of Otter Media following the acquisition of the remaining parts of the company still held by the Chernin Group. The company was then added to WarnerMedia, previously known as Time Warner. The following year, during a reorganization, Otter Media was made a part of Warner Bros., and the two entities began feeding content to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim nighttime programming block, called Toonami. In May 2019, Crunchyroll was made a part of WarnerMedia Entertainment.

Also in 2019, Crunchyroll became the majority investor in Viz Media Europe Group, a global licensor and distributor of anime and other content, with the Hitotsubashi Group retaining a minority stake. In 2020, Crunchyroll became the majority owner of Viz Media Europe, resulting in the business being restructured and renamed Crunchyroll EMEA. The reorganization brought Viz Media units KAZE, Anime on Demand, Anime Digital Network, Eye See Movies, and others under the Crunchyroll umbrella.

In August 2020, Sony Pictures Entertainment began negotiations to purchase Crunchyroll from WarnerMedia, a deal that concluded a year later with a purchase price of $1.2 billion.