The anime OTT market had a huge change when AT&T officially completed the sale of the OTT platform, Crunchyroll, a few days ago. This USD 1.175 billion anime-only streaming platform was bought by Sony’s Funimation group — which is another huge anime-only streaming OTT platform. With Sony now planning to bring both OTT platforms together under the Sony umbrella, as soon as possible – we are looking at a defining moment for the International anime OTT market.
Anime or Japanese animations are the most-watched animated content around the world. With the product having reached various countries through TV channels such as Cartoon Network, Pogo, Animax (In India, mainly), it has become a much-loved form of artform and has a growing fanbase around the globe. India can be considered among the Big-5 countries for the anime market, due to its growing population and anime fanbase – behind Japan, China, US and Canada.
Currently, Netflix and Crunchyroll are going head-to-head with their diverse and varied anime content, fighting for subscribers around the world. And while Crunchyroll has got the rights to some of the best anime in the world, Netflix has also acquired the streaming rights of many up and coming brilliant anime as well as a highly varied library with other non-anime International content which is incredible content to watch, with shows like ‘Dark’, ‘Sex Education’, ‘Money Heist’, etc.
Now Sony is planning to merge Crunchyroll and Funimation to make one big powerhouse of an anime-exclusive OTT platform – which will make it the largest subscription-based, anime-specific OTT platform in the world. However, to compete with the likes of Netflix, Disney Plus and Amazon Prime Video, Sony should start adding their intellectual property for streaming in this new OTT platform. This new OTT platform will make history, but it is still a long way from competing against the likes of the previously mentioned International streaming conglomerates.
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