What Sony’s Acquisition Of Crunchyroll Means For The Anime Streaming Service

Sony (SNE) may be looking to ramp up its anime strategy as it is currently in talks with AT&T to buy Crunchyroll – a U.S.-based anime streaming service.

The electronics giant is looking at a deal valued at more than 100 billion yen ($957 million) to obtain Crunchyroll and is in the final round of negotiations with AT&T (T), Nikkei Asia reported.

With the purchase of Crunchyroll, Sony would no longer have to license its anime to other streaming sites, which it had been doing with its movie and music content overseas, including its hit “Demon Slayer Kimetsu no Yaiba,” Kotaku reported.

The move to purchase Crunchyroll, however, would better position Sony to compete against rivals such as Netflix, Hulu and other streaming services, with access to the site’s 70 million free users and 3 million subscribers globally, Nikkei said.

Reuters said that Sony is looking to leverage the exclusive rights it obtained to negotiate for Crunchyroll as it looks for a platform to distribute its own movie and music content. The company is also looking to shift its reliance on hardware product sales by offering streaming content to offset revenues down cycles, the news outlet said.

The acquisition would also add to the Funimation Productions deal that Sony made in 2017 for about $143 million, Reuters said. Funimation is an animation distributor with 1 million paying subscribers.

AT&T picked up Crunchyroll in 2018.

Shares of Sony were trading at $83.00 as of 1:30 p.m. EDT, down 43 cents of 0.52% while shares of AT&T were trading at $1.96, down 3 cents of 1.51% at the same time.