Sony’s plan to combine crunchyroll and animation into a streaming service to lead its anime empire seemed as easy as making a billion dollars to AT&T. But now the plan is enough that the U.S. Department of Justice is expanding its antitrust review of its. 177575 billion purchase into a full investigation, three sources said. Information.
The DOJ is focusing on whether the deal will reach the U.S. The license in limits the options of Japanese studios looking for shows InformationSources of. “Warnermedia and Sony have told the Justice Department that Crunchyroll and Sony’s emerging anime empire, anime creators, are just two of the many options to distribute their shows outside of Japan.” Information Writes, but even if direct competition is not worrisome there may be other reasons to worry.
Controlling both fanimation and crunchyroll means that U.S. There is one thing in terms of anime streaming services, but all the other things like manga publishing and anime conventions are crunchy and the international anime company Sony has missed purchases in Australia and France, the company may have a large amount of control over the entire industry.
As we wrote in 2019, Animation and CrunchyRoll were already the two largest streaming anime services outside of Japan, while big players like Amazon, Netflix and the new HBO Max are also preparing their ings with anime. If the DOJ doesn’t block Sony’s deals and it merges crunchyroll and fanimation, Sony could very easily become an anime streaming provider to beat.
Sony, AT&T, and DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
