Sony going all-in on anime as Crunchyroll continues to grow
Sony going all-in on anime as Crunchyroll continues to grow
Crunchyroll has now grown to 17 million subscribers and Sony is hoping to ride that success to a much larger streaming footprint.
The anime streaming service Crunchyroll is just getting started. That’s the message from Sony, whose fiscal year 2024 ended at the conclusion of March. As part of its broader earnings report, the company revealed that Crunchyroll had gained subscribers yet again, and it will use the streamer as a key part of its efforts to double down on more anime content going forward.
Key Details:
- New customers: Crunchyroll has now grown to 17 million subscribers.
- Follow the money: The company expects Crunchyroll to continue bringing in enhanced revenues in 2025.
- Stronger together: Sony wants to embed Crunchyroll more deeply in other aspects of its business.
According to Sony, Crunchyroll now has 17 million paid subscribers. The anime streaming service continues to gain ground as in August 2024, it had 15 million customers. Sony doesn’t have a lot of on-demand streaming platforms to its name, preferring to be a freelance arms dealer, but the streamer it does own continues to perform well.
The data from Sony’s fiscal year-end earnings results shows that the company expects more growth from Crunchyroll in the near future. The streamer boosted revenue year-over-year in 2024, and is forecast to continue bringing in more cash in the months to come. Sony wants to keep mining Crunchyroll to see what dividends it can bring to the company, as well.
“Amid the anticipated continued growth of the anime market, Sony plans to accelerate Crunchyroll’s growth,” Sony said as part of its 2025 corporate strategy presentation.
That growth will include melding Crunchyroll more seamlessly with other parts of Sony’s business. The streamer is at work on an anime series based on the popular PlayStation game “Ghost of Tsushima,” and wants to make it easier to access with a PlayStation 5 console going forward.
Crunchyroll comes with more than 50,000 episodes, original titles, movies, and much more, with both subtitles and overdub options available on many shows. Crunchyroll already a big part of Sony’s business, and the company plans to highlight the service even more in the future.
Crunchyroll
Crunchyroll is a subscription video streaming service catering to fans of anime with over 30,000 episodes. Viewers can see new episodes of shows one hour after they air in Japan, and read hundreds of chapters across dozens of manga titles. Some of their more popular titles are Dragon Ball Super, Attack on Titan, and Fire Force.