A billion dollars is not bad for a site that started as a fake-it-til-you-make-it piracy site. I only know the story 4th-hand. But, my understanding is that it started as a user-upload site (I.e. piracy with disclaimers). And, of course, the seed users were actually employees with puppet accounts pirating media to their own site.<p>That kicked off real users who competed on getting the highest quality subtitle jobs uploaded quickest after the first broadcast of a given show in Japan.<p>Once viewers outside of Japan learned that they could get episodes same-day as Japan, they flocked to CR. Of course, this was only possible because CR did not attempt the impossible task of convincing the producers to allow this to be possible.<p>Once the CR audience was high enough, there were two obvious consequences: 1) They were too big to fly under the radar and were likely to be sued soon. 2) Their audience was large enough to be offered in negotiation with the publishers for a legit contract. So, that's what they did. They offered a fair revenue split with the publishers in exchange for being a legitimized distributor.<p>There are lots of ways that this could have gone badly. Most piracy sites do as much as possible to exploit the material and the viewers for short-term gain. Most publishers reasonably lawyer-stomp such sites as fast as is feasible.<p>But, in this case it worked out. There's no way CR could have negotiated with the publishers up-front. They were starting with nothing at all to offer. No audience. No reputation. No capital. Nothing.<p>Their approach was not legal. But, it was small and respectful-ish enough to not be worth suing until it was large and respectful-ish enough to be worth negotiating with.<p>Do not recommend this business plan. Glad it worked out for them.
Sony email from 2013: <a href="https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/1285" rel="nofollow">https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/1285</a>
From 2013 to 2017, there was Daisuki, which many thought was another pirate streaming site. But it was actually a project funded by the government of Japan and some major banks via the Cool Japan Fund.[1] The Japanese government has an organization to promote Japanese culture as a form of soft power. They're worried about K-Pop. They're currently funding Sentai.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.cj-fund.co.jp/en/about/cjfund.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cj-fund.co.jp/en/about/cjfund.html</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.sentaifilmworks.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.sentaifilmworks.com/</a>
This is interesting because it means the two big distributors of anime in the US are now one. It's creating a monopsony from the perspective of the anime studios, though I suspect a rival will emerge shortly.
Maybe they'll make more of their library available in my country. CR expects me to pay exactly the same subscription fee as in the US, but allows me to watch less than 1% of their library. Of course, I can always try to find a residential US proxy, but I ain't doing it to get access to a _paid_ service, sorry.<p>Needless to say, I continue to enjoy the convenience and non-discrimination of torrent trackers.
As a french, not quite fan of this...
We have only three big platforms for anime streaming (outside of Netflix, which catalog is still small here).
One of them, Wakanim, was acquired by Aniplex, which is owned by Sony, years ago.
The second, ADN, is owned by Kaze, which was bought by Crunchyroll.
So now that Crunchyroll is part of Sony, they have a near-monopoly on both VOD and physical releases.<p>We are lucky in that Wakanim is allowed to sell DRM-free episodes for 1€, I hope this won't change with this and the ongoing talks about removing geologist in the EU.
Westerners appear to under estimate how much the anime industry is about connections, yet its challenge going west has been for lack of users. Sony's consolidation is all about getting users.<p>Years back Bandai funded "daisuki" anime, which folded. In fact I worked in the same office as the executive who needed to fold down that division. Daisuki failed due to lack of users, not content. Likewise Sony tried a home spun distribution platform too, and folded it as well.<p>Now years later with all that industry experience in hand Sony is moving in and consolidating. Bandai is licensing their stuff to Netflix domestically, as is Sony. Yet those contracts can switch in a moment if a domestic conglomerate secures the users. Sony appears to be making those moves and could establish Japan's strongest beachhead in the streaming wars.<p>Japan cannot compete with Americans easy access to Hollywood negotiations, but likewise a Japanese platform should have strong negotiations securing anime.
Honestly I never understood why Netflix didn't make a stronger push to acquire them, it's such a great addition to their existing offerings and would boost their customer base as well.
I wonder if they are going to merge content like they had before, or if they aim to segment the market in some way. I know Funimation is more known for rapid English dubs, for example.