Japanese electronics company Sony is to buy the anime streaming service Crunchyroll from US telecoms owner AT&T. Sony is paying $1.2bn for the brand as it expands its content and entertainment offer. Crunchyroll has 3m subscribers, 90m registered users and popular brands such as Naruto which will sit alongside Sony’s Fullmetal Alchemist and Attack on Titan. AT&T has owned Crunchyroll since 2018 when it bought Otter Media.
The sale helps AT&T to reduce its borrowings following last year’s $85bn acquisition of Time Warner. It is now focused on creating a streaming service, HBO Max, to rival Netflix. This latest deal coincides with an auction to sell AT&T’s satellite division DirecTV. The big test will be in 2021.
