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Sony Purchase of Crunchyroll In Jeopardy In Light Of Recent AntiTrust Probe

Do you think Sony owning both Funimation & Crunchyroll violates antitrust laws?

  • Yes

    Votes: 11 36.7%
  • No

    Votes: 14 46.7%
  • I'm undecided

    Votes: 5 16.7%

  • Total voters
    30
  • Poll closed .
Looks like Sony owning both Funimation and Crunchyroll might violate antitrust laws, so an investigation has seemingly been launched.

I didn't really even consider the possibility but thinking on it now, Funimation and Crunchyroll combined do make up the vast majority of anime distribution in the West. Central Park, Media Blasters, Discotek, Manga Entertainment, Viz Media (technically they still distribute some titles but that's through deals with Funimation and Crunchyroll), AD Vision etc. are all gone, or merged/co-distribute in some way with Funimation or Crunchyroll in the Americas and parts of Europe.

So, I can see how antitrust concerns could be a possibility in this situation. Welp, we'll see where the chips land, but it's also possible that Crunchyroll either remains independent or gets purchased by another suitor.
 

T8SC

Member
mickey-mouse-infinity-gauntlet.jpeg


Says it all.
 

LRKD

Member
Absolutely shouldn't go through, just like the Disney Fox purchase. But just like the Disney Fox purchase it probably will go through.
I dislike most all buyouts, the more companies the better. Less choices and options is always a bad thing.

On a side note both Crunchyroll, and Funimation are terrible, and shouldn't be supported.
 

sol_bad

Member
mickey-mouse-infinity-gauntlet.jpeg


Says it all.

It doesn't say anything.
Universal, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate and even A24 are all separate movie studios. Disney are far from owning all available movie and entertainment content.

Sony owning Funimation and Crunchyroll would be a majority ownership though.

Sentai Filmworks has about 4-8 releases per month and no streaming as far as I am aware.
Aniplex rarely releases any title and their releases seem to be limited and expensive.
Viz have very limited releases and licenses, again skipping months with no releases.
Discotek primarily focuses on retro titles.
AnimEigo have very limited licenses.
Media Blasters, very limited licenses.
 

Arkam

Member
It doesn't say anything.
Universal, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate and even A24 are all separate movie studios. Disney are far from owning all available movie and entertainment content.

Sony owning Funimation and Crunchyroll would be a majority ownership though.

Sentai Filmworks has about 4-8 releases per month and no streaming as far as I am aware.
Aniplex rarely releases any title and their releases seem to be limited and expensive.
Viz have very limited releases and licenses, again skipping months with no releases.
Discotek primarily focuses on retro titles.
AnimEigo have very limited licenses.
Media Blasters, very limited licenses.
So you are saying they could produce and distribute Anime if they wanted? Cool no issues here then.

Also doesn't Disney have Studio Ghibli distribution rights in the US? Yea more I think about this, the less I see any issue of antitrust.
 
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sol_bad

Member
So you are saying they could produce and distribute Anime if they wanted? Cool no issues here then.

Also doesn't Disney have Studio Ghibli distribution rights in the US? Yea more I think about this, the less I see any issue of antitrust.

Shout Factory are distributing the Ghibli films on blu ray at the moment. HBO Max has the streaming rights.
 
are they both anime distributors or creators. I know crunchy is a distributor. I guess it comes down do you think owning both limits the ability for people to access the content.

That's the interesting part because I was also watching a Clownfish vid talking about it, and they mentioned of the other distribution companies/streaming platforms plus the fact several Japanese studios are doing their own streaming initiatives like Retrocrush. Bandai have their own channel on Youtube for official Gundam content as another example.

So it's kind of debatable if Sony owning both Funimation & Crunchyroll actually constitutes a monopoly; they would just have the two biggest players but in terms of actual distributor/platform count that's only two out of many other options. Then again, that particular argument didn't work for Microsoft in the '90s when they got hit with their antitrust lawsuit: there were technically other alternatives to Windows for OSes and IE for web browsers, but collectively those alternatives made up a small fraction of marketshare.

And that's probably how this is being viewed by the investigators: not in terms of # of overall players, but their relative marketshares. So again, Sony'd only have two distributors under their belt (if it goes through), but they'd have a large amount of the marketshare for Western distributors of anime content. Sony are arguing for anime to be viewed in the context of "general animation", like The Simpsons or Family Guy, to argue against the antitrust probe but....I doubt that's going to work xD. Maybe if they were doing this in the '90s, because the West as a whole was less knowledgeable of anime, especially the mainstream.

Nowadays while the term anime TECHNICALLY only refers to animation that's from Japan, it's created its own culture and industry both figuratively and literally, enough so to be viewed as distinct from Western animation. Even those in the mainstream who aren't big watchers probably view it along these lines, hence why I don't think that argument's going to hold up well in the probe.

It doesn't say anything.
Universal, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate and even A24 are all separate movie studios. Disney are far from owning all available movie and entertainment content.

Sony owning Funimation and Crunchyroll would be a majority ownership though.

Sentai Filmworks has about 4-8 releases per month and no streaming as far as I am aware.
Aniplex rarely releases any title and their releases seem to be limited and expensive.
Viz have very limited releases and licenses, again skipping months with no releases.
Discotek primarily focuses on retro titles.
AnimEigo have very limited licenses.
Media Blasters, very limited licenses.

Yeah, when you look at it in terms of marketshare (which is usually how antitrust cases are viewed), Sony would easily hold the vast majority for anime distribution in the West. Some of the other distributors you listed, also have some licensing agreements with...Funimation and Crunchyroll, both of whom Sony already own.
 
Shout Factory are distributing the Ghibli films on blu ray at the moment. HBO Max has the streaming rights.
It's not Shout Factory it's Gkids that has the distribution rights to Ghibli films at the moment. I had both Disney and Gkids releases. The Gkids ones have nicer slipcovers.
 

sol_bad

Member
It's not Shout Factory it's Gkids that has the distribution rights to Ghibli films at the moment. I had both Disney and Gkids releases. The Gkids ones have nicer slipcovers.

I think Gkids have the theatrical rights and then Shout Factory have the home distribution rights licensed via Gkids.
If you check Shout Factories site you'll find all of the Ghibli films except Wind Rises.

 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
What a strange thing for an anti-trust probe to really care about.. like why should "anime streaming" be considered it's own market?

I guess it's the fault of the services being exclusively anime based.. but they are just small-ish video streaming services, and I imagine that will be Sony's argument.
 
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What a strange thing for an anti-trust probe to really care about.. like why should "anime streaming" be considered it's own market?

I guess it's the fault of the services being exclusively anime based.. but they are just small-ish video streaming services, and I imagine that will be Sony's argument.
It wouldn't necessarily be a great argument though; anime's popularity has exploded in the West the past five or so years, I'd argue it's even more mainstream now than it was in the late '90s/early '00s when Pokemon and Toonami got it major exposure. It's also a multi-billion dollar industry, and I don't think an industry's size in relation to other industries necessarily matters when discussing antitrust violations in the specific market as marketshare is looked at within the realm of whatever industry is under the spotlight, not relative industries.

That said in terms of sheer # of anime streaming platforms there are quite a lot of them in the West, so Sony having ownership of just two of them in that context isn't a big deal. The issue seems more in terms of how big both of those platforms they own are in terms of marketshare. However, another important thing to prove in such cases is that the company with such a majority marketshare is leveraging it to actively suppress competitors and their ability to compete!

That is something which probably cannot be proven, as Sony's only recently purchased Crunchyroll, and we have seen quite a few Japanese anime studios either set up distribution agreements with other options (Netflix, Hulu etc.) or doing their own via stuff like RetroCrush on Youtube, or Bandai's Youtube page for officially streaming tons of Gundam series. Unless Sony starts setting up anti-competitive practices or strict contracts preventing anime studios from setting up deals with other streaming platforms etc., then that part of the case will be very hard to argue as something Sony are actively doing.
 
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