Crunchyroll has announced that it has achieved an all time high of 5 million concurrent subscribers, along with 120 million registered users in total.
The popular anime streaming service announced the new subscriber milestone on its website. The company hit the five million subscriber milestone just six months after it announced that it had four million subscribers, showing that its rate of growth is actually speeding up over time. Crunchyroll celebrated the announcement with the following statement:
This huge achievement is only possible because of the amazing community of anime fans backing us up. People tune in to watch anime on our site across 200 countries and territories all around the world, and it’s an honor to be able to connect so many people to the stories and art that they care about.
Crunchyroll was founded in 2006 and originally streamed unlicensed, fansubbed content. The company began licensing anime series such as Naruto in 2008 and 2009, and has since then only offered authorized, legal streams of over a thousand anime shows. In recent years, Crunchyroll began funding and producing its own original anime series, the latest of which will be Fena: Pirate Princess, which will debut later this year. Crunchyroll also hosts its own anime convention, the Crunchyroll Expo, which will be held virtually this year.
The popular streamer was purchased by Warner Media and its parent corporation AT&T in 2018. In 2020, Warner announced that it was selling the streaming company to Japanese tech giant Sony for a reported $1.1 billion USD, though the deal still awaiting regulatory approval. Notably, Sony also owns Funimation, the anime licensing and distribution company that also runs the biggest competing streaming service to Crunchyroll.
The anime streaming company is just one of the many streaming services to see a boom in subscribers during the on-going COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing stay-at-home orders. According to Deadline, the number of households subscribing to multiple streaming services rose to 61% in 2020, up from just 48% in 2019. This rise coincided with a decline in the amount of subscribers to traditional satellite and cable TV services.
Source: Crunchyroll, Deadline
