Crunchyroll Is Reducing Monthly Subscription Prices
After Sony acquired Crunchyroll, the platform announced that it is reducing its monthly subscription rates in nearly 100 countries around the world, which materialized Sony’s anime streaming domination bid.
The news comes as a bit of a surprise; Crunchyroll inherited most of Funimation’s catalog at the beginning of 2022, which would make you think that Crunchyroll’s rates would increase. Instead, the opposite is happening.
The price cuts will affect 95 different countries around the world, including Bangladesh, Cameroon, Brazil, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Palestine, Peru, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, and many more.
You can see the full list of countries in Crunchyroll’s announcement post, but if you are in North America, much of Western Europe, or Australia, you are in no luck as the prices will remain the same for you.
What the Price Reduction Means for Crunchyroll Subscribers
So why is Crunchyroll doing this? We don’t know exactly. In a statement to The Verge, Crunchyroll’s spokesperson, Bianca Doria, said that “to create consistency for Crunchyroll memberships and to offer fans more value as we continue the unification of Crunchyroll and Funimation, fans in select markets are receiving price decreases.” While this isn’t a specific answer, it sure is a welcome change to the price increases we’re used to.
It’s All About Increasing Crunchyroll’s Subscriber Base
Now that Sony has successfully merged the most popular anime streaming services into the Crunchyroll brand, all that is left to do is to increase its subscriber base. Being this the case, it makes complete sense to cut subscription prices in large markets where there are few subscribers while keeping the same prices in markets where there already is a strong subscriber base.
