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Otter Media Invests $22 Million Into Crunchyroll Parent Ellation


Crunchyroll Logo - 20141124Apparently, the otter decided to take another bite of the crunchy roll.

Chernin Group subsidiary Otter Media revealed that they will invest another $22 million into Crunchyroll parent company Ellation. The company will use the funding to expand its product offerings and engineering capacity, while bolstering its original content initiatives.

Last month, Crunchyroll and Sumitomo announced that they would come together in a joint venture. The two organizations will create a new company that focus on funding anime co-production projects.

According to Ellation, Crunchyroll currently serves 20 million registered users, and expects 750,000 paying subscribers by the end of 2015. The combined user base watches 1.5 billion (with a “B”, that’s not a typo) minutes of anime every month. In addition, the company revealed that 80% of its subscriber-base comes from English-speaking countries.

When asked about the company’s current direction, Ellation CEO Tom Pickett stated that “We’re trying to build video and product that super-serve a certain set of the audience […] That’s fundamentally different from Hulu and Netflix, which are trying to go very broad with a thin layer of content.”

The Chernin Group purchased a majority stake in 2013. While the total value of Chernin’s offer wasn’t announced, Chernin valued the company at $100 million at the time of the buy.

Source: TechCrunch

About the author

Samantha Ferreira

Samantha Ferreira is Anime Herald’s founder and editor-in-chief. A Rhode Island native, Samantha has been an anime fan since 1992, and an active member of the anime press since 2002, when she began working as a reviewer for Anime Dream. She launched Anime Herald in 2010, and continues to oversee its operations to this day. Outside of journalism, Samantha actively studies the history of the North American anime fandom and industry, with a particular focus on the 2000s anime boom and bust. She’s a huge fan of all things Sakura Wars, and maintains series fansite Combat Revue Review when she has free time available. When not in the Anime Herald Discord, Samantha can typically be found on Bluesky.

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