Crunchyroll announced on Tuesday that it is launching a new Crunchyroll Beta site. The beta is currently available to 20% of its premium members, but it will eventually become available to all premium subscribers and free users in the United States. The company will reveal details about the international launch of the beta at a future date. Qualified premium users can choose to Crunchyroll Beta through header images or pop-ups that appear on the service’s website.
At the Crunchyroll Beta, the home page of the site will have a new user interface, in which users can receive personalized recommendations and easily navigate to their watch list or redesigned watch pages. The beta version will also feature enhanced search capabilities and the ability to filter between genres, new and popular animes, and subtitled and dubbed series. Users will also be able to create unique usernames and select from a library of avatars and images from different series.
Crunchyroll The Beta will also feature the new Crunchylists feature, which allows users to create their own curated title collection. Users can add any series or select episodes from the service in their list and organize it as they prefer.
Crunchyroll it exceeded more than four million subscribers and more than 100 million registered users in February.
Crunchyroll launched in 2006 as a streaming service that offers anime titles without authorization. The site secured $ 4.05 million in its first-round funding from Venrock and began licensing titles for streaming in 2008.
The Chernin Group acquired a majority stake in Crunchyroll in December 2013. The Chernin Group and AT&T formed the Otter Media joint venture in 2014, and Otter Media invested another $ 22 million in CrunchyrollEllation, its parent company, in November 2015. AT&T then announced in August 2018 that it acquired all of Otter Media.
The service reached more than one million subscribers in February 2017, more than two million subscribers in October 2018 and more than three million subscribers in July 2020.
Crunchyroll and Viz Media Europe closed the deal for Crunchyroll to become the majority owner of Viz Media Europe Group in December 2019. The companies announced the agreement in September 2019. Viz Media Europe SAS (Société par Actions Simplifiées or simplified corporation) announced in April 2020 that it changed its name to Crunchyroll SAS.
The streaming service announced in December that Sonyin Funimation Global Group will acquire Crunchyroll from AT&T. Sony reported that the purchase price is US $ 1.175 billion, to be paid in cash at closing.
Source: email correspondence