Crunchyroll Adding Two High-End Tiers For Most Devoted Fans

AT&T
T
-owned anime streaming service Crunchyroll is launching two new pricing tiers beginning today for its most hard-core fans, with up to six concurrent streams, special merchandise deals, and offline and ad-free viewing.

CrunchyRoll’s newest offerings will appeal to its most devoted fans, while providing many of the high-end viewing functions available from Netflix
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and some other major services. The story was first reported in Deadline.

Crunchyroll’s existing $8-a-month subscription tier, “Fan,” offers 30,000 episodes drawn from 1,000 series in the service’s library, on a single stream, and simulcasts of series as they debut in Japan.

The new “Mega Fan” service will cost $10 a month, and will add offline viewing and access to four concurrent streams. It also will provide deals in the Crunchyroll merchandise store.

The “Ultimate Fan” offering will cost $15 a month. For that, viewers will get six concurrent streams, an annual “swag bag” of merchandise, and members-only access to even more merchandise. Viewing is ad free for that tier.

The top tier’s pricing puts it at the cost of WarnerMedia’s other big streaming service, HBO Max, which offers a far wider swathe of content to a general audience. Crunchyroll programming, along with the sublime films of anime auteur Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli, are also featured on HBO Max.

The 14-year-old service has been one of the most successful and prominent specialized video services as the streaming wars have heated up.

It attracts 3 million paying subscribers in 200 countries to its core offering, with popular shows such as Dragon Ball Super, One Piece, Black Clover, and Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. Millions more animation fans watch its free, ad-supported tier.

AT&T, which acquired CrunchyRoll when it bought what is now WarnerMedia in 2018, is reportedly trying to sell the service for as much as $1.5 billion as it tries to reduce its mammoth debt load. Talks reportedly have been held with Sony, which already owns the Funimation anime service.

Anime, the vast universe of Japanese animation of all kinds of genres and target audiences, has become a hot programming niche even for major streamers. Netflix and Amazon
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, for instance, both have significant anime libraries, and Netflix has commissioned a number of original series from leading Japanese animation studios.

Crunchyroll’s free tier will continue operating, too. Viewers there get access to new shows a week after they debut on the paid service. The new tiers of service are rolling out beginning today but aren’t expected to fully available until early September.