Sony’s anime-centric streaming service Crunchyroll has inked a distribution partnership with Bango that will allow the latter to offer telecom partners and others the opportunity to sell Crunchyroll subscriptions to their customers.
The pact allows Crunchyroll to be included in “super bundles” that are becoming a bigger part of Bango’s pitch to telecom partners like Verizon and Optus, which have leveraged the tech and payment processing firm’s Digital Vending Machine to connect their customers with streaming video services and other subscription-based products.
A press release issued by Bango on Tuesday did not say if Crunchyroll is being incorporated into the company’s Digital Vending Machine, which helps facilitate transactions between telecom partners and subscription-based services. But the partnership almost certainly involves the tool, which allows telecoms to build and deploy their own subscription management platform. Verizon has notably used the Digital Vending Machine for its Plus-Play platform, and Optus has done the same with SubHub.
“Crunchyroll is the number one choice for anime fans across the globe, and bundling through third parties will continue to drive its rapid growth. Indirect subscriptions have become increasingly essential for the SVOD market, and we look forward to helping Crunchyroll capitalize on this emerging trend,” Anil Malhotra, the Chief Marketing Officer at Bango, said in a statement. “As consumers look for more flexibility, and to access more services in one place, Super Bundling represents a clear strategic step forward for brands like Crunchyroll to reach new audiences and further grow their subscriber base.”
Crunchyroll was acquired by Sony from AT&T four years ago. The service has around 14 million paying subscribers and a registration base of over 100 million users, according to data released by the service earlier this year.
The streamer is seen as a relatively niche service, offering popular anime titles that draw fans of that genre but without the well-rounded general entertainment library that makes other services like Netflix, Prime Video and Disney Plus more popular with general consumers.
By partnering with Bango, Crunchyroll becomes another streaming option that telecom partners like Verizon and Optus can utilize to build unique bundles of subscription services — which also include Netflix, Disney Plus, AMC Plus and Max — that could help Crunchyroll further scale its business and make telecoms “more sticky” with consumers.
