Simulcasts: The Crunchyroll Effect and its impact on the UK

Buzz201

Mad Scientist
If Jerome's comments about being offered an MG of $150 (per episode?) for Sakomoto are true, I can't say I'd blame anyone for not putting their show on Crunchyroll.

There's no way there aren't more royalties than $150 per episode in the UK, they're clearly trying to screw him. Wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't even an audit clause in the contract.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Back when Rob was at Crunchyroll he was clear on the fact that the UK alone couldn't sustain a license for them (and he was very supportive of the UK in general) so the US had to be included in anything they licensed (so they couldn't pick up UK rights for something that someone else was streaming in the US only). They have since that time started picking up licenses that don't include the US, but those are much wider than just the UK and also non-English.
Sub-licensing from someone else like Manga must be cheaper than licensing direct from Japan (and in the case of Sakamoto they already have the show so there are costs for preparing the subtitles and the videos, they'd just need to flip the region switch) but that doesn't change the amount of income the UK generates and splitting that income separately is a different prospect to a more global license where the UK money is a little bit extra of extra gravy for the US pie.
 
Simulcasting: The Crunchyroll Effect

I know, but even $150 seems a little low, no? Jerome seemed to imply it was overall, rather than per episode (though I might be wrong on that). So, at 4 cents a stream, they're expecting only 3,750 streams of the entire series or an average of 312 an episode? Maybe that makes sense per episode, but for an entire series it seems a little low to me.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Are there though? I have no idea how many UK fans use Crunchyroll, but if we assume they have around 750,000 paid subscribers all-in...

Massive thread-derailing post under the button.

[spoilerbutton]The US population is roughly 5x that of the UK, but Crunchyroll serve the entire world and the UK population is less than 1% of that. Since not all regions are equal (and some regions - including the UK - get substantially more direct Crunchyroll marketing than others), I'm going to assume the size of Crunchyroll's UK audience is in the region of 10,000-20,000 people. I have no idea how accurate that is as a huge majority of UK fans seem to prefer to steal anime with vague excuses about Crunchyroll's catalogue being smaller in the UK, but I'd like to believe it's not too far out. That gives us £150,000-£300,000 as their UK budget for an anime season.

Crunchyroll has offered Jerome $150 (per episode) for a 12 episode TV show (or possibly 13; I have no idea whether they're broadcasting the missing episode in the US so I'll take the worst case scenario). That's £1,250; not a huge amount by a long way but they also had 40 other UK-accessible simulcasts this season. If $150 is their going rate then the rights holders are getting around £52,000 of the pot no matter how large the UK market actually is. If it's bigger, they're making more money; if it's a lot smaller they're likely to be losing money.

Furthermore, we know that it's unlikely that anime companies are going to Japan and obtaining rights for £1,250 per season, especially if Crunchyroll is pursuing the superior worldwide-aside-from-Japan rights and picking up home video rights too. If Crunchyroll is dealing directly with Japan, they're paying a lot more than £1,250 for some of those 41 shows with no guarantee they'll be able to recoup the costs. Jerome has paid his minimum guarantee for home video rights (which he intends to use to cover the cost of the license) and streaming (which he intends to squander and not monetise at all). Crunchyroll's model works on the streaming rights being the most important with titles which can support home video going there later. There's very little in it for them to pay out huge sums of money to someone who is effectively acting as a rights squatter in a minor country.

(Heck, with the things Jerome says about Crunchyroll on social media it's questionable whether they benefit from the relationship at all; he's undermining their reputation and refusing to drive traffic their way. He's applying pressure on Japanese companies to avoid the worldwide-outside-Japan licensing model which benefits Crunchyroll in order to profit from a situation which blocks fans from accessing anime and causes them to accuse Crunchyroll instead. It's not a healthy atmosphere in which to do business.)

This doesn't even scratch the surface of that fact that a legal stream can be used to promote the future UK home video release (why don't people do this?) and that £1,250 isn't being replaced by revenue from anywhere else, so unless Jerome is right that piracy doesn't harm sales but legal streaming does, I question the logic of turning away free money. It would be different if he was shopping it to Animax or even a paid service like Amazon or iTunes, which would be annoying but at least internally logical.

Then, of those 10,000-20,000 UK users, how many will even watch and like Sakamoto? It's a very Japanese comedy. It's obviously not exactly an Attack On Titan tier hit, and it's not going to get an offer equivalent to whatever they paid for something like that. If nobody watches it at all even when they're a paid subscriber, that's money Crunchyroll saw no benefit from other than being able to brag that they licensed an even larger number of shows.

On top of all of the minimum guarantees for the more expensive titles, there are also other costs they need to take out of that £150,000-£300,000 pot.

  • Payment processing (on a £5 monthly payment this could be around 27p on average if everyone uses Paypal: £2,7500-£5,500, plus costs of chargebacks, compliance and integration)
  • Staff costs (I don't know how many people they employ or their salaries but there are obviously a reasonable number of them from technical support through to licensing and marketing: £??,???)
  • Operating costs (covering everything from rent to expenses to server and technology costs: £??,???)
  • Marketing (they do a lot of this; the cost of attending trade shows is substantial; they also produce videos and run add plenty of online ad campaigns: £??,???)
  • Reinvestment in the industry - we're seeing Crunchyroll co-productions now and this is actively and directly improving anime for fans all around the world...
  • Profit (I assume they do actually want to make some of this to keep their investors happy)

It seems plausible that the more expensive directly-negotiated licenses alone can gobble up the whole of the available pot given how much we know some of these things are likely to cost, and personally I don't want Crunchyroll to go out of business as it would put us right back in the dark days of the 90s for legal anime access in the UK.

Andrew will have a much more nuanced view of the situation than that since he has hands-on experience of the streaming world from half a dozen different angles at this point (he probably knows it better than Crunchyroll themselves!)[/spoilerbutton]

But just because Jerome thinks streaming Sakamoto late in the UK is worth more than £1,250 doesn't mean that it's necessarily true.

R

P.S. If I can get UK streaming-only rights to shows for £1,250 I'm booking a trip to Japan right now to make some cash and save UK anime streaming singlehandedly. Crunchyroll is obviously paying a lot more than that to license some of their shows directly.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Rui said:
Are there though? I have no idea how many UK fans use Crunchyroll, but if we assume they have around 750,000 paid subscribers all-in...

The US population is roughly 5x that of the UK, but Crunchyroll serve the entire world and the UK population is less than 1% of that. Since not all regions are equal (and some regions - including the UK - get substantially more direct Crunchyroll marketing than others), I'm going to assume the size of Crunchyroll's UK audience is in the region of 10,000-20,000 people. I have no idea how accurate that is as a huge majority of UK fans seem to prefer to steal anime with vague excuses about Crunchyroll's catalogue being smaller in the UK, but I'd like to believe it's not too far out. That gives us £150,000-£300,000 as their UK budget for an anime season.

Crunchyroll's catalogue is a joke in the UK. In fact it's a joke everywhere outside North America, they just seem not to care.

Rui said:
Crunchyroll has offered Jerome $150 (per episode) for a 12 episode TV show (or possibly 13; I have no idea whether they're broadcasting the missing episode in the US so I'll take the worst case scenario). That's £1,250; not a huge amount by a long way but they also had 40 other UK-accessible simulcasts this season. If $150 is their going rate then the rights holders are getting around £52,000 of the pot no matter how large the UK market actually is. If it's bigger, they're making more money; if it's a lot smaller they're likely to be losing money.

Furthermore, we know that it's unlikely that anime companies are going to Japan and obtaining rights for £1,250 per season, especially if Crunchyroll is pursuing the superior worldwide-aside-from-Japan rights and picking up home video rights too. If Crunchyroll is dealing directly with Japan, they're paying a lot more than £1,250 for some of those 41 shows with no guarantee they'll be able to recoup the costs. Jerome has paid his minimum guarantee for home video rights (which he intends to use to cover the cost of the license) and streaming (which he intends to squander and not monetise at all). Crunchyroll's model works on the streaming rights being the most important with titles which can support home video going there later. There's very little in it for them to pay out huge sums of money to someone who is effectively acting as a rights squatter in a minor country.
He has indicated that he wouldn't rights squat if they offered him a decent sum of money. So whilst he may technically be a rights squatter, I'm not sure I'd use that term.

Rui said:
Then, of those 10,000-20,000 UK users, how many will even watch and like Sakamoto? It's a very Japanese comedy. It's obviously not exactly an Attack On Titan tier hit, and it's not going to get an offer equivalent to whatever they paid for something like that. If nobody watches it at all even when they're a paid subscriber, that's money Crunchyroll saw no benefit from other than being able to brag that they licensed an even larger number of shows.

(Heck, with the things Jerome says about Crunchyroll on social media it's questionable whether they benefit from the relationship at all; he's undermining their reputation and refusing to drive traffic their way. He's applying pressure on Japanese companies to avoid the worldwide-outside-Japan licensing model which benefits Crunchyroll in order to profit from a situation which blocks fans from accessing anime and causes them to accuse Crunchyroll instead. It's not a healthy atmosphere in which to do business.)
Crunchyroll seemingly doesn't give a crap about what people outside North America think of them. Check their forums. The amount of complaints about the way they announce titles, with region information at the end of a long paragraph designed to make you want to watch the show, is insane. Yet, only one member of staff has ever done anything about it. Crunchyroll simply doesn't care.

And, of course, he's putting pressure on Japanese licensors to do things which benefit him. As are Crunchyroll, I can't see them being upset by a simple reality of business.

Also, the accusations he's levelled at Crunchyroll indicate they're spreading the bad atmosphere themselves. Finding out you've lost a major bidding war, when another party announces they've won it publicly is so unbelievably ******. Whether this is the way of the world or not, it is completely classless not to drop somebody a stock email saying you've gone with somebody else. And, tbh, if there was a way around it I wouldn't do business with that party again either, or I'd make sure they knew I expected better from them.

Rui said:
This doesn't even scratch the surface of that fact that a legal stream can be used to promote the future UK home video release (why don't people do this?) and that £1,250 isn't being replaced by revenue from anywhere else, so unless Jerome is right that piracy doesn't harm sales but legal streaming does, I question the logic of turning away free money. It would be different if he was shopping it to Animax or even a paid service like Amazon or iTunes, which would be annoying but at least internally logical.
For something as niche as Sakomoto, it could easily reduce sales by quite a huge amount too. (And I'd imagine it regularly does. In fact, Andrew Partridge said it did -- When he says stuff people believe him, but when Jerome says it it's completely unreasonable.)

Rui said:
On top of all of the minimum guarantees for the more expensive titles, there are also other costs they need to take out of that £150,000-£300,000 pot.

  • Payment processing (on a £5 monthly payment this could be around 27p on average if everyone uses Paypal: £2,7500-£5,500, plus costs of chargebacks, compliance and integration)
  • Staff costs (I don't know how many people they employ or their salaries but there are obviously a reasonable number of them from technical support through to licensing and marketing: £??,???)
  • Operating costs (covering everything from rent to expenses to server and technology costs: £??,???)
  • Marketing (they do a lot of this; the cost of attending trade shows is substantial; they also produce videos and run add plenty of online ad campaigns: £??,???)
  • Reinvestment in the industry - we're seeing Crunchyroll co-productions now and this is actively and directly improving anime for fans all around the world...
  • Profit (I assume they do actually want to make some of this to keep their investors happy)

It seems plausible that the more expensive directly-negotiated licenses alone can gobble up the whole of the available pot given how much we know some of these things are likely to cost, and personally I don't want Crunchyroll to go out of business as it would put us right back in the dark days of the 90s for legal anime access in the UK.

Andrew will have a much more nuanced view of the situation than that since he has hands-on experience of the streaming world from half a dozen different angles at this point (he probably knows it better than Crunchyroll themselves!)

But just because Jerome thinks streaming Sakamoto late in the UK is worth more than £1,250 doesn't mean that it's necessarily true.

R
Well, it should be a minimum guarantee, so theoretically at least if it worth more than that, Jerome will get the extra money. It makes me wonder if the rate he's being offered per episode is below par, or if there's something in the contracts that would allow Crunchyroll to screw him. (Perhaps Crunchyroll won't allow an audit clause to be included or something?)
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Anime Limited Discussion Thread

British CR is a bit annoying considering we pay the same as the US and get no where near as much content so we are getting scammed in a way
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Anime Limited Discussion Thread

The same? We've been paying more for at least a year and a half now...
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Anime Limited Discussion Thread

thedoctor2016 said:
British CR is a bit annoying considering we pay the same as the US and get no where near as much content so we are getting scammed in a way

I wouldn't say scammed. Scammed implies they're trying to trick you, their list of titles accessible in this country is out in the open for all to see and it's your choice whether or not you wish to pay it. It's not like they're misleading you or anything. Also, it's incredibly easy to view US shows with a simple browser extension, even if they don't want you to. These US shows are all covered by the same subscription, so it's not like it's a morally wrong thing to do...
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Buzz201 said:
Crunchyroll's catalogue is a joke in the UK. In fact it's a joke everywhere outside North America, they just seem not to care.

I think it's worth the subscription for the simulcasts alone, easily. 40 shows in the last season is insane, plus dramas and other bonuses. The catalogue is the way it is because a lot of the content is sublicensed from local distributors and they only seem to have US rights (I was very happy that Miss Machiko wasn't done the same way). We need more globalisation, or at least local distributors willing to work with global providers.

He has indicated that he wouldn't rights squat if they offered him a decent sum of money. So whilst he may technically be a rights squatter, I'm not sure I'd use that term.

That's pretty much what rights squatting is in this case (though I appreciate he does plan to use the physical rights eventually). If someone took advantage of a mistake and registered animeuknews.net then refused to give it back to us unless Chaos paid what they considered to be a 'decent sum of money', it would be the same thing. Acquiring rights you have no intention of using is blocking fans from a service they would otherwise have had; it's rights squatting. I called Funimation out on it for years and now they've finally put those rights to use so I've stopped. I've called numerous non-anime companies out on it. It's an atrocious way to behave.

Crunchyroll seemingly doesn't give a crap about what people outside North America think of them. Check their forums. The amount of complaints about the way they announce titles, with region information at the end of a long paragraph designed to make you want to watch the show, is insane. Yet, only one member of staff has ever done anything about it. Crunchyroll simply doesn't care.

And, of course, he's putting pressure on Japanese licensors to do things which benefit him. As are Crunchyroll, I can't see them being upset by a simple reality of business.[/quote]

I don't believe Crunchyroll don't care for a moment; we've gone from being a tiny add-on to the UK site to getting an unprecedented haul of simulcasts for what is, objectively speaking, a tiny subscription fee when compared to the equivalent anime offerings available on UK services. The US has it better, but even Japan doesn't get as good a deal as we do these days. I completely agree that the way licenses are announced with regions to follow is deeply irritating, but if companies stop blocking worldwide-outside-Japan from being the norm hopefully we'll eventually get through this period and be able to enjoy the lot.

Jerome's simple reality of business decreases the anime audience's access to legal anime streams, so it sucks. If money is limited (as it is, simple fact of life) I can't fault Crunchyroll for favouring arrangements with people who don't slander them on social media.

For something as niche as Sakomoto, it could easily reduce sales by quite a huge amount too. (And I'd imagine it regularly does. In fact, Andrew Partridge said it did -- When he says stuff people believe him, but when Jerome says it it's completely unreasonable.)

Yet SamFlam is unavailable on Crunchyroll and sold poorly (how many of us watched it on Wakanim?) while I'm boycotting Manga's Sakamoto because it's not on Crunchyroll.

I really, really want to see some real market research done to find out more about how the Crunchyroll Effect works and how it can be turned around to benefit local companies. Television never had this problem, and the way Crunchyroll's impact is disproportionately held up when mass piracy exists bothers me. There's way more to this issue than people are considering right now.

I take Andrew more seriously because he's tried everything you can try with regards to streaming instead of partially streaming one show, giving up and then pretending to be an expert for years thereafter. Also, he knows how to address his paying customers with basic human civility instead of calling them terrorists, criminals and directing lewd jibes their way. I'm old enough to be able to take my business elsewhere when someone I'm paying for a service is telling people like me to do vulgar things to parts of their anatomy instead of listening to criticism when service is withheld for petty corporate reasons. It would be a different story if Jerome was going to Animax (who I openly hate) because they were offering twice as much, but he's going nowhere and the only ones suffering are the law-abiding fans; he's using a workaround to watch the US version himself and doesn't care.

Will split this into a separate thread in a moment...

R
 
Re: Simulcasts: The Crunchyroll Effect and its impact on the

I think streaming is a double edged sword . I imagine a lot of people think that I can watch it online why do I need to own the physical release . I also believe there are advantages to streaming , if it wasn't for anime streaming on Netflix I would have never started watching anime . I would not be surprised if a lot of other people's first experience of anime will because anime streaming on Netflix or Amazon . With anime being a small market , I believe a lot of people like to try before they buy which makes streaming on legal sites important .
 
Re: Simulcasts: The Crunchyroll Effect and its impact on the

I don't think the argument of whether streaming increases or decreases home video sales is black or white, considering the different release models and market expectations in play. For example, Collector's Edition releases from the likes of Aniplex of America or Anime Limited will be more likely to benefit from the exposure of a simulcast due to enticing established fans to spend on premium goods, whereas companies like Manga Animatsu have traditionally released barebones editions to target the lower-end of the consumer spectrum, who are increasingly turning their attention to cheaper streaming platforms.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Anime Limited Discussion Thread

IncendiaryLemon said:
thedoctor2016 said:
British CR is a bit annoying considering we pay the same as the US and get no where near as much content so we are getting scammed in a way

I wouldn't say scammed. Scammed implies they're trying to trick you, their list of titles accessible in this country is out in the open for all to see and it's your choice whether or not you wish to pay it. It's not like they're misleading you or anything. Also, it's incredibly easy to view US shows with a simple browser extension, even if they don't want you to. These US shows are all covered by the same subscription, so it's not like it's a morally wrong thing to do...

Erm, on the basis that their region filtering isn't brilliant, I'm not sure I'd quite give them a free pass on that.

Also, IP spoofing is directly against their Terms of Service, they can (and probably will eventually) ban users for doing it.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Rui said:
I think it's worth the subscription for the simulcasts alone, easily. 40 shows in the last season is insane, plus dramas and other bonuses. The catalogue is the way it is because a lot of the content is sublicensed from local distributors and they only seem to have US rights (I was very happy that Miss Machiko wasn't done the same way). We need more globalisation, or at least local distributors willing to work with global providers.

It still being good value for money doesn't impact on it's status as a joke...

Rui said:
That's pretty much what rights squatting is in this case (though I appreciate he does plan to use the physical rights eventually). If someone took advantage of a mistake and registered animeuknews.net then refused to give it back to us unless Chaos paid what they considered to be a 'decent sum of money', it would be the same thing. Acquiring rights you have no intention of using is blocking fans from a service they would otherwise have had; it's rights squatting. I called Funimation out on it for years and now they've finally put those rights to use so I've stopped. I've called numerous non-anime companies out on it. It's an atrocious way to behave.

I'd call somebody a rights squatter if they never have any intention of using them or brought the rights just to stop somebody else for petty. It's complicated, but I'd argue Jerome has a legitimate commercial purpose for owning the rights, so isn't a rights squatter.

Rui said:
Crunchyroll seemingly doesn't give a crap about what people outside North America think of them. Check their forums. The amount of complaints about the way they announce titles, with region information at the end of a long paragraph designed to make you want to watch the show, is insane. Yet, only one member of staff has ever done anything about it. Crunchyroll simply doesn't care.

I don't believe Crunchyroll don't care for a moment; we've gone from being a tiny add-on to the UK site to getting an unprecedented haul of simulcasts for what is, objectively speaking, a tiny subscription fee when compared to the equivalent anime offerings available on UK services. The US has it better, but even Japan doesn't get as good a deal as we do these days. I completely agree that the way licenses are announced with regions to follow is deeply irritating, but if companies stop blocking worldwide-outside-Japan from being the norm hopefully we'll eventually get through this period and be able to enjoy the lot.

Jerome's simple reality of business decreases the anime audience's access to legal anime streams, so it sucks. If money is limited (as it is, simple fact of life) I can't fault Crunchyroll for favouring arrangements with people who don't slander them on social media.

I was referring to their PR team, the idiots who wish people "Good Morning" on social media. Seemingly not realising that other time zones exist and people speak English within those time zones...

We have no indication that that is why he lost. He didn't start his major tirade until after he'd lost, so clearly they were willing to negotiate with somebody who slandered them on social media. Whether we want to acknowledge it and side with Jerome or not, Crunchyroll behaved in a ****** manner, and trying to defend it is silly.

Rui said:
For something as niche as Sakomoto, it could easily reduce sales by quite a huge amount too. (And I'd imagine it regularly does. In fact, Andrew Partridge said it did -- When he says stuff people believe him, but when Jerome says it it's completely unreasonable.)

Yet SamFlam is unavailable on Crunchyroll and sold poorly (how many of us watched it on Wakanim?) while I'm boycotting Manga's Sakamoto because it's not on Crunchyroll.

Correlation does not equal causation, and it's a huge leap to suggest it does. There are many other factors that influence it, like the fact that seemingly nobody has anything overwhelmingly positive to say about it, or the lack of knowledge of the title?

Rui said:
I really, really want to see some real market research done to find out more about how the Crunchyroll Effect works and how it can be turned around to benefit local companies. Television never had this problem, and the way Crunchyroll's impact is disproportionately held up when mass piracy exists bothers me. There's way more to this issue than people are considering right now.

I take Andrew more seriously because he's tried everything you can try with regards to streaming instead of partially streaming one show, giving up and then pretending to be an expert for years thereafter. Also, he knows how to address his paying customers with basic human civility instead of calling them terrorists, criminals and directing lewd jibes their way. I'm old enough to be able to take my business elsewhere when someone I'm paying for a service is telling people like me to do vulgar things to parts of their anatomy instead of listening to criticism when service is withheld for petty corporate reasons. It would be a different story if Jerome was going to Animax (who I openly hate) because they were offering twice as much, but he's going nowhere and the only ones suffering are the law-abiding fans; he's using a workaround to watch the US version himself and doesn't care.

I think people on this forum have a habit of taking Andrew more seriously than Jerome because Andrew doesn't tell us things we don't want to hear unless we ask to hear them. I've noticed Andrew tends to agree with the sentiment of a lot of what Jerome says, but because he doesn't make his opinions public. Which is fair enough, but we really need to stop completely disregarding everything Jerome says like he's some kind of madman. For a madman, he has a nasty habit of being right...

Also, this is not a petty corporate decision, this could a huge impact on their sales. And I genuinely wonder, if there was market research that sided with Jerome and said streaming did adversely affect sales by more than $150 per episode, whether he'd still get beef for not streaming shows? I bet he would...
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Buzz201 said:
IncendiaryLemon said:
thedoctor2016 said:
British CR is a bit annoying considering we pay the same as the US and get no where near as much content so we are getting scammed in a way

I wouldn't say scammed. Scammed implies they're trying to trick you, their list of titles accessible in this country is out in the open for all to see and it's your choice whether or not you wish to pay it. It's not like they're misleading you or anything. Also, it's incredibly easy to view US shows with a simple browser extension, even if they don't want you to. These US shows are all covered by the same subscription, so it's not like it's a morally wrong thing to do...

Erm, on the basis that their region filtering isn't brilliant, I'm not sure I'd quite give them a free pass on that.

Also, IP spoofing is directly against their Terms of Service, they can (and probably will eventually) ban users for doing it.

More likely they will implement the same tech as Netflix are to stamp down on using proxies, vpns and dns services. While their measures were patchy ay first it is now pretty difficult to watch Netflix for another region.
 
Re: Simulcasts: The Crunchyroll Effect and its impact on the

The UK accounts for 4.4% of Crunchyroll views according to Alexa. No need to go into all the complex calculations.
 
Re: Simulcasts: The Crunchyroll Effect and its impact on the

So using the 750,000 subscribers figure, and the 4.4% UK visitors figure, that leaves us with 33,000 UK subscribers (which seems a little high to me, but it won't come up again, so let's roll with it.)

A UK subscription costs £5 a month, let's assume they're all paying that (I knew some will be on annual subscriptions or still paying in USD), just to simply things. Then let's assume of that £5, £2 goes on costs, leaving £3 to go on anime. Crunchyroll has said in the past that there is a pot of money connected to each account, which is then divided by any anime watched.

Let's assume the average person watches 6 simulcasts a season, and there's 4 episodes every month. So that's 24 episodes, let's add in 24 catalogue episodes just for fun. Leaving us 48 episodes, or 6.25p per episode.

Jerome was offered $150 or £102.15 per episode, divide that by the 6.25p per episode, leaves us with 1,634.4 streams per episode (approximately 5% of UK subscribers watching each episode). Looking at it like this, I guess I was wrong, it's not necessarily unreasonable for Crunchyroll to offer that much. But in the same breath, this doesn't necessarily make it good value for Jerome. It could simply be that those 1,634 streamers won't buy it now, or maybe the ones that won't buy are countered by people who tried it on a whim and now will, who knows?

The maths in this post is almost certainly wrong, please feel free to correct the numerous and probably obvious mistakes I have made. Obviously there is a lot of assuming, and I'm certain I'll have made an ass of myself with most of them, so treat this with the highest degree of skepticism. Please note that it simply does not include free viewers at all. So chances are the number of streamers is actually higher, as the rate paid by non-subscribers is likely to be lower than the rate paid by those that do subscribe.
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Buzz201 said:
I'd call somebody a rights squatter if they never have any intention of using them or brought the rights just to stop somebody else for petty. It's complicated, but I'd argue Jerome has a legitimate commercial purpose for owning the rights, so isn't a rights squatter.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn he had at least asked Crunchyroll for an offer, but I respectfully disagree; purchasing rights you aren't using in any way (especially when being paid to do so, even if it's not an impressive amount) is atrocious behaviour.

He can't call himself an anime distributor when he's actively engaging in activities which block the distribution of anime. And then openly breaches Crunchyroll's TOS himself to circumvent the region lock because his own company doesn't provide a service he thinks is necessary enough that it should be circumvented. If it was anyone else doing this I'd be just as annoyed.

I was referring to their PR team, the idiots who wish people "Good Morning" on social media. Seemingly not realising that other time zones exist and people speak English within those time zones...

It doesn't especially bother me. They can wish me "Good morning" at any time of day so long as they're fulfilling their role as a simulcast provider and I've been used to being second fiddle to the One True English-Speaking Country all my life. I wish Animax would tweet stupid things at dumb times of day instead of being silent, for example.

Whether we want to acknowledge it and side with Jerome or not, Crunchyroll behaved in a ****** manner, and trying to defend it is silly.

That's how negotiations go, though. It's not all friendship and handshakes; sometimes there are bids and sometimes people lose bids. And sometimes people don't bother telling them they did until they chase the other party up themselves. I don't like it when people don't tell me I've lost out on a job, or a deal, and sure it's annoying. But it's hardly so unusual that it warrants more than a passing glance when the deal probably went down out of hours in the middle of the run up to a major trade show.

Correlation does not equal causation, and it's a huge leap to suggest it does. There are many other factors that influence it, like the fact that seemingly nobody has anything overwhelmingly positive to say about it, or the lack of knowledge of the title?

I'm not suggesting that my circumstances are the majority view (I doubt the majority of fans are buying Sakamoto no matter what it streams on; heck, the vast, vast majority are simply pirating it). However, I do exist and market research (as opposed to random guesses by one person) would be interesting to see.

Lack of knowledge of the title is directly addressed by widespread streaming availability. SamFlam came out at a bad time when Wakanim wasn't really focused on the UK (a polite way of putting it) and most anime fans in the UK have never had a chance to see it unless they happened to be around at that time and willing to try Wakanim out.

I think people on this forum have a habit of taking Andrew more seriously than Jerome because Andrew doesn't tell us things we don't want to hear unless we ask to hear them. I've noticed Andrew tends to agree with the sentiment of a lot of what Jerome says, but because he doesn't make his opinions public. Which is fair enough, but we really need to stop completely disregarding everything Jerome says like he's some kind of madman. For a madman, he has a nasty habit of being right...

Also, this is not a petty corporate decision, this could a huge impact on their sales. And I genuinely wonder, if there was market research that sided with Jerome and said streaming did adversely affect sales by more than $150 per episode, whether he'd still get beef for not streaming shows? I bet he would...

Andrew is perfectly capable of breaking my heart too, from the SamFlam news (part one is on my shelf) to the streaming problems I have been first in line to criticise over the years. He's also an awful lot nicer about Jerome than I am, however I don't consider not being rude and offensive a sign that someone is holding things back. This might be an age thing, but I tend to believe that people who can express an opinion without resorting to insults or references to their own genitalia probably have more worthwhile things to say than people slamming their own customer base with personal insults whenever people suggest they might be wrong.

I'm not irrationally biased against Jerome here; get some companies to call me and ask me to suck their unmentionables and see how many of them I ever buy from in future. I'm an ex-Manga supporter who has been aggressively disillusioned by an increasingly out of touch company so deeply obsessed with only catering to one audience that they don't even care how much they insult, inconvenience or infuriate anyone else any more.

I don't believe that evidence can ever exist saying that (specifically) legal streaming damages sales when illegal streaming via piracy or region lock circumvention does not, because it's inherently silly. Nor that television boosts sales while legal exposure on modern television replacement platforms does not. But if it did exist, I'd be extremely interested to go through it in detail and reassess my stance.

kuuderes_shadow said:
The UK accounts for 4.4% of Crunchyroll views according to Alexa. No need to go into all the complex calculations.

Alexa isn't any more accurate though. It also thinks my personal blog gets an order of magnitude more traffic than the main website of the company I work for (this is not true, thankfully) >_>

I would also argue that there may be a disproportionate paid:free ratio in the UK where the catalogue is perceived to be less enticing, but I doubt even Crunchyroll have the real figures since so many people in the UK circumvent the region locking to access the full catalogue.

R
 
Re: [UK Anime Distributor] Anime Limited Discussion Thread

Rui said:
He can't call himself an anime distributor when he's actively engaging in activities which block the distribution of anime. And then openly breaches Crunchyroll's TOS himself to circumvent the region lock because his own company doesn't provide a service he thinks is necessary enough that it should be circumvented. If it was anyone else doing this I'd be just as annoyed.
The BBFC refuse to classifisy some films, doesn't make them less of a film classification body. I mean, aside from crunchyroll's TOS, he may not even be breaking the law if he does it with Animatsu's blessing...


Rui said:
That's how negotiations go, though. It's not all friendship and handshakes; sometimes there are bids and sometimes people lose bids. And sometimes people don't bother telling them they did until they chase the other party up themselves. I don't like it when people don't tell me I've lost out on a job, or a deal, and sure it's annoying. But it's hardly so unusual that it warrants more than a passing glance when the deal probably went down out of hours in the middle of the run up to a major trade show.
Just because it's common doesn't make it any less ******. I'm sorry, but I don't think this is classy behaviour for a business, maybe I'm traditionalist and out of touch, but I wouldn't be happy if somebody treated my business that way (if I had one), so I can't blame Jerome for being happy either.

Rui said:
I'm not suggesting that my circumstances are the majority view (I doubt the majority of fans are buying Sakamoto no matter what it streams on; heck, the vast, vast majority are simply pirating it). However, I do exist and market research (as opposed to random guesses by one person) would be interesting to see.

Lack of knowledge of the title is directly addressed by widespread streaming availability. SamFlam came out at a bad time when Wakanim wasn't really focused on the UK (a polite way of putting it) and most anime fans in the UK have never had a chance to see it unless they happened to be around at that time and willing to try Wakanim out.
Would being able to watch the show help, given a lot of people have said watching it actually put them off? It's a double edge sword, obviously Sakomoto is well received, but the reception to SamFlam seems more mixed, it could have easily gone the other way. Which is the problem, nobody knows whether it will increase sales or not.

The market research bit was just a hypothetical. Even if it reduced sales, I imagine Jerome would take a hit for not streaming it, because anime fans want what they want.
 
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