Crunchyroll

   Crunchyroll is an American website and international online community focused on streaming East Asian media including anime, manga, drama, music, electronic entertainment, and auto racing content. Founded in 2006 by a group of UC Berkeley graduates, Crunchyroll's distribution channel and partnership program delivers content to over five million online community members worldwide. Crunchyroll is funded by The Chernin Group and TV Tokyo.

   The service started in 2006 as a for profit upload and streaming service. Some of the content hosted on Crunchyroll, such as fan-subbed versions of East Asian shows or bootlegs of official US releases of anime titles, was illegally hosted without permission from any rightsholders or the fansub team responsible. However, Crunchyroll eventually removed copyrighted content when requested by the rightsholder.

   In 2008, Crunchyroll secured a capital investment of $4.05 million from the venture capital firm Venrock.  The investment drew criticism from anime distributors and licensors Bandai Entertainment and Funimation as the site continued to allow users to upload illegal copies of licensed titles.

However, Crunchyroll eventually began securing legal distribution agreements with companies, including Gonzo, for an increasing number of titles. On January 8, 2009, after announcing a deal with TV Tokyo to host episodes of Naruto Shippuden, Crunchyroll stated that it was committed to removing all copyright infringing material from its site and to hosting only content to which it had legitimate distribution rights.

   In 2010, Crunchyroll announced its acquisition of the North American DVD rights to 5 Centimeters Per Second. This was the first DVD release licensed by Crunchyroll.

As of summer 2011, Crunchyroll offers over 200 anime shows and more than 200 Asian dramas to users, although not all programming is available worldwide due to licensing restrictions.

On December 2, 2013, The Chernin Group announced that they have acquired a controlling interest in Crunchyroll. A person with knowledge of the transaction said the price for the acquisition was close to $100 million. The Chernin Group said that Crunchyroll management and existing investor TV Tokyo will maintain a "significant" stake in the company.
   Crunchyroll has a number of competitors including Netflix though Netflix has only a small number of comparisons to Crunchyroll in it's comparatively small anime collection. As such it's more major competitors are those delivering similar products at a similar level those being Funimation and Animax both of which have a community attached to them as well as a streaming service.
   The service users are varied in gender and age with a mix of interests (something that has been reflected in the service provided) but most are working class with an average amount of spending power allowing them to spend 10-50 pounds on their own entertainment.

   Crunchyroll regularly monitors it’s streaming service and forums to see what it’s users are viewing, reading and talking about to see what series are gaging interest, from there Crunchyroll contacts  companies involved in the production of the product to arrange a contract deal for the streaming and of that product. Crunchyroll also communicates with fans and users through the use of social media, this method has proven to be extremely successful after a mass of viewers hoped for a sequal to one of the most popular anime of 2012 “Sword Art Online.” Crunchyroll saw the mass of interest the series created and fed back to the series creators who in early autumn 2013 released the information that the next series would be released in the summer of 2014.

   Crunchyroll as a streaming service can be compared to a number of similar services that have arisen over the last few years such as LoveFilm and Netflix, these two being it’s main competition though it can most easily be compared to the WWE Network as while there are other anime streaming services out there both of the services have a similarly massive library of content.