Streaming anime site Crunchyroll and anime powerhouse Funimation have engaged in some public chest-thumping in recent days, each claiming to be the biggest source of streaming anime videos. Both appear to be correct, depending on how you define the question, but perhaps most interesting is the total volume of anime streams accounted for by only these two sources.
The month under discussion was March, and Funimation kicked things off with its claim of 8 million on-demand views in March, "cementing its status as North America's hub for programming straight from Japan and double hte number of episode views of its nearest competitor."
Crunchyroll responded by releasing the info that its users had viewed 28.1 million videos that month. Claiming it has “the most engaged community for anime in the world,” Crunchyroll compared itself to Funimation, noting that it had 1.3 million unique
Funimation fired back in a press release to Anime News Network, arguing that it uses a “hyper-syndication” strategy that offers Funimation content not only on its own 180 sites, but also through third parties such as Hulu, YouTube, TV.com, and Anime News Network. Through its own and third party sites, Funimation videos were viewed 55 million times by North American viewers in March, it said. Funimation also noted that “a majority” of Crunchyroll’s users were not in
Assuming that Funimation’s assertion about the location of Crunchyroll’s users are correct, perhaps 10-15 million anime views via Crunchyroll were from users in North America. That still brings the views accounted for by the two companies (on a wide range of venues) to a total of 65 to 70 million videos viewed in March.
Over 65 million views in one month is a staggering number, reflecting either a very broad audience, very heavy consumption per viewer, or both.
Some of those views are paid via subscription (e.g., on Crunchyroll); the rest are supported by advertising or viewed as promotional for sales of DVDs or downloads.
