> Are they price sensitive enough that they won't go to a competitor that's a few dollars more expensive per month if it has better subtitles
Outside of Asia, Crunchyroll is a de-facto monopoly on legal anime. From the article, 70% of new releases are exclusive to Crunchyroll. They're not losing customers to platforms with better subs, because customers have no alternative.
(Besides pirating, but I assume the golden age of Tier 1 fan subs is over)
> I assume the golden age of Tier 1 fan subs is over
That's just because the legal options were easily available, right? Kind of like people stopped pirating as much when Netflix was actually decent. But now the tides are turning again, so maybe the fan subs will start coming back as well.
There used to be an unwritten rule in fansubbing that you should only fansub anime that didn't have a licensed release - but of course that was during the time when barely any anime got licensed.
Still, though, I wonder if that mindset is still going to be around.
Less now, but the bar is higher because now there's a baseline good enough product, so even if in the past you'd have done it anyway with more care, now unless the official sub is bad enough, why would you bother?
I remember seeing (I think Netflix release) of Komi-san can't communicate, noticing A lot of things being missed, like Komi's literal main manner of communication (A notebook where she writes) not getting any translation for some episodes, or a lot of things I'd have to fill others in that normally at least would have been a T/N in fansub
It was bad enough that I went looking elsewhere to see if I had missed more than I realized, and the fansub did have everything covered
At the moment the threshold for a fansub getting made or not is whether or not the licensed releases are "good enough". If the official releases are terrible, expect someone to step up and at least fix the typesetting even if they use the script from the license.
Also, it’s trivial to standup a minimal quality stt+translation workflow in something like comfyui, all freely available models, and run on modest consumer gpu, ~3050 is just fine. If you’re handy with this tech you can do a lot better. If crunchyroll is only going to have slightly better quality then it can be appealing even to moderate fans who wouldn’t spend the time doing things manually.
I don't think that's accurate to the current market. Ten years ago it was true but in 2025 they have several competitors and not nearly as many exclusives. I can name several counterarguments.
* Shonen anime, which are consistently the most popular ones, are also on netflix and probably several other services. Eg, demon slayer, dandadan, etc.
* there are still shows that are japan-exclusive because nobody bothers to license them. Roboshinkalion is an entire franchise that nobody cares to import! We actually had to wait two extra years for gridman universe because nobody bothered to license it for English localization!
* just this year they failed to obtain the rights to Mobile Suit Gundam G-Quuuuuux and Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt because amazon outbid them. These are both new entries in well-established brands and they're both made by studios with large fan followings (khara for g-quuuuuux and trigger for panty and stocking).
* somehow Hulu ended up breaking harmony gold's 45-year blockade around the macross franchise and won exclusive streaming rights.
* netflix has a lot of exclusives these days, including Jojo stone ocean and the upcoming steelball run.
At least in Europe, if CR has licensed a show or a season, then nobody else can license the same show or season. There's always exactly one place to watch one particular show or season. So, no competition - licensing goes to one, and only one place. Likewise, if Netflix has licensed something then CR isn't getting that license (e.g. Komi Can't Communicate - it's on Netflix, therefore not available on CR)
This may be true for current seasons but previous seasons and finished series are often available on other services. At least crunchyroll and Netflix have an overlap (in Sweden). Frieren is available on both as an example.
Outside of Asia, Crunchyroll is a de-facto monopoly on legal anime. From the article, 70% of new releases are exclusive to Crunchyroll. They're not losing customers to platforms with better subs, because customers have no alternative.
(Besides pirating, but I assume the golden age of Tier 1 fan subs is over)