Crunchyroll hits 3 million paid subscribers

Congratulations are in order for anime streaming service Crunchyroll, which today announced they had hit 3 million paid subscribers to their service, with a total of over 70 million registered users - that's a LOT of anime fans!

Commenting on the brand's growth, Joanne Waage, GM of Crunchyroll said; “Crunchyroll’s global growth has been incredible. We launched in 2006 and it took us about 10 years to hit one million subscribers. It took us only two years after that to break two million, and even less than that to hit three million subscribers where we are today. But, we don’t just measure success based on paying subscribers. We have an active and growing AVOD community of over 70 million registered users. Our goal has always been to grow the love of anime globally, and these numbers show our labor of love is paying off -- and this is just the beginning.”

The site, which hosts over 1,000 anime titles and 30,000 episodes, has grown exponentially. Taking 10 years to hit 1 million subscribers (2016), by 2018 they had reached 2 million, and now they've hit 3 million anime fans worldwide.

At the UK Anime Network, I fondly remember working with the company to integrate the Crunchyroll feed into our site for about a year. It wasn't appreciated by everybody - a certain UK anime distributor reported us to the government for running a TV station (yes, really...) but it was dismissed when we didn't hit the 3 landmarks that would have qualified us - editorial control of the content, scheduling and selection. Sadly we had to decommission the feed when the talented author of the software that drove it, Doug Robertson, was killed in a hit and run 5 minutes from his home in January of 2013.

Because of this link with both the company and Douglas, The UK Anime Network (and Doug's family) are especially proud to have been even a very small part of the company's legacy, and are thrilled that Crunchyroll has been so successful in showcasing anime to a wider audience, bringing people together through art and culture.