AMC Networks Acquires Sentai Holdings Which Includes Sentai Filmworks & HiDive: Who Wins And Who Loses?

AMC Networks Inc.announced today it has completed the acquisition of Houston-based Sentai Holdings, LLC (“Sentai”), a leading global supplier of anime content and official anime merchandise, with brands including the anime-focused HIDIVE direct-to-consumer subscription streaming service. The acquisition includes all of the member interests from Cool Japan Fund, Inc., a public-private Japanese investment fund.

With strong industry relationships and access to key content creators in Japan, Sentai distributes and curates one of the anime industry’s most diverse libraries of top trending and classic titles, with its content available on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Amazon Prime, among others. Sentai’s HIDIVE streaming service represents a strong new addition to AMC Networks’ portfolio of fast-growing targeted offerings, which includes AMC+, Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now and ALLBLK. AMC Networks, the global leader in targeted streaming, has forecast its targeted streaming portfolio will have exceeded nine million paid subscribers by year-end 2021, with 20-25 million paid subscribers by 2025.

Our Take

Funimation and Crunchyroll have been acquired by Sony and now Sentai, arguably the country’s third most valuable independent anime brand, has been acquired by AMC Networks. As animation continues to be important cogs for corporations, it doesn’t surprise me that this goes down. AMC has been strengthening it’s stake in animation, further shown by premiering Ultra City Smiths last year and the continued production of the promising original series Pantheon. 

The real loser here is Adult Swim’s Toonami. It’s highly unlikely that a competitor cable network is going to allow Sentai Holdings-licensed content on Adult Swim and Toonami programming head Jason DeMarco is already complaining about working with Sony on acquiring future titles. The lineup continues to lose mainstay franchises with Demon Slayer already confirmed to not be coming back for the network and original collaborations with Crunchyroll coming out just horribly, Toonami will have to be more creative in the future, otherwise, it’s just going to be a mess of reruns.