Sony Pictures Television has just announced that it will acquire a 95% stake in Funimation.

The deal is estimated to cost a whopping $143 million.

Even though it’s a huge payout, it’s still a bit surprising considering Funimation makes an estimated $100 million in annual sales.

But then again, we’re not stockbrokers, so who knows what’s a good value for a company with that kind of revenue stream.

While Sony Pictures Television will have a majority share in the company, Gen Fukunaga, the CEO and founder of Funimation, will retain the remaining 5% share and will also maintain his current position at the company.

Funimation has been doing pretty well, seeing double-digit growth year-after-year since 2013.

We’re excited to see how this acquisition by Sony will affect Funimation.

Andy Kaplan, Presdident of Worldwide Networks at Sony Pictures Television, stated:

Around the world, Sony’s networks have been major players in the anime space for nearly two decades, and in more recent years we have rapidly increased our networks’ over-the-top and digital offerings to consumers. With the acquisition of Funimation, the combined [intellectual properties] of Animax, Kids Station, and Funimation allows us to deliver the best anime to fans across all screens and platforms.

Kenichiro Yoshida, Sony’s CFO, stated:

We have IPs across Funimation, Aniplex, Animax, and the PlayStation platform. The challenge is to connect them all organically.

That all sounds very promising. Looks like we might have a huge anime streaming network to contend with (and maybe topple) Crunchyroll soon.

Source: ANN, MAL, Deadline Hollywood, The Hollywood Reporter.