Sony Becomes Kadokawa’s Largest Shareholder With Newly-formed ‘Strategic Alliance’

In a nutshell

  • Alliance Formation: Both companies will enter a strategic capital and business alliance starting January 7, 2025, making Sony the largest shareholder with around 10% of Kadokawa’s shares.
  • Collaboration Goals: The alliance aims to maximize the global value of both companies’ intellectual properties through joint investments, discovering new creators, and promoting media mixes, including live-action films, TV dramas, anime, and games.
  • Leadership Statements: Kadokawa CEO Takeshi Natsuno and Sony President Hiroki Totoki expressed confidence that the alliance will strengthen IP creation capabilities and support global expansion, enhancing corporate value in the mid-to-long-term.

Sony and Kadokawa have announced that both parties will enter a strategic capital and business alliance, set to commence on January 7, 2025.

This agreement will see Sony acquire 12,054,100 new shares for approximately 50 billion yen, making them the largest shareholder with around 10% of Kadokawa’s shares.

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The alliance aims to maximize the global value of both companies’ intellectual properties through potential joint investments in content, the discovery of new creators, and the promotion of media mixes of both companies’ IPs. Specific initiatives under discussion include adapting Kadokawa’s IP into live-action films and TV dramas, co-producing anime works, expanding the global distribution of anime, and furthering the publishing of games.

“We are very pleased to conclude this capital and business alliance agreement with Sony. This alliance is expected to not only further strengthen our IP creation capabilities, but also increase our IP media mix options with Sony’s support for global expansion, allowing us to deliver our IP to more users around the world. We are confident that this will greatly contribute to maximizing the value of our IP and increasing our corporate value in the mid- to long-term. We intend to do our utmost to ensure that our collaborative efforts with Sony produce great results in the global market,” says Takeshi Natsuno, Kadokawa CEO.

“Through this capital and business alliance, we will become the largest shareholder of KADOKAWA, which consistently creates a wide variety of IP, including publications and books, such as light novels and comics, as well as games and anime. By combining KADOKAWA’s extensive IP and IP creation ecosystem with the strengths of Sony, which has promoted the global expansion of a wide range of entertainment, including anime and games, we plan to work closely together to realize KADOKAWA’s ‘Global Media Mix’ strategy, aimed at maximizing the value of its IP, and Sony’s long-term vision, ‘Creative Entertainment Vision,” says Hiroki Totoki, President, COO and CFO, Sony Group Corporation.

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Kadokawa currently owns From Software, developers of hits such as Elden Ring, Sekiro, Dark Souls, and more. While it may mean nothing for the games side of things at the moment, we’ll have to wait for further details on how this strategic alliance would impact both companies.

Sony currently does not plan to acquire additional Kadokawa shares after this agreement.

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