CSS will also beef up Plus' offerings by bundling basic Crackle with its own ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) networks Popcornflix, Truli, Popcornflix Kids, Popcornflix Comedy, Frightpix and Españolflix. The company's CEO Bill Rouhana told Variety that Sony didn't sell Crackle to CSS outright, because the Plus version doesn't need any more cash infusions. He's confident they can run it as a profitable business.

Sony started looking for a partner that could help it expand the service's offerings in mid-2018, over a decade after it acquired the network. It's nowhere near as popular as Netflix or Hulu, but it did give rise to Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee... which eventually moved to Netflix. Over the past year, Crackle shut both its Canadian and Latin American businesses, so things weren't exactly looking up for it.

Sony clearly thinks that Plus has a future, though. Mike Hopkins, the chairman of Sony Pictures, said the joint venture is a good opportunity, seeing as it will have access to around 38,500 hours of programming and 10 million monthly active users across all the networks they will offer under Crackle Plus.