CyberAgent and TV Asahi announced on March 31, 2015, that they would jointly establish a fixed-rate video distribution company called AbemaTV in April of that year.

[3] CyberAgent and TV Asahi launched the service on April 11, 2016, with some channels pre-released starting from March 1 of the same year.

AbemaTV channels stream in real-time, similar to traditional linear TV, but missed programs can only be watched by becoming a premium plan member, which costs 960 yen per month.

[7] In December of the same year, AbemaTV announced that the 72 Hour Honne TV program featuring three former members of SMAP had garnered 74 million views.

[9] Despite this, CyberAgent plans to continue investing in AbemaTV in the fiscal year 2018 and expand into peripheral businesses such as radio channel launch and broadcast of shopping programs.

[10] In January 2019, CyberAgent disclosed that Abema Premium had 358,000 subscribers, a 4.5-fold increase from the previous year, and that AbemaTV's app had been downloaded 37 million times.

[11] President Fujita explained that when AbemaTV started about three years ago, the plan was to create a linear TV service on the internet.

After March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic acted as a tailwind, and the number of weekly active users reached a record high of over 14.9 million in early April.

As a "soccer enthusiast" who was concerned that the World Cup might not be viewable in Japan, President Fujita decided to pursue the acquisition of broadcasting rights.