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Answerman - Being A Member of a Production Committee

You doubt the quality of series like Gravity Falls and Steven Universe?

Is adding more languages that expensive? I thought it'd be peanuts compared to legal fees.

It's not European Persecution Because Websites Are Too In Love With North America, it's problems with licensing separate foreign rights for every show they acquire (oh, but that's easy with Japan, isn't it?), plus regional advertising support, and many other reasons that, like Netflix, just make it simpler for streaming companies to create and mind their own local business.
If France or Italy wants to come up with an anime streaming service that will serve France or Italy--without having to additionally force itself on NA like some companies do--they are welcome to try, as long as the local market supports it. And if Crunchyroll manages to branch out a division to service anime rights and advertisers in Germany, maybe they can fight it out with Viewster over there, but here, the market has settled into its own audiences' tastes.

I'm talking about garbage like Adventure Time and Clarence. And for the record, I don't know what people see in Steven Universe, but that's just my opinion. I can give Gravity Falls the credit it deserves however.

It's a fixed cost. Licensing fees can vary greatly depending on how popular the show is and what the licensor thinks that they can get for it. So while licensing fees may scale down with a less popular show (or if a rights owner just wants to get it out there to sell more expensive home video releases or other complementary goods, a la Aniplex of America), for a sufficiently unpopular show additional languages just aren't worth it for the same reason that a dub just isn't worth it. (A sufficiently unpopular show won't get made in the first place, but it's the Japanese home video sales that are driving the show for late night shows and OVAs.)

Which would explain why the British Isles and Scandinavian rights to Blood Blockade Battlefront floated around for almost it's entire run without being acquired. If CR wanted them they could have had them, they didn't...

The truth, rather depressingly, is the CR has a few territories and languages it cares about and every other territory that get is a bonus to them. Sadly, Europe (with the possible exception of France) is the cherry on their North American sundae, nice if you have it, not a complete disaster if you don't...

While subscriptions provide a nice revenue stream Crunchyroll still gets the bulk of its income from advertising. It is hard enough getting advertisers who sell in both Canada and the US. Finding advertisers selling in Europe is much harder. I really doubt that views originating outside North America are counted by CR's advertisers. Basically since Europe provides very little money it is not a priority.

Crunchyroll is actively looking for marketing employees in Brazil, Germany and Sweden or Norway, so it's not like they're completely writing off everywhere except North America.

It kind of is, but only from a business stand point. It's because the North American market is worth more, and European rights aren't neccesarily worth it to them. I completely understand why all these companies prioritise NA, but that doesn't preclude me from being disappointed that they do.

Crunchyroll don't have the US rights either so you can't complain that, as Crunchyroll customers, we were missing out.
In the case of Blood Blockade the UK license could have gone either to FUNimation (who have the US license) or Kaze (who are streaming it in France) and either would have prevented CR getting it. We don't know where Viewster licensed it from.

There have been some UK and Scandiwegian licenses that have only been possible due to subscribers (and indeed some shows that have only been available to subscribers). My information on this dates back to when Rob was still with the company (he is now with Viewster and has done other things inbetween) so I'm not sure exactly where things stand these days, nor can I recall a recent subscriber-only show in the UK. I have quotes, but I'd have to dig them out.

Europe's basically screwed over by three things: A) it's not always a single license B) it's a multilingual region even if you do get it; not everybody's English in the region is up to par, so those people aren't going to be attracted to an English-only service and C) quite a bit of the continent has a very low purchasing power. Meanwhile, the US and Canada are always a single license, have only one language worth worrying about and most of the population has enough income to waste on a streaming subscription if they feel like it.

Beyond single countries, Latin America's really the only place that starts to fill the second two criteria - and even then you've got to pick a dialect of Spanish(I'm not sure how the licensing schemes typically work for the region). Ignoring ability to pay, the other large region with a single language would be Africa, where most of the population is well versed in French and/or Swahili - but there's the tiny problem of those countries being unlikely to get their crap together any time soon(thank you foreign aid).

A FUNi license in no way precludes it being streamed, it just usually ends up not happening.
For a season or two I watched FUNimation simulcasts on YouTube (Campanella, Denyuuden, C3 etc.) This stopped when they stopped putting simulcasts on YouTube (and even when they do upload whole episodes now, they're usually locked to UA/CA by default).
For one season, all the FUNimation shows with UK rights included were streamed on Animac (e.g. Selector Infected Wixoss and Noragami).
We had a couple of FUNimation-licensed shows on Viewster last season, although it is unclear whether they were sub-licensed from FUNimation or
direct from Japan.