Hulu announced Saturday that it will now be streaming episodes of South Park as part of a three-year deal signed with the TV show's creators.
The $80 million deal grants the online streaming service exclusive rights to stream all episodes of the animated show on Hulu Plus, which includes over 240 episodes that have already come out along with new ones, according to PC Magazine. The new episodes will be available after they've aired on Comedy Central.
The agreement with Hulu is expected to help South Park continue to provide more episodes past its 20th season. It is also expected to be beneficial toward fans of the show, who will now be able to watch every episode for free until the beginning of season 18 on Sept. 24th.
"This is a natural partnership for us. We are excited that the entire library will be available on Hulu and that the best technology around will power South Park Digital Studios," said Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park.
Some episodes will still be available for free after season 18 starts. However, only Hulu subscribers will be able to watch all episodes in the South Park library, the Huffington Post reported.
The deal was announced at the Television Critics Academy press tour on Saturday, where Stone and Parker said they respected Hulu's business methods.
"We were first trying to figure out how we can rip off their player- how we can just steal their technology," Stone said. "And then we realized we couldn't. So we'd better just do it the old way."
Hulu's deal with South Park follows its deal with Viacom, in which it paid between $40 million and $50 million to steam episodes of fellow Comedy Central shows The Daily Show with John Stewart and The Colbert Report. The company has close to six million subscribers to Hulu Plus.
Parker and Stone said their show could have become even more successful sooner if it started online today. Stone added that if anything, "it would be easier to get it seen."
"I can't imagine if we had had the ability to just launch something as an Internet show and not be censored at all, then 'South Park' probably would have started off, you know, even crazier, because we were definitely holding way back," Parker said. "But it made it way more lucrative for us because we slowly got raunchier as we went."
