Saturday, May 14, 2011

DVD Revenues Plunge 44 Percent

SNL ImageRetail purchases of DVDs fell 44 percent in 2010, despite growth of movie box office sales, which might suggest the shift to video on demand and online streaming services such as Netflix is heating up. But the data also suggests that people simply are not buying DVDs to own as they once did a decade ago.

A contributing issue is that it appears people might not be renting as many DVDs, either, since the DVD rental services buy discs to support those rental efforts. It also is true the studios are focusing their efforts on Blu-ray and VOD, instead of DVD sales revenue.

Unfortunately for studios, revenue from VOD has not yet offset the resulting drop in DVD sale revenue, which was their top earner for more than a decade now.
DVD revenues fell from $7.97 billion to $4.47 billion in 2010. It sometimes is the case that lower DVD activity is the result of a poor year, in terms of popular blockbuster movie hits. Less popular theatrical releases virtually always translates into lower levels of follow on activity throughout the downstream portions of the market.

That does not appear to be the case in either 2009 or 2010, when the box office revenue hit records.


The average wholesale price was relatively flat when compared with 2009, but there were significantly fewer units shipped, down 44 percent.
On average, films shipped 545,000 units and made $10.8 million in wholesale revenue, off 52 percent from the $22.6 million average in 2009. Over the past five years, average wholesale revenue posted a negative 13.7 percent compound annual growth rate.

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