PRESENTATION of the MEDIA Salles EUROPEAN CINEMA YEARBOOK

PRESENTATION of the MEDIA Salles’ “EUROPEAN CINEMA YEARBOOK – 2004 final edition” THE RELATION BETWEEN THE TURNOVER OF VIDEO/DVD AND OF CINEMA ATTENDANCE by Dr Joachim Ph. Wolff scientific advisor to the “European Cinema Yearbook” and chairman of the Netherlands Foundation for Film Research, associated with Utrecht University Berlin, 13 February 2005

Cinema attendance is, or is supposed to be, under pressure from: • Piracy • Video/DVD (the home cinema)

The subject of this presentation is a comparison between cinema Gross Box Office (GBO) and the retail turnover of video and DVD.

First the unspecified figures in Table 1: 1997: no DVD data published yet 1999: first published data concerning DVD 2002: most recent published overall data concerning video and DVD

Table 1: GBO of cinemas vs. Retail turnover of Video and DVD (rental and sales) mln. € 1997 -2002

Development was different from what could have been expected. Cinema going and video/DVD are substitutes, and one could expect that the increase of the turnover from video/DVD would be at the expense of cinema attendance. This, however, is not apparent.

Table 2: Indices of GBO vs. Retail turnover of Video and DVD (rental and sales) (1997=100)

In the period 1997 – 2002 the turnover of these media increased parallelly: • (unweighted) average increase of GBO: 43% • (unweighted) average increase of the turnover of video/DVD: 110% • (unweighted) average increase of total spending on cinematic entertainment: 80%

Increase of new media was much stronger than increase of GBO of the cinemas. Notwithstanding the strong increase of DVD, the spending on cinema tickets increased with 43% in this period.

The real substitution was not of cinemas by video/DVD, but of video by DVD.