Sweden: VoD spend offsets cinema loss
August 19, 2020
Cinemas worldwide were very early subject to an almost complete lockdown, regardless of all other pandemic-fighting strategies. This was true also for Sweden. Consequently, the revenues of cinemas have been highly affected.
Mediavision Q2 analysis of Swedish household media expenditure points at an almost 70 per cent year-on-year decrease in cinema spending. So where did the money go instead? Perhaps unsurprisingly, household spend on TVoD and SVoD increased almost as much and thereby substituting the cinema spend. Especially TVoD saw a strong growth, mainly explained by the boosted price on new titles – originally slated for theatrical release. In other words, the film distributors could to some extent offset the loss of theatrical income with a revenue from TVoD.
In Sweden, the limit of gatherings to 50 persons is still in place, forcing the cinemas to prioritise larger/broader titles. This is likely having a negative impact on certain less commercial titles – possibly moving directly to streaming.