Rise of the DVD Economy

May 10, 2005 10:20pm by

LensWe’ve previously discussed how DVD sales have been booming, cannibalizing CD sales, and wreaking some creative destruction. 

So you can imagine our joy at finding yet more detailed data showing just that. And to add a little sparkle, its from the author of the book, "The Big Picture."

Ironic, no?

William Safire describes the book: "In The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood, the investigative author Edward Jay Epstein holds that what used to be the movie business, centered in "movie houses," has been transformed into the home-entertainment business." That transformation, in a nutshell, is the key to understanding the New Hollywood.

Interesting description. It lends further significance to his thesis of "The Rise of the Home Entertainment Economy," and these three tables of data:


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Studio Revenues Worldwide, 1948-2003                        
Table 1 Worldwide Studio Receipts

Year

 Theater
 Video/DVD
 Pay-TV
 TV,
Free 		Total
 Theater
Share (%)
1948
 6.9
 0
 0
 0
 6.9
 100
1980
 4.4
 .2
 .38
 3.26
 8.31
 55
1985
 2.96
 2.34
 1.04
 5.59
 11.9
 25
1990
 4.9
 5.87
 1.62
 7.41
 19.79
 22
1995
 5.57
 10.6
 2.34
 7.92
 26.53
 20
2000
 5.87
 11.67
 3.12
 10.75
 31.41
 19.5
2003
 7.48
 18.9
 5.56
 11.4
 41.2
 17.9

Note:  All Dollars are Inflation-Adjusted, baseline 2003 Dollars  (in Billions)



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The Rise of DVDs
Table 2 Global Home Video Sales
DVD & VHS Studio receipts (Billions of dollars)

ear DVD VHS Total
1993 0 $5.93 $5.93
1997 0 $9.8 $9.8
2002 $10.39 $5.929 $16.323
2003 $14.9 $3.9906 $18.902



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Foreign Home Video Markets
Table 3: Studio receipts, 2003 (millions of dollars)

Country DVD VHS Total
Britain 504 1,223 1,727
Japan 720 332 1,052
France 693 183 876
Canada 566 183 749
Germany 576 120 696
Australia 325 88 413
Spain 303 103 405
Italy 174 124 298
Holland 191 48 239
Mexico 97 52 149


Top10

4,148 2,460 6,608
All Foreign 5,522 2,146 7,668


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Quite fascinating . . .

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What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. Damian commented on May 10

    As other have written about – the movie companies are right now riding the DVD wave like the music industry did with CDs in the 1980-90s. And we know how that worked out for the music companies. When the movies become a digital product similar to CDs (broadband speeds go up etc), they may face a similar fate. The future of media companies, in my opinion, is going to be made up of companies like Lions Gate – fast moving, niche oriented, multi-format and not at all scared of new technology or platforms.

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