Even Amid Reopening, Streaming Video Revenues Continue To Grow
Even with widening access to more ways to spend their time, U.S. consumers continued to devour streaming video and other home-entertainment options last quarter, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, a trade organization representing most of Hollywood.
DEG’s Q3 numbers show revenues for film and video programming on all home-entertainment distribution platforms generated nearly $8 billion in revenue, up 9.5 percent over the 2020 period, which also had set a record. The numbers suggest that consumers continue to embrace home consumption of movies, TV series and other video content, habits that appear to have become increasingly ingrained.
Those home-viewing habits continue even as, for instance, many live concerts and music festivals resumed during the quarter, and at least some high-profile films returned to mostly reopened big screens.
Indeed, the DEG report pointed out that the home-entertainment numbers were probably boosted by the return of blockbuster movies such as Disney’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings and MGM’s No Time To Die.
Their flood-the-zone marketing campaigns not only raised consumer awareness even among those who wouldn’t go to a theater, but helped spur further exploration of available product, the report suggested.
“With pandemic conditions improving as the year progressed and theatrical releases restarting, spending on home purchases of theatrical new releases has begun to pick up,” according to the DEG report. “It is expected to continue in a positive direction as theatrical releases across the industry return to a typical pattern.”
Theatrical box office for the quarter hit $1 billion, up from what was basically zero in 2020, early in the pandemic and lockdown, the report said.
Sales of physical discs built around those theatrical new releases were up 38 percent in the quarter, while sales of digital versions of the films were up a whopping 73 percent for the quarter.
The figures don’t include PVOD, the pandemic’s biggest and most controversial innovation in home entertainment. Reliable public figures on PVOD revenues remain difficult to come by, though Disney said in court filings last summer that Black Widow generated $125 million in PVOD revenues in its first several weeks.
Despite studio comments suggesting much less reliance on PVOD in coming months, the report noted, “early insights suggest that interest is high, and results are strong.”
Other kinds of digital distribution thrived, from rentals, to electronic sell through to streaming. Combined, spending on all kinds of digital products rose 12 percent.
Spending on digital streaming services grew even faster, up 17 percent in the quarter, to $6.4 billion, thanks to a plethora of major new services that are finally filling out their offerings after widespread production shutdowns last year.
Overall spending on home entertainment was up 6.3 percent to $23.6 billion for the first three quarters of the year, all but $1.4 billion of that on digital distribution, including streaming services, video-on-demand rentals, and electronic sell-through.
The quarter’s most popular features and episodic series in home entertainment included F9: The Fast Saga, Free Guy, Godzilla vs. Kong, Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, A Quiet Place Part II, Wrath of Man, Yellowstone, The Office, and Rick and Morty.