Movie Rental Industry Drives Home Entertainment Market

The home entertainment industry especially United States was affected from the recession, although the home entertainment industry did show some resilience with consumer spending on rentals and purchase of DVD and Blu-ray Disc falling a relatively moderate 5.7%.

In addition, consumers spent US$~ million on digital rentals and purchases of films and TV shows over the Internet. Although consumer spending on DVD rentals at bricks-and-mortar stores, kiosks and online was flat at US$~ billion, rental transactions inched up 1.8%.

Physical movie rental market is again sub divided between In-store, vending and By-mail rental market. Digital movie rental market is a combination of cable video-on-demand, digital VOD and subscription VOD. By-mail rental market is also growing continuously but in 2008 growth rate is expected to be slow. By-mail rental also caters to a large part of the physical movie rental market. In-store rental market is a leader among all the physical movie rental market segments but in 2007 it has declined and the trend of downfall is expected to continue in 2008.

Consumer spending on the rental and purchase of video cassettes and DVDs in Europe reached US$~billion. Operator profitability is expected to rely heavily on the sale and rental of DVDs and games. Consumer spending through DVD rental vending machines is currently dwarfed by traditional over-the-counter rental (kiosks accounted for just two per cent of total DVD rental spending in the US in 2008).

The report covers Worldwide Movie Rental market with a detailed description of United States and European Markets. This industry is divided between traditional/physical movie rental and digital movie rental wherein each segment consists of sub-segments. Report talked about each segment and market share with a focus on VHS and DVD rental. Kiosk rental is another segment of the report which refers to an opportunity for the industry to grow further.

Global Environment

• In 2008, UK had the third-largest filmed entertainment market in the world, after the USA and Japan. The USA accounted for 42% of the world market.
• Consumer level revenues generated by transactional and subscription movie services in international markets amounted to US$54.39 million in 2008, up from US$26.58 million in 2007.
• The international transactional market is driven by rental, which accounted for over 60 percent of transactional revenues in 2008.
• The French market has been characterised by high levels of competition: more than 15 companies sell movies online.
• Rental and sales of home entertainment software is a mature market, growing 3%-5% since 2001. Digital forms are growing rapidly, but physical media still dominates.
• Kiosks would outnumber video rental stores in US currently.
• Industry experts believe that the DVD rental kiosk market is expected to grow past US$1billion by 2011, which would comprise about 14 % of the total DVD rental kiosk market (excluding digital).
• UK Video on Demand (VOD) in 2007 was a very small market, but VOD retail has taken a major chunk of the market, which is six times more than VOD rental market.
• Two service models that have been a hit with consumers are online rental and internet catch-up TV. Online rental took almost 30% of UK film rental market in 2007 with 29 million transactions (US$~ million revenues).
• In 2008, the most popular genre in UK was comedy which accounted for 23.90% of rentals, closely followed by drama and action/adventure titles.