Box Office Still Down 61% Vs. 2019: Home, Mobile Entertainment Grow

Although the U.S. and Canadian theatrical movie business in 2021 doubled its revenue versus the year before -- at $4.5 billion versus $2.2 billion, according to the Motion Picture Association -- it is still down 61% versus 2019’s total of $11.4 billion.

Total admissions also increased, to 470 million (2021) versus 240 million in 2020. During the pre-pandemic period, the total was 1.24 billion, according to data cited from Comscore.

U.S. home/mobile entertainment was up 11% to $29.5 billion in 2021. The MPA estimates here include all digital media, subscription video streaming, other video-on-demand and physical sales, but exclude sports content from digital media.

Globally, home digital entertainment was up 24% to $42.5 billion in 2021.

In addition, research says global online video subscriptions were up 14% to 1.3 billion, with “cable” TV subscriptions 1% lower to 526.5 million -- with the MPA citing Omdia as its source. It adds that the global pay TV subscription market (excluding online video subscription) was $228.5 billion in 2021.

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According to other research from Omdia, online video content grew 6% to 352.9 billion “views/transactions” in 2021 in the U.S -- 319 billion for TV content (up 5% versus 2020) and 33.9 billion for movies -- 15% higher versus the year before. 

The data here is from subscription services, including virtual pay TV services and digital transactions.

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