Omdia: frequent cinemagoers providing boost for SVOD uptake

Frequent cinemagoers – or ‘cinema power users’ – are much more likely to take up subscriptions to streaming SVOD services than other segments, and represent a significant growth opportunity for streaming companies, according to a report by Omdia.

Omdia’s Movie Windows – Adapting to the Future report identified three distinct consumer types characterised by their movie content consumption habits. Cinema power users, cinema goers and infrequent goers exhibit differences in terms of the frequency and channel selection of their viewing habits.

Cinema power users are subscribed to 50% more SVOD services than infrequent goers, rent twice as many new movie releases, purchase three times as many new releases and are around three times as likely to pirate content from unauthorised sources, according to the report.

Although power users are the highest content users across the board, cinema goers, the second segment, present the greatest growth opportunity for studios across all content access points, particularly through paid subscription channels with 13.9% growth year-on-year in subscriptions per household to SVOD services.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the average household spend for cinema in the US was over US$80 per annum. However, due to the global lockdown restrictions, cinema spending has suffered, and box office revenues were down US$30 billion in 2020 from almost $42 billion in 2019.

Omdia predicts that it will take two to three years for cinema spending to return to pre COVID-19 levels. In the meantime, consumers will look to other windows for premium content and Omdia expects models such as online video subscriptions to benefit from the advances in their spending habits.

“Whilst cinema closures have effectively halted box office revenues, they have not hampered consumer demand for new content, especially in cases of government mandated lockdowns,” said Max Signorelli, senior analyst for media and entertainment at Omdia.

“We are seeing consumers look to all subsequent video options to access premium entertainment with an increasingly appetite that will remain post pandemic.  As cinema release delays such as James Bond prove however, content producers can reliably bet on people returning to the cinema when able to do so.”