Thursday, August 11, 2005

The Box Office is dead

(Via Copyfight). If asked about the main source of profits for the movie industry, you would probably assume that ticket sales are near the top, otherwise, why is there so much emphasis on ticket sale figures for the latest blockbuster? And why do we have to put up with the idiotic copyright warnings before watching a movie?

It seems like ticket sales are indeed at the bottom of the profit earners at $7.4 billion USD ticket sales worldwide. The top earner for movie studios is video market. In 2004, sales for video (includes DVDs) were $20.9 billion USD worldwide. But these figures are just for sales, so the actual profits are $13.95 billion USD for video.

The best profits come from TV licensing, because these are profits only, and the studios incur in no expenses. This produces $17.7 billion USD of profit.

This seems to tell us better why the movie studios are so worried about P2P. Ticket sales are not worries, but if people start downloading movies from the internet instead of watching them in Sky Movies, then the profits will decrease. IP is the big profit maker.

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