The market share of global theaters operating this past weekend dipped below 60% for the first time since before preparations for TENET helped drive re-openings in late-August. Gower Street’s Global Growth Tracker (see below) shows cinemas reporting business to our partners at Comscore for the Dec. 4-6 weekend slipped to 59%, as measured by 2018-2019 market share. This is the first time it has fallen below 60% since the Aug. 14-16 weekend. This is down from a global high of 79% open by market share for the Oct. 2-4 weekend.
December 4-6 October 2-4
The biggest impact has come from the Domestic market and EMEA region. The Domestic market has seen over 750 movie theaters re-close since mid-November, bringing the market share of open theaters down to just 40%. This number stood at 55% at the start of November, having topped 60% (61%) at the end of September and beginning of October. Rhode Island was the latest state to re-close theaters this week, while California and Colorado also saw notable further drops in locations reporting.
In contrast, the EMEA region saw another improvement in cinemas open by market share, rising to 31% this weekend (up from 24% last week). Partial re-openings in the UK and Spain were driving the boost. Even so the region is heavily down from an early October high of 89% with many markets re-closing in November. The UK should see a further boost next weekend, with Vue re-opening its first sites on Dec. 11. France is due to re-open next week (Dec. 15), however lockdowns in Germany, Austria and Italy have all been extended into January. Denmark and Finland are also now under tighter restrictions from this week that have resulted in significant closures (Nordic markets are not included in our Road To Recovery report and calculations due to reporting limitations).
This week also saw Hong Kong re-close cinemas for a two-week period, leading to a small drop in the market share of theaters open across the Asia Pacific region (excluding China). Malaysia closed cinemas in November. Tighter restrictions have also been imposed in South Korea.
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