Americans spent more than US$7 billion on home entertainment in Q3

US consumers spent a gargantuan US$7.3 billion on home entertainment in Q3 2020.

The figure, which accounts for the amount spent on movies and TV shows for home and personal viewing, was up 18% year-over-year, according to a report from The Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) which cites data from OMDIA.

The report attributes a significant amount of this growth to the closure of cinemas with consumers “seamlessly” shifting their viewing “to a broad variety of content including catalogue movies and TV shows.”

Q3 charted particularly strong demand across internet-delivered rental platforms (iVOD), with spending rising 25% during the third quarter, and 46% year-to-date. This strong Q3 performance is likely to do with Disney’s controversial decision to shift Mulan from cinemas to a premium purchase on Disney+ – a call which reportedly paid off to the tune of more than US$260 million within a week.

Overall, consumer spending on theatrical titles through iVOD rose 23% during the quarter and 45% for the year-to-date. DEG notes that growth in the number of consumer transactions was even higher than the growth in spending, which was limited by lower average transaction prices for catalogus tiles, versus new releases.

Overall US consumer spending across digital and physical home entertainment formats in the first nine months of 2020 was US$22.2 billion, a 23% increase from the US$18 billion in the first three quarters of 2019.

Of that total, the vast majority was generated by digital avenues – electronic sell-through (EST), VOD, and SVOD. So far, digital has generated revenues of US$19.6 billion in 2020, up 34% from the US$14.6 billion in the first nine months of 2019.