The Motion Picture Association’s 100th birthday present could hardly have been more gratifying than the figures for the global cinema and home entertainment market (including mobile use, but excluding pay TV), which were presented in March by means of the 70-page Theme Report. With a new record total of $99.7 billion, the figures not only surpassed the first pandemic year by 24 percent, but exceeded even the record $98.1 billion set in 2019. While the DVD/blu ray market continued to decline as expected (from $15 billion in 2017 to $8 billion in 2020 to $6.5 billion in 2021), the digital business is proving to be the big driver alongside cinema. Thus, VoD subscriptions increased by 14 percent, up by about 164 million, and now confirmed to jump over the billion-dollar hurdle again after 2020 with 1.3 billion.
Even if the data from the USA/Canada are not comparable with the European or German market – in North America, for example, the largest cinema-going group is found among 15-39 year-olds with 26% (2021), whereas in Germany the 50-59 year-olds represented the largest cinema-going group with 18% in 2020 – the US trends have also prevailed in Europe for years, with a few years‘ shift.