entertainment merchants association

EMA’s 2012 D² Report: Discs and Digital – The Business of Home Entertainment Retailing is now available. This annual publication provides an overview of the home entertainment and video game industries from 2011 through mid-2012. Data includes sell-through and rental revenue from physical and digital formats for both industries, retailing trends, delivery methods, windows, consumer behavior and projections for growth and change over the next five years.

Highlights of the report include:

Consumer Spending

• US consumer spending on filmed home entertainment and video games fell about 2% in each category in 2011. 
• Filmed entertainment spending on DVD, Blu-ray and digital formats totaled $18 billion.  Growth sectors were:
• Blu-ray which grew 20% in 2011 and grew 23% in the first quarter of 2012
• Digital formats comprised of electronic sell-through, VOD and subscription streaming grew 51% in 2011 and 74% in the first quarter of 2012.
• Consumer spending on video game software, hardware and accessories in 2011 was between $16.3 billion to $16.6 billion.

Physical Discs Still Dominant

• Physical discs still provide the majority of revenue with 81% of consumer spending on filmed entertainment came from physical disc sales and rentals.
• Sales of physical software accounted for 56% of total video game industry content revenues in 2011.
• When asked to choose between a physical and digital game, 75% of respondents said they would be the physical version.

Digital Growth Strong

• Digital rentals and VOD and digital retail will grow 5% to 10% annually for several years.
• PC game sales are tipping to 60% digital and 40% physical in the U.S.
• Half of gamers purchased downloadable content in 2011 compared to 40% in 2001 and 34% in 2009.

Retail

• Amazon increased its worldwide media sales by 15% in 2011.
• In 2011, GameStop’s digital revenues grew 57% to $453 million and the retailer expects its digital business to grow at an almost 50% compound annual growth rate through 2014.
• Netflix holds a market share of 30% in physical movie rentals and 55% in paid digital movie rentals.
• Redbox’s share of DVD and Blu-ray movie rental transactions was 37% in 2011.
• In 2011 Walmart’s Vudu increased its market share among online movie stores to 9% placing it third behind Apple iTunes (60%) and Microsoft’s Zune Video Marketplace (16%).

 

The report is free and sent to EMA members.  Members may order additional print copies for
$19.95 each. Non-members may purchase the report for $95.00.

Report is available in print and PDF versions.