Did Game of Thrones kill the summer box office?
Hollywood just saw its lowest summer box office numbers in 25 years. Yes, some of this can be blamed on consumer fatigue from a slew of poorly made sequels; however, I would argue that a larger part of the poor box office numbers is a combination of:
- The abundance of high quality, compelling original content from networks and streaming services
- Fundamental and irreversible shifts in consumer media consumption habits, especially in OTT
Game of Thrones’ 79-minute season finale drew 12.1M viewers live, and more interesting, an additional 4.4M viewers from its OTT services (HBO Now & HBO Go).
While the GoT franchise overall may be an outlier, it's OTT viewership numbers alone builds the business case for Hollywood to divert distribution efforts from big blockbuster box office releases to straight-to-streaming distribution (both episodic and one time releases). The economics will differ greatly, based on distribution through SVOD's, AVOD's, TVE's or some combination of the above, but for those studio's that get it right, the upside potential is huge.
More compelling to make Hollywood act should be the downside risk if they don't get the shift to OTT right. Just as the music industry saw a decade ago, adapt or die (or at least die a slow death) Winter is here.
GTM Expert! Founder/CEO Full Throttle Falato Leads - 25 years of Enterprise Sales Experience - Lead Generation Automation, US Air Force Veteran, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black Belt, Muay Thai, Saxophonist, Scuba Diver
8 个月Josh, thanks for sharing!
Head of Marketing | EMEA Strategy & Execution | Brand & Revenue Growth
7 年Josh Boaz, this is an interesting question and some very valid arguments there, but how can we compare revenue from box office to revenue from streaming? One cinema ticket costs almost the same as one monthly streaming subscription.
Co-Founder and CEO at Digital Nations LLC
7 年Studios are proving more likely to follow in the blunders of Disney than the innovations of Netflix. Big ships turn slow. Plus tech companies aren't tied up in theater and television relationships and commitments.