The U.S. video entertainment market has been growing slowly as a whole by single-digit percentage points each year, and it’s now on track to reach an all-time high. The market, which spans a host of mediums, including pay-TV, box office, Blu-rays and DVDs, video-on-demand (VOD), and other services, is on track to make a whopping $123 billion in retail value in 2015, according to a report from research firm Futuresource Consulting. The official press release explains that the video market grew by 2 percent to jump to a $120-billion total in 2013.
David Sidebottom, a senior market analyst for the firm broke the $120 billion 2013 total down to the average U.S. household, which amounts to around $1,000 spent on video entertainment last year. Sidebottom notes: “This is by far the highest in the world, and significantly higher than any European country.” In fact, the amount of money spent on digital video in the U.S. alone is greater than the rest of the world combined.
Futuresource claims that the U.S. video market commands a unique position on the world stage because of its exhaustive array of viewing options and the strong cultural tendency to adopt and integrate new technology quickly and seamlessly.
Americans apparently still have plenty of love for their pricey satellite and cable subscriptions too, as pay-TV dominated the various other sectors by making up more than $90 billion of the previous $120-billion total. Even though 2013 was the first year that pay-TV operators actually lost more customers than it gained, the sector is still the strong foundation on which the rest of the industry leans.
Futuresource also predicts that by 2015, digital video and box office values will both exceed packaged video spending on hardcopy discs like Blu-rays for the first time, as a result of market saturation and declining retail space in the packaged video market, as well as the flourishing growth in consumption of content via subscription VOD services, including services like Netflix. The packaged video market will, however, still manage to exceed $10 billion in retail value at the end of 2014, putting it in second place behind subscription pay-TV.
Futuresource Consulting is a research and consulting firm specializing in consumer electronics, entertainment content and delivery, and a number of other video-related industry sectors.
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