2009 Blu-ray Sales Metrics Stats: Nielsen/Videoscan/HMM Charts/Ratios/Bestsellers Etc

[Kosty]

updated thru 5/10/09 data

Graphs are based off of the weekly data as published in Home Media Magazine or provided as revised data for 2008 from HMM staff.

Last week on right


EDIT: The graphs in this post have now been updated.

Please refer to the newest pages of this thread for the latest versions.

[Kosty]

EDIT: The cumulative data tables and charts and graphs in this post have now been updated.

Please refer to the newest pages of this thread for the latest versions.

[Kosty]

EDIT: The graphs in this post have now been updated.

Please refer to the newest pages of this thread for the latest versions.


Week ending 5/10/09 revenue update complete

[Kosty]

I like the fact that DVD revenue is down, but because of Blu Ray total packaged media is up.

That is a pretty big deal in my book.

Most of the reason is that DVD is actually only down a little bit year to year for the last couple weeks.

But its now two weeks in a row and for retailers and the studios on general its an industry benchmark and means a great deal from a conversational and psychological perspective.

Its a big deal that Blu-ray can be seen as covering for DVDs attrition and can by itself give encouragement and increased retail and studio momentum and support to Blu-ray at the consumer point of sale level.

Things like that start to build momentum and create virtuous circles of increased sales.

[Kosty]

Top 20 Rentals for the Week Ended 5/10/09

Top 20 Sellers for the Week Ended 5/10/09

Top 20 Selling Blu-ray Discs for the Week Ended 5/10/09

[Kosty]

Last week was Blu-ray's 14th highest out of 70 we have data for and it would have been the second highest for almost 11 months of last year . Only Ironman week would have beat it last year from 01/06/08 through 11/23/09.

It does look even better at 226% gain because of Blu-ray particularity poor week though last year. But it was a pretty good week by itself, and 8/9 of the last weeks have been over $15 M in revenues. Thats even better than the streak ending the 4Q 2008.

[Kosty]

Blu-ray is still the icing on the cake for total packaged media sales.

But that frosting has gotten thicker in 2009 than it was in 2008.

    2009
05/10/09  (BD+226.95% -03.90% DVD TL +02.69% YTY)
05/03/09  (BD+176.73% -05.24% DVD TL +00.66% YTY)
04/26/09  (BD +43.76% -21.75% DVD TL -17.82% YTY)
04/19/09  (BD +15.31% -31.37% DVD TL -28.57% YTY)
04/12/09  (BD+172.86% +27.63% DVD TL +33.44% YTY)
04/05/09  (BD+130.70% +01.73% DVD TL +06.89% YTY)     
03/29/09  (BD+164.64% +87.76% DVD TL +93.91% YTY)
03/22/09  (BD +05.89% -02.08% DVD TL -01.37% YTY)
03/15/09  (BD +51.53% -10.87% DVD TL -07.13% YTY)
03/08/09  (BD +69.04% -17.54% DVD TL -14.08% YTY)
03/01/09  (BD +46.36% -10.16% DVD TL  -7.33% YTY)  
02/22/09  (BD +29.31% -11.94% DVD TL  -9.47% YTY)
02/15/09  (BD +33.27% -00.25% DVD TL  +1.42% YTY)
02/08/09  (BD +61.03% -13.32% DVD TL -10.33% YTY)
02/01/09  (BD +68.41% -24.30% DVD TL -20.96% YTY)
01/25/09  (BD+165.35% -26.80% DVD TL -21.32% YTY)
01/18/09  (BD +62.99% -27.01% DVD TL -23.91% YTY)
01/11/09  (BD+207.95% -12.32% DVD TL - 4.75% YTY)
01/04/09  (BD+231.89% -12.88% DVD TL - 4.46% YTY)

Note: These top 20 unit charts are now 2 weeks lag from the revenue charts.

[space-monkey]

Kosty, great work as always.

That cume chart is amazing to me. Looks as if BD has already made as much in about 20 weeks as it made in 40 weeks last year.

Q4 is going to be a blockbuster for BD, especially if the economy continues to stabilize.

[Kosty]

Kosty, great work as always.

That cume chart is amazing to me. Looks as if BD has already made as much in about 20 weeks as it made in 40 weeks last year.

Q4 is going to be a blockbuster for BD, especially if the economy continues to stabilize.

Yep. It took until the week ending 10/12/08 last year for Blu-ray to get over $295 M in revenues , (10/05/08 292.57 , 10/12/09 303.64).

So through 19 weeks this year, Blu-ray has already surpassed where it was at week 40 of 2008.

Still a long way from where DVD is at though, but that is serious year to year growth.

Date Range              DVD    Blu-ray  DVD+BD  BD/(DVD+BD) BD/DVD*100  BD% of
Week Ending          revenue   revenue  revenue  revenue    revenue    top 20 units

01/04/09 - 05/10/09   3,582.80   295.22    3,878.02  7.61%   8.24       11.16% (avg of top 20%'s)
01/06/08 - 12/28/08  11,255.13   531.80   11,786.93  4.51%   4.72	 7.46%

Date Range              DVD    Blu-ray  DVD+BD  BD/(DVD+BD) BD/DVD*100  BD% of
Week Ending          revenue   revenue  revenue  revenue    revenue    top 20 units

TOTAL FOR PERIOD
01/04/09 - 05/10/09   3,582.80   295.22	 3,878.02  7.61%  8.24  11.16% (avg of top 20%'s)
01/06/08 - 05/11/08   3,914.68   132.80	 4,047.48  3.28%  3.39	 4.68%

WEEKLY AVERAGE FOR PERIOD
Average YTD 2009	188.57	  15.54	   204.11  7.61%  8.24  11.16%
Average YTD 2008	206.04	   6.99	   213.03  3.28%  3.39   4.68%

[Kosty]

I added a 2008 cumulative week by week revenue column and calculated out the year to year changes for January to the revenue chart on post 1381.

2009 Blu-ray Sales Metrics Stats: Nielsen/Videoscan/HMM Charts/Ratios/Bestsellers Etc

[comixguru]

Total numbers (BD+DVD) still show a 4.2% decline. I know, the usual "Why does BR need to make up for DVD's slide?" challenge.

But if someone actually wants to talk about what that means for the industry and how it might change the behavior of the studios, I'd welcome some intelligent conversation on this.

Personally, I think this year over year trend continuing again has to have it's toll on the future of home entertainment. Different studios have different assets and have, I think, begun to signal different courses.

It seems like there's some studios who are going aggressively after new revenue, be that from free ad-supported content, or with new venues/ventures. As a contrast to that, we have studios making defensive moves, saying they will release less and make more off of it by pouring on value-added features. To a certain extent this always existed, but it seemed like for 1999-2007 it was variations on how they handled the SD DVD rental and sell-through market.

I see the strategies for some of these studios branching out quickly if Q4 2009 doesn't indicate a predictable recovery for sell-through.

Another point of conversation, I think, is the acceleration we might see at the tipping point. It's possible SD DVD sell through could cliff down at the tipping point, but adoption for BR may slope up... as people simply hold off, uncertain of SD DVD or not willing to replace 2-3 players with BR to support full household playback. I think we saw some of this with the core buyers shifting to HD. There was a fairly big stall in people buying movies as the war played itself out. Tipping points often produce pauses or differing responses... for the upside and downside.

Curious to see how this plays out, and what might happen if SD DVD sell through ends sharply and BR picks up, but not with a 1=1 replacement.

[Kosty]

Just look at the DVD cum chart just above, DVD is off but not that much off and most of that is not in the top 20/30 titles but a drop in revenues as catalog titles have been price reduced at retail.

Thats a studio concern with retailers, but if thats all the difference is, its not significant.

DVD sell through for the older releases, besides TV box sets has been down for 3 years, although the TV stuff has hidden it a bit.

Overall a 4.2% offset is pretty much within the margin of error just because of the release schedules and some of that is substitution for online streaming and digital downloading. 5-20% substitution of catalog DVD revenues for that part may just becom the norm.

The real issue is how much Blu-ray will replace DVD catalog dales over the longer term and if packaged media day and date high margin sell through sales will transition from DVD to Blu-ray. The catalog sales and overall revenues are important, but the high margin and retailer and studio sales that are important are the day and date releases, where th top 20 unit sales data is a pretty good benchmark.

Overall revenues for packaged media is important too, but there is a lot of high volume time of the year to go, and being down only a few percent now with 19/52 of the year (and with the 4Q counting double 19/65 of the seasonal volume) is not a bad palce to be, especially when the other revenue streams from streaming and digital downloads can cover that much in the long and short term.

Lots of volatility week to week in DVD just due to release strength, so a few percentage off is not a huge issue, yet.

[Kosty]

Total numbers (BD+DVD) still show a 4.2% decline. I know, the usual "Why does BR need to make up for DVD's slide?" challenge.

But if someone actually wants to talk about what that means for the industry and how it might change the behavior of the studios, I'd welcome some intelligent conversation on this....

Let me try and give a little bit more perspective.

Look at the red line and the light red line in the graph below, At the end of the red line, the gap between that and the light red line is the cumulative gap to date for this year for DVD sales. Even though that maybe 8% of the cumulative for the year to date, its a much smaller percentage of the annual DVD sales to be made up. The Blu-ray line is making up some 3.8% of that gap already.

Actually DVD by itself is down only $331.88 M from last year to date, Blu-ray is already making up $295.22 M , its just that Blu-ray's was already $132.80 M in 1/06/08-5/11/08 revenues, so Blu-ray is only doing $162.42 M above its 2008 levels.

But it also could be argued that Blu-ray should only be making up for DVD shortfalls, and counting last years combined DVD+Blu-ray totals underestimates Blu-rays impact, as if Blu-ray did not exist last year, the DVD levels by itself would have been ever lower. I think thats a bit of a stretch and combining the two formats for each year is the best perspective, but there is a valid discussion there of what would happen if Blu-ray had not existed.

By HMM's revised figures , DVD sell through sales were $11,255,130,000 last year. Blu-ray was $531,800,000. Total DVD + Blu-ray sales for 2008 were $11,786,930,000. A gap year to date of $4,047,480,000 - $3,878,020,000 = $169,460,000 is 169.46 / 4047.48 = 4.19% of the year to date total but its only 169.46 / 11786.93 = 1.44% of the total 2008 combined DVD+Blu-ray revenues, as the high volume parts of the year are still coming in the 4Q and we are only 19/52 into the year anyway.

$169.46 M low is not that much when you are looking at a pile that is $11,786.93 M high at the end of the year.

Variations in the strength of the releases and the total box office generated have a lot more uncertainty than that built into them.

Just look at that chart again. The last gap between the DVD lines is all that is below the 2008 YTD. Also realize that when you say the total is below that 4.22% level, (HMM has it at 4.19%) thats also not giving credit for Blu-ray's 2007 contributions as well.

  Date Range              DVD    Blu-ray  DVD+BD  BD/(DVD+BD) BD/DVD*100  BD% of
Week Ending          revenue   revenue  revenue  revenue    revenue    top 20 units

TOTAL FOR PERIOD
01/04/09 - 05/10/09   3,582.80   295.22	 3,878.02  7.61%  8.24  11.16% (avg of top 20%'s)

01/06/08 - 05/11/08   3,914.68   132.80	 4,047.48  3.28%  3.39	 4.68% 
01/06/08 - 12/28/08  11,255.13   531.80 11,786.93  4.51%  4.72   7.46%

[Kosty]

Pretty sure the top 20 DVD and top 20 Blu-ray units are also significantly up year to date, but I'll have those figures and graphs up tomorrow. If thats the case, and top 20 DVD unit numbers is up year to year, then the attrition in DVD revenues would be almost entirely due to lower retailer prices on catalog or older release DVDs, which is just a symptom of DVD saturation and retailers cutting prices on older DVDs.

[Kosty]

EDIT: The cumulative data tables and charts and graphs in this post have now been updated.

Please refer to the newest pages of this thread for the latest versions.