Revenue from subscription VOD streaming services was up 38.7% year over year to more than $5.5 billion in the third quarter, according to the Digital Entertainment Group.
But the home entertainment trade org, which gets its data directly from media companies, found that the selling and renting of movies and TV shows has actually been way off during the pandemic.
Electronic sell-through (that is, purchasing titles off transactional platforms like Vudu, Fandango, Amazon, et. al) fell nearly 14% in Q3 to around $601 million.
Notably, the disc business got a lot closer to the abyss, with sales declining 34.3% in the quarter to just $434.3 million. DVD and Blu-ray rentals fell 34.4% to around $225 million.
As DEG noted, domestic box office was off a staggering 92.4% in Q3 and nearly 40% for the year. With studios choosing to hold back theatrical titles rather than put them into a release pipeline that effectively lacks a theatrical window, there’s not that much for consumers to buy or rent right now.
The aggregate business of providing U.S. consumers with movies and TV shows at home is still up significantly during the pandemic—up 17.47% to nearly $7.3 billion in the third quarter, and up 23.29% to $22.2 billion for the first three quarters of 2020.
