What a state to be in...

“ THE STATE OF THE INDUSTRY...” Whenever you see those words, it tends to be the precursor to a negative story! Well, I may need a reality check, but the latest news is showing that the state of our industry is actually proving to be on the UP!

Last month, the international cinema trade body UNIC released its preliminary estimates for the 2022 box office and admissions across the territories it covers — and the figures show a significant recovery across all of the countries when compared to the Covid lows of 2020 and 2021. Not surprising, right? Then again, we are seeing estimated box office for 2022 being some 30.8% below the 2019 record-year, with admissions down by 35.1%.

However, it’s important to bear in mind that here in the UK, we focus on the money earned by cinemas rather than the number of tickets sold, which may explain the difference in box office figures compared with those EU countries that primarily count the number of tickets sold.

EARLY FIGURES FOR 2023 are more encouraging. In January, the EMEA region recorded the highest-grossing month since the same month in 2020, with box office revenues reaching healthy levels of approximately €821m.

Success stories from across Europe included many national Cinema Days, which helped to boost admissions. The UK’s own national Cinema Day saw 1.46m admissions a great achievement, when considering the challenges we’ve faced in the past few years.

We’re confident that we’re on the road to full recovery, and a constant supply of new and diverse titles will be crucial in order to continue to drive box office and admissions forward.

So, let’s look forward to an even brighter ‘state of the industry’ for UK cinema in 2023 —and beyond!

Simon Tandy, MD, Omnex