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source from:FT
https://www.ft.com/content/ef1ba0ec-1ce9-11e7-a454-ab04428977f9
China Business Added
Chinese box office takings set to fall in 2017
Drop in first-quarter cinema revenues presages first annual decline since 1990s
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3 HOURS AGO
3 HOURS AGO by: Charles Clover and Sherry Fei Ju
A 7 per cent drop in China’s first-quarter film revenues presages a likely annual fall this year in the country’s box office — the first such decline since the late 1990s.
China’s once booming film demand was expected to overtake the US in 2017 but has been hit by slowing economic growth and a dearth of hit movies.
After expanding at double digits every year since 1999 — according to data from China’s broadcast regulator and official news service Xinhua — growth in domestic cinema revenues skidded almost to a halt last year. China’s annual box office in 2016 rose just 2.4 per cent year-on-year compared with 49 per cent growth in 2015.
While the 7 per cent drop in the January to March 2017 quarter to Rmb13.6bn ($2bn) was not the first such year-on-year decrease, nor even the biggest, it was the first time this has happened in the all-important first quarter. The first three months of the year are typically the biggest quarter for cinema revenues in China because of the Lunar New Year holiday week.
Last year, for example, the first quarter grew 51 per cent from the previous year and accounted for 32 per cent of the total 2016 box office as calculated by figures from Beijing-based Entgroup, which tracks the China entertainment industry.
Only part of the latest quarterly drop was explained by lower turnout — movie-goers slid 2 per cent to roughly 410m in January-March, according to Entgroup. Lower ticket prices are also thought to be part of the problem, with a rapid increase in theatres spurring competition to cut prices.
But critics also say there has been a noteworthy lack of hit movies this year, and that China’s slowing economic growth is cutting into entertainment spending.
The limping box office has dealt a blow to Chinese film companies that had laid big plans to invest in Hollywood and had grown accustomed to double-digit growth during the past decade.
Huayi Brothers Media, China’s largest private film producer, saw its first drop in net profit since it went public in Shenzhen eight years ago. In its 2016 annual report, released two weeks ago, the company reported net profit of Rmb808m, down 17 per cent from the previous year.
Earlier this year Wanda Cinemas — China’s largest film distributor and a part of the real estate and entertainment conglomerate Dalian Wanda — reported a 7.5 per cent year-on-year increase in annual net profit to Rmb1.3bn; that was its first single-digit annual increase and the lowest since Wanda Cinema first published net profit figures in 2011.
In what may be an effort to pump up numbers, Chinese authorities over the past month have been investigating under-reporting of ticket sales by theatres. Some film executives think such manipulation may have suppressed 10 to 20 per cent of reported sales in previous years.
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