Growth in number of DVD players in India :

• 2007 – 12 million
• 2009 – 40 million
• expected to grow by another 12 million per year.

However, the value of DVD sales is falling:

• 2007/8 – 350 Crore
• 2008/9 – 320 Crore (estimated)

The industry estimates that 90% of home film viewing is of pirated material. Despite aggressive cost cutting in DVD prices, many companies have not seen demand increase.

It seems to me that the biggest problem to be countered in combating piracy is distribution. Firstly of films, and secondly of legitimate DVD.

In terms of films, a huge weakness in the Indian distribution network is the lengthy delays in prints moving from the larger cities to smaller cities. No one wants to wait weeks to watch the films that the media is raving about, so buying pirate DVDs seems like a ‘fair’ option to people living in smaller towns. The cost of making enough film prints to cover all cities is prohibitively high, so the only solution to this is the steady roll out of digital cinema.

In terms of DVDs, until the police work to remove the pirate DVD stalls from train stations and shopping areas,  it is simply easier for most people to purchase pirated material rather than original DVDs. Now that companies like Moser Bayer are offering real DVDs at almost the price of pirated ones, if the availability of purchase locations was as convenient as it is for pirated material, then most consumers would prefer the higher quality of real discs.

When Moser Bayer began their discounted DVD strategy, their announced plans included selling the DVDs from stalls and roaming carts. I don’t know why they haven’t pushed ahead with this?

(Stats from Screen India, Oct 2nd 09)

  Dodona Research in the UK specialises in studying the cinemagoing habit of various countries. Here’s a couple of titbits from their India 2009 report:

• The often quoted stat that 4 billion cinema tickets are sold each year in India is likely very inflated – the accurate figure is probably around 1.5 billion.
• At the end of 2002 there were 80 multiplex screens, now there are over 1250. This year there will be around 190 million admissions.
• While multiplexes are booming, traditional single screens are rapidly closing. The time delay in moving prints from the multiplexes in cities to the single screen theatres in rural areas allows pirates to make copies available before the film releases – stealing much of the audience. Over 3000 screens have closed in the last 7 years. There are currently approximately 7,600 screens operating which will this year sell around 1.4 billion tickets.
• Average ticket cost at a multiplex is Rs.88. (This sounds a bit low to me? i have visited multiplexes in smaller towns and they typically seem to charge Rs.70 – 100. In bigger cities the ticket price is easily Rs.120-250.)
• In 2007, Multiplexes accounted for less than 30% of total box office takings. By 2012 this figure will be over 50%. However, 75% of tickets sold will be for single screen theatres.

The development of the Indian cinema industry is matching the pattern followed by other countries:

• Cinema is changing from mass audience entertainment to focus on a smaller, middle-class demographic
• Audience taste is gradually shifting to more sophisticated, international films