On Saturday September 3, the UK distribution and exhibition industries came together to offer National Cinema Day, with all tickets priced at £3 ($3.25) — reviving an all-industry discounting promotion that had fallen out of favour in the territory since 1998. Admissions surged on that day to an estimated 1.46 million — roughly three times what had been measured on the equivalent day in recent pre-pandemic years, according to Cinema First, the cross-industry body that staged the event.
The success of the scheme during what is traditionally a slow period for cinemagoing, and the regular success of long-established events including France’s Fete du Cinema and Spain’s twice-yearly Fiesta del Cine, give rise to a number of questions: why did the UK’s National Cinema Day go away, why did it come back, and should we expect to see more of the same in the future?
On the first question, memories in distribution and exhibition are hazy, but it is worth considering that the UK release of Titanic in January 1998, and its stellar box-office success, was only part of an overall buoyancy in the market at the time. Cinema admissions, which had bottomed out in the UK with 54 million in 1984 before climbing steadily with the arrival of the multiplex era, continued to build throughout the 1990s — rising from 97.4 million in 1990 to 142.5 million in 2000 — and into the next decade, reaching 171.2 million in 2004. In the years just before the pandemic — 2018 and 2019 — UK cinema admissions were respectively 177 million and 176.1 million, the highest since 1970.
Meanwhile, the rise of premium-large formats and more luxurious, smaller-capacity cinema auditoria saw average ticket prices rise at rates higher than general inflation, particularly after 2010, peaking in 2017 at £7.49 ($8.08). Throughout this period, it was hard to make the case that UK cinemas needed a National Cinema Day to entice audiences.
Screen International spoke to a leading UK studio distributor and leading UK exhibitor, who both agreed the revival of National Cinema Day in 2022 relates to the post-pandemic moment. “What we do find at the moment is that we have less films, less frequent film releases, than what we had pre-Covid,” says Eduardo Leal, group regional director of screen content at Vue. “That’s the main driver of why we’re not 100% of our pre-Covid average admissions; we’re at about 80%.
“The average size of film release is the same as before, the average success per film is the same as before, we just have a third or a quarter less films, depending on the period you look at. So bringing people in [with a discount promotion], in a period like that, is the right thing to do.”
Sharon Reid, director of marketing and partnerships at Cinema First, has a different perspective on the long gap between this year’s National Cinema Day and the version in 1998. “I think it was the success of those events in the late 1990s that prompted the thought that the industry needed a more regular discounting offer, but one that focused on driving incremental admissions,” she says. “This eventually led to the establishment of Orange Wednesdays in 2003 and now the successful Meerkat Movies 2 for 1 [ticket offer]. [This] is a different and more complex mechanic than simple discounting — driving awareness of cinema and film, in addition to driving incremental visits to cinemas on a Tuesday and Wednesday.”
She adds that the success of Cineworld Group’s Cineworld Day in late February this year, when tickets at its cinemas — including the Picturehouse chain — were all priced at £3, prompted discussions about the revival of National Cinema Day across multiple exhibitors.
The short-term benefits of an admissions surge are evident for cinemas, which retain 100% of the booking fee as well as high-margin profits at concession stands. For distributors, which see ticket prices diluted and perhaps some cannibalisation of audiences before and after a discount day, there might be more equivocation.
Rob Huber, UK and Ireland managing director at Universal Pictures International, was happy to support National Cinema Day, despite it falling on opening weekend of the studio’s UK release of indie drama The Forgiven, as well as a rerelease of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. “I love The Forgiven, but audience choices are skewing towards bigger and known IP at the moment, and it’s still proving harder for smaller and mid-range films to find audiences,” says Huber, who opted not to change any of Universal’s UK dating plans after September 3 was pinpointed as the date for National Cinema Day.
Distributors with proven successes in the market, including family titles, saw the most evident uplift, including Universal’s Minions: The Rise Of Gru, which surged from sixth place to the top of the UK and Ireland box office in its 10th week of release.
Research data
Reid shares data from Comscore’s PostTrak service, where 82% of respondents attending National Cinema Day said they came because of the discount, and 68% declared they were more likely to return to the cinema in the future. Separate research, measuring all UK cinemagoers, not just the attending audience, suggested half of them had heard of National Cinema Day.
Despite the cash benefit to cinemas on September 3, Vue’s Leal insists, “This is not a short-term cash grab or popcorn revenue. This is about the long-term benefit of bringing people back into cinemas. If you want to increase awareness, if you want to improve industry morale and remind people that cinemas are here, that serves everyone, the cinemas and the studios equally.”
As for what happens next, Leal replies, “Ask me next year.” If it took a pandemic to get all the distributors and exhibitors to agree to reviving National Cinema Day, it is not clear if the benefits of widening audiences will remain sufficiently compelling if box office returns quickly to pre-pandemic levels. At Cinema First, however, Reid remains positive: “Discussions on the future of National Cinema Day are ongoing but current thinking is that we’ll look to hold it again at some point in 2023.”
As for following the model in other European countries and staging the event over several days, or twice a year, Reid is cautious. “There’s a need to take things at a sensible pace,” she says. “The impact of such events is diluted if they’re held too regularly or over too long a period, and we don’t want to devalue the experience.”
That view seems to chime with the studio perspective. “You wouldn’t want to do this too frequently, and it’s not something you want to build an expectation for,” says Huber. “My gut preference is to have it once a year. Let’s see how the market evolves.”
No comments yet