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Can the film industry halt the decline of young audiences in cinemas?

18 November '19 22 Comments on Can the film industry halt the decline of young audiences in cinemas?

Industry watchers (and regular readers) will know that there is an increasing concern in the film business about the declining cinema attendance among young people.  Teenagers and young adults have always formed the biggest group of cinema attendees and yet we have seen a decline in many countries in the current decade.

Last week, I ran a symposium for senior industry figures in UK cinema, supported by Into Film.  In attendance were representatives from the biggest cinema chains, distributors, public bodies, industry bodies and some big names from film production.  The event was a private forum for executives to share their experiences, ideas and solutions with the aim of increasing cinema attendance among young people.  (Note: We observed the Chatham House Rule, meaning that I can share what was said but not who said it.  This proved vital in the discussion of the topic and for the freeflow of ideas).

To aid the debate, I worked with Liora Michlin to prepare two new reports on the topic:

  • A literature review of 47 existing studies into young audiences, summarising and collating the key findings.
  • A survey of 1,000 11-to-15-year-olds in the UK, looking at their attitudes and interactions with cinema-going.

The full papers are available to download at the links above but I thought I would pick out nine choice tidbits and three primers on the topic.  We’re going to address three questions:

  1. What is happening to cinema attendance among young people?
  2. Why does this matter?
  3. What can be done to regain younger audiences?

What is happening to cinema attendance among young people?

  • Ever fewer young people are visiting UK cinemas. Between 2011 and 2017, UK cinema admissions were close to static (a 0.6% decline) whereas admissions from 15- to 24-year-olds fell by 20.6%.
  • It’s not just the UK. Many other countries have seen a decline, including major markets such as the US and Germany.  The International Union of Cinemas (UNIC) reports that the average age of a cinema-goer in 2001 was 38.3 years old, whereas by 2016 it had risen to 42.6.
  • This trend is related to the cinema itself. There has been no comparable change in young people’s engagement with other major art forms.

The trend is best illustrated in the two charts below.  The UK data comes from Film Monitor via the BFI and the US data is from the MPAA.  (More on the data in the Notes section).

Why does this matter?

  • Young audiences are a key demographic for cinemas. 15- to 24-year-olds make up a larger proportion of cinema audiences than any other age group – in 2017 they made up 28% of admissions in the UK, despite being only 12% of the population. In addition, young people are especially over-represented during opening weekends and opening week, and once they engage with a film they tend to be very active in all aspects of it.
  • Due to the social nature of cinema-attendance among young people, a small decline could spiral. One of the common reasons young people cite for not going to the cinema is not having people to go with them.  The network effect suggests that as fewer young people attend cinemas, their remaining pro-cinema peers will have even fewer people to go with, creating a vicious cycle further depressing demand.
  • Cinema-going habits are formed young and remain as we age.  If the current generation of young people disengages with cinema-going in a big way then it is unlikely they will attend cinemas in the decades to come. This also extends to the appreciation of film as an art-form (assuming that these non-cinema attending young people are not replacing their cinema viewing with equally-reverent movie watching on other platforms).

Using BFI and ONS data we can see that young people hugely over-index for cinema admissions.

What can be done to regain younger audiences?

In our survey of 1,000 11-to-15-year-olds, we asked all sorts of questions around attendees and behaviours towards cinema attendance.  I suggest you read the full report as I can only scratch the surface here.  Nonetheless, I want to highlight three strong findings which suggest actions the industry can take to make cinema more attractive to young audiences.

  • Reduce the actual (or perceived) cost of a cinema trip. Spending money and socio-economic factors are very strong predictors of cinema attendance.  In particular, a group we call ‘potential cinema-goers’ (i.e. those who like visiting the cinema, live near one but who don’t go often) typically have less spending money and are from lower socio-economic backgrounds.  This means that lower ticket prices are likely to increase cinema attendance among young people.  The research also highlighted that it’s not just the actual cost of the trip which matters but also the perception that cinema is expensive.  Therefore, increasing the perceived value of a cinema visit could have a positive effect on attendance.
  • Tackle the struggles of organising a trip to the cinema. For regular cinema-attendees, friends/family having different film tastes is a strong block to going more often. Facilitating group outings for those held back by the film tastes of their friends is an opportunity to increase attendance, such as through film clubs or social mixers.  Furthermore, a commonly cited barrier to cinema attendance is how hard it can be to organise a cinema trip and so anything cinemas can do to help with this is likely to have a strong positive effect.
  • Enhance the whole experience of a cinema trip, beyond just the movie being screened. The research shows that sociability is the key selling point of cinema for young people.  This means that the whole experience before, during and after the screening is taken into account when assessing whether to visit.  Cinema attendance is likely to be increased via things like sofas in the lobby, discounts on post-cinema activities (i.e. ten pin bowling), access to social eating facilities (whether on-site or nearby), etc.

A bonus note on programming

So far there has been no discussion of the films on offer.  This is partly because younger audiences care much less about which movies are playing than older audiences (hence the state of modern Hollywood blockbusters) and partly because cinemas don’t have a great deal of choice in what to show.

In theory, there are a large number of movies they can screen, as there are over 900 new movies released each year in the UK.  However, in practice, the vast majority of tickets sold are for the biggest studio movies with massive marketing budgets and the most famous names.  This means that if cinemas want to be able to pay their rent and staff, they have to be offering whatever major release opens each week.

However, our survey of young people did throw up one programming suggestion.

Boys go to the cinema more often than girls, but there is no difference in the proportion that have not been to the cinema at all in the past month. i.e. boys are more likely to be repeat cinema-goers. There was no difference in the perception of cinema as a most valued local facility, suggesting that the difference in levels of attendance between genders isn’t due to attitudes towards the cinema-going experience.  Girls especially felt that the barrier to going more often is that cinemas were not showing films they wanted to see.

This suggests that more films targeted towards young women will increase cinema admissions among that group.

Notes

The literature review and new research together run over 62 pages and so I have heavily summarised the work for this article.  If I have made a claim or quoted a statistic in this article which you would like to know more about, please take a look at the reports for the source, details, context and caveats.  This blog is read by people in many different areas of film and some just want headlines.  If you would like to go deeper, I highly recommend you refer to the reports rather than the article, just for the sake of being complete.

The data showing the percentage of young people in cinema audiences across the UK and Domestic markets are measuring subtly different things.  The UK data come from the Film Monitor survey via the BFI Yearbook.  It is gathered via exit polls of audiences seeing a selection of top films each year.  The US and Canadian data cames via MPAA annual reports, and covers “tickets sold”.

I don’t wish to imply that this is an uncontroversial or inevitable decline.  One of the views expressed by a knowledgeable executive in the exhibition sector at the event was that there isn’t really a problem in the UK.  They pointed out that the decline is from a high base (i.e. in 2011, The Inbetweeners was a huge success with young audiences) and that young audiences are returning to the cinema at the level of the early 2000s.  I would say that their views are in the minority among fellow film professionals but they are certainly not alone or without merit.  It could well be that this is a minor cyclical blip which will naturally rebound in the fullness of time.

It’s also true that there is nothing the film industry likes more than a declaration of doom and gloom – the UK industry especially!  The history of the film business is that of crying “Agh! The good times are over“, whether it be the introduction of television, pre-recorded videos, piracy, streaming, sequels or people enjoying superhero movies.

I’m extremely grateful to Into Film for their tireless support of the research and of the event.  None of it would have been possible without their encouragement, work, resources and financial backing.  Not only that, but this symposium took place during their month-long annual festival in which they hold screenings and events for over half a million school children across the UK.  Chatting to Into Film staff on the day, I learned that our symposium was taking place at the same moment as almost 400 other events throughout the UK. Yikes!

I’m also very grateful to my co-author Liora Michlin, without whom the research and event would not have taken place.

Epilogue

It’s impossible to know what the future holds for film and for cinema-going.  There’s no doubt that the world is changing in so many ways. The opportunities and pressures on young people today are so different from those of the past century that it seems extremely unlikely that cinema attendance will remain completely unchanged.  However, despite the massive shifts we’ve seen in technology, social interactions and societal norms, young people will always need fun ways to be social in the real world.

One possible outcome is that the current trends continue and we see further fragmentation of the cinema into two ever-more-different experiences:

  • “Spectacle cinema” – Big blockbuster films get bigger, dominate more of the space in multiplexes and cinemas focus on brighter, louder shared experiences designed to provide visual and audible awe.  We’ve seen how successful this can be for recent movies in the Marvel and Star Wars franchises.
  • “Premium cinema” – Plusher cinemas offer arthouse fare and unique experiences.  Patrons pay a higher ticket price than those in the ‘spectacle cinemas’ and in return receive a premium experience, watch less spectacle-driven programming, with live elements.  The Everyman cinema chain has profited from this approach in the UK and we can see examples of the programming from Secret Cinema and NT Live theatre performances.

The former is likely to skew younger, due to the types of the movies on offer and the social aspect of simultaneous shared experiences, both on- and offline.  The latter would skew older, due to the increased cost, the mature setting and the movies on offer.

Who knows if this will come to pass.  What is certain is that all aspects of the film industry flourish when they are connected to their audiences and what they want to pay for.

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Comments

22 comments
  1. Stephen. I designed, years ago, a full change that all cinemas need. I presented it to one chain and got no response. I have some new info I have added. If you would like to see it, let me know. Dawn Brown

  2. “a commonly cited barrier to cinema attendance is how hard it can be to organise a cinema trip and so anything cinemas can do to help with this is likely to have a strong positive effect.”

    What good look like if you solved this? I’m not sure what a cinema is doing wrong or right for that feedback to be something the exhibitors can respond to in the right way

    1. Hi Stuart. Great question. I don’t have fixed, costed suggestions which could be used tomorrow. Running a cinema is a balancing act of all sorts of factors and audiences. However, this particular note could be dealt with in a few ways:

      * The manner in which people buy tickets (i.e. there is little to no centralised ticketing system in the UK with way Fanadago dominates the US market)
      * It’s pretty much impossible for third parties to buy tickets, making group-organised outings harder
      * Times are set and announced so close to the screening that planning is hard
      * Apps and sites often crash when there’s a high demand (Start Wars, etc) adding to the memory of frustration.
      * Social spaces outside cinemas might make meeting at set times less critical.
      * Changes to the in-lobby buying experience (which has currently been optimised to reduce staff costs, not customer experience).

      Finally, this might be as much about perception as reality. Personally I find the poor experience when pre-buying tickets so frustrating that it colours my overall feelings towards buying tickets generally. Small, targeted, nudge-based actions could be all that’s needed (i.e. broken window theory).

      The supermarket Tesco went through a big change like this a decade or so ago. They created internal slogans and policies to help improve the customer journey. Things like “The aisles are clear at Tesco” and “Every customer offered help” [at the till]. These became almost mantras and overall added to the almost imperceptible feeling that Tesco was a better shopping experience than rivals.

  3. I would love to know your thoughts on other possible metrics of cinephilia, as per this article: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/01/audiences-2018-netflix-first-reformed-mandy-1202030186/

    I don’t know if the theatrical experience is essential to “the appreciation of film as an art-form.” More movies are being watched then ever before and I certainly have one young person in my home who is a bigger movie snob than anyone I know 🙂

    I would love to have you do a dive into the other ways this love of arthouse and indie films could be measured.

    1. Hi Annelise. A great link on a fascinating topic. I don’t have data on this and so I might refrain from proffering an opinion. I certainly have one as a film fan but this is something we all need to figure out individually, or to find shared, objective data to inform our views.

  4. Your research shows a more concerning situation in the disproportionate level of 55+ age group, 30% of population only being 12% of cinemagoers. That’s an age-group that truly grew up in the cinema, a decline in boomer attendance could be devastating for cross-over and arthouse theatres.

    1. Hi Andy. You’re totally right that older audiences make up a much smaller percentage of cinema audiences than they do of the general population. But the good news is that it’s rising, pretty quickly too. Historically, cinema was a pursuit of the young (children and younger adults) whereas in the past decade or so we’ve seen greater numbers of older people making the trip. This is likely down to a number of factors, including:

      * An ageing population mean that the “55+” demographic has more people;
      * Longer life expectancy, meaning people are healthier and around for long;
      * Baby boomers were brought up on cinema and cinema trips;
      * Rise of boutique cinemas, with can be prohibitively expensive to teenagers;
      * A increase in film options aimed at the older audience such as The Great Marigold Hotel, Kings Speech, etc.

  5. Nooooo… I am a young person. We don’t go to cinemas because 2 thing has changed over time. #1 is Technology!! Meaning, I have an incredible TV at home (better blacks, better color, and BIGGER for *cheaper than ever*) AND access to streaming services (so I can stop a bad show at anytime and change it too). Impossible to beat.

    Why should I go all the way to the cinema (traffic, pay tickets, expensive snacks) when I have all it has to offer already at home?

    Answer is… None. I won’t go.

    ADDED ON THAT is perhaps a second point. This generation now values a HEALTHY LIFESTYLE. Meaning, young people do NOT want to visit a cinema to *sit* for 2 hours in *silence* with their friends. Our generation does not like to SIT at ALL! When we go out, we are sporty, we attend ‘soul cycle’ classes and the likes, all while being socially engaged. NOT turning out the lights….

    I believe these are the two most important factors that have dramatically impacted cinema attendance. And because these two changes are unlikely to change back in the future, I find it hard to expect anything to change for cinema. Cinema, like other brick and mortar, are dead. RIP.

    1. Hi Nadia. Thanks for adding your perspective. The industry certainly needs to listen to your generation more.

      I would say that you’ve explained the decline, whereas the industry is focused on what actions they can take. You may well be right, but they still need do their best.

    2. I would partially agree with Nadia. I think that, to survive, cinemas will have to evlove into something new, something that could create a totally unique expericence to attendees. Maybe, it could be a blend of cinema and something else, like a big culture club.

  6. Hi Stephen, I would dispute the assertion that ‘ever fewer young people are visiting UK cinemas’. The latest Kantar TGI data showed that 89.6% of 15-24s were cinemagoers in 2019, as opposed to 82.5% in 2009. Frequency has declined but the number of 15-24s has increased.

  7. They do. The figure rose from 82.5% in 2009 to 92% in 2016 and this year was 89.6%. I can email you the full figures, if you’d like?

  8. I think you’re on the wrong track. People aren’t going to the cinema, not because of the cinema, but because the general standard of the movie industry has declined in recent decades. One thing is clear from looking at movie scores on rotten tomatoes, people do NOT like remakes, yet this is what Hollywood pumps out on conveyor belts. People are also becoming pig sick of the seemingly endless super-hero movies. Hollywood has no imagination and works to a corporate formula. I saw this same phenomenon in the music industry during the late 1980’s, with producers such as Stock, Aitken & Waterman, pumping out acts and records pressed into a formula that the public got sick of fast. As a result and almost in disgusted response to the state of music in the 80’s, we saw the true youth rise in the 90’s with the introduction of acts like oasis, and Blur and The Prodigy.

    The movie industry needs to go through that same level of change, as those who are at the head of it lack imagination and have lost their way. I’m hoping for a breakthrough of maverick directors and independant studio’s.

    What happened to Stock, Aitken & Waterman after the 80’s? That particular formula died a natural death, made instantly obsolete by the fresher, more gutteral and imaginative acts of the 90’s. Hollywood I’m looking at you when I say I smell a corpse in the room.

  9. Young people don’t go to the cinema because we’re poor.

    We can barely afford food and rent, let alone the cinema. Also of note is the fact that if you go to the cinema there are other discrete costs. The cost of travel, parking, food, drink, as well as the tickets themselves.

    Boomer attendance is strong because they’re rolling in it. Despite working full time the only time I go to the cinema is with my retired mum! That’s because she pays for the tickets!

  10. The main reason for lack of attendance to the movies is the absence of good films.
    The film industry is to blame for their own demise.
    It’s all super heroes full of CGI and the rest is pure garbage.
    And yes, going to the movies has gotten expensive for a lot of people, so spending money in something that’s not worth seeing is the main problem in my humble opinion.
    Back in the 80’s and 90’s my friends and I used to go almost every weekend, now me and my friends go to the movies once or twice a year.

  11. Commenting from the other side of the world (Australia) so please don’t mind me.

    I lived in Brisbane for just under a decade and the only cinema there that was consistently packed was the South Bank Cineplex. Sure, one could argue that its proximity to the CBD, train and bus stations, South Bank Parklands and the city’s three major universities made it attractive but the big difference was price. The prices were ridiculously low and it was not uncommon for sessions to sell out. It was especially a huge hit with the young.

    Another noticeable trend is the lack of creativity for newly-released big budget films. Remakes and sequels everywhere except for the first few months of a calendar year when the Oscar contenders get a run. This could be in part due to the rise of streaming which may have drawn away much of the best writing talent (why condense a story into 120-180 mins when you can have a whole season?)

    That’s not to say cinemas can’t be saved. Lower ticket prices could have a good effect. The old argument would be 50 people paying $10 or 100 people paying $5? Ticket revenue would be the same but in the second scenario there’s an extra 50 people who would be tempted to buy snacks, drinks and merchandise. They might also fondly remember the buzz of being surrounded by others (granted not something people might appreciate right now but perhaps may be more appreciated post-Covid-19).

    Cinemas could also try to capture the binge watching market, perhaps striking deals with streaming services to do pre-release binges of popular shows. Smaller cinemas could cater for niches such as parents and young children, classic film, films from abroad, arthouse etc, and there’s also potential for hosting parties, fundraisers etc. Are any of these ideas practical? I don’t know. But it need not be doom and gloom.

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