The premium transactional market saw rapid growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, offering a way to monetise content effectively when many theatres were closed. At the time, the demand was clearly there for a timely way to watch the latest movies at home, and so studios in the US have continued to experiment and grow this type of windowing strategy.
Movie Tracker reveals that most studios saw their biggest growth in PVOD activity in 2023 in the US, with Lionsgate, Paramount and NBCUniversal experiencing the most growth. Sony continues to be selective with its PVOD strategy and therefore is the only studio to actually release proportionately less titles on PVOD/PEST compared to 2022.
NBCUniversal had the most PVOD activity for 2023 movies, with its own hit, ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’, coming out on PVOD a month and a half after its theatrical release. Disney’s PVOD activity has been limited to an early release of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’, although releasing it at a more traditional TVOD pricing. This is contrary to Disney’s typical release strategy, that usually sees a title only come to transactional within a fortnight of its eventual release for Disney+.
Despite the high levels of PVOD activity, its presence in the best performing movies at the box office was much more limited. For runaway box office successes, it can be best to not undermine their theatrical run with an early release on transactional. Some studios like Warner, adopted a best of both worlds approach, releasing ‘Barbie’ past the traditional premium transactional period but at a premium price.
Movie releasing is a delicate balancing act where too much prioritisation on one window may serve to undermine another. If a movie is released on transactional early, it may undermine its box office. While transactional premieres occurring around the same time as a Pay-One release may deny additional revenue from transactional, it should help boost the value proposition of a studio’s D2C service.
Studios have yet to settle into a defined strategy around PVOD/PEST, and so further experimentation is to be expected in 2024 in both the US and abroad. Despite this, in general, almost 80% of respondents in our annual TV Industry Trends survey agreed that whilst they will be shorter, traditional windowing patterns will return. 54% also agreed that D2C Studios would premiere on owned services for a short exclusive period before going co-exclusive with 3rd-parties.
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