Nigeria’s box office revenue rebounds after cash crunch

Nigeria’s box office raked in ₦441 million from ticket sales across the country’s cinemas in March.

Opeyemi Ajayi, chairman of the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria (CEAN), revealed this in Lagos.

The CEAN boss was speaking about what he described as a rebound in the country’s monthly box office revenue.

In the lead-up to the February 25 presidential and national assembly polls, the central bank redesigned the Naira.

An initial phasing out of the old notes and a delay in the circulation of the new currency caused cash scarcity.

Citizens faced palpable hardship in withdrawing cash from banking halls and ATMs for their domestic needs.

Ajayi said the total admission of viewers into cinemas across Nigeria for March 2023 was 174,071.

He said this amounted to ₦441,752,914 in box office revenue.

The CEAN boss said these figures are an improvement from the ₦278 million recorded in February 2023.

“For March, we had total sales of ₦441,752,914 across all cinemas with 174,071 viewers admission,” Ajayi said.

“Sales in March were encouraging compared with February when we recorded total sales of ₦278 million due to activities of the presidential and national assembly elections as well as the national problem of cash crunch.”

For January, CEAN earlier stated that it recorded ticket sales worth ₦819 million across cinemas in Nigeria.

The association similarly revealed that it generated ₦6.94 billion in revenue for 2022.

Unlike the ₦4.74 billion recorded in 2021, it said this amounts to a 46.4% YOY growth and a post-COVID rebound.

CEAN reported ₦5.98 billion in cinema revenue for 2018, ₦6.4 billion for 2019, and ₦2.1 billion for 2020.

But an analysis would later attribute the ₦6.94 billion total recorded by the end of 2022 to a ticket price hike.