Report: Concerns as Nollywood’s cinema market share shrinks

A new report has raised concerns about the “shrinking” cinema market share for Nigerian movies.

Inside Nollywood, a film industry publication, released its second quarter issue for the year 2022 on Friday.

The report, backed by data from the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria (CEAN), revealed an analysis of films shown across Nigerian cinemas and how much of the viewing audience is consuming Nollywood movies.

It put Nollywood’s cinema market share at 25.8% as of the first half (H1) of 2022, a drop from 39.3% in H1 2021.

The publication said this is despite that, in both years, total cinema admissions stayed at 1.49 million with 7000 more in 2022.

The little increase, it added, was in favour of Hollywood titles, with most cinema-goers avoiding Nollywood films.

The report said the 2022 drop is an all-time low despite the industry’s seemingly upward curve in recent years.

“Year in, year out, the industry had flirted with about 40 percent market share while a large chunk of the remaining 60 percent was held by Hollywood,” the report read.

“In the first half of 2022, just 25.8 percent of the current cinema market share is held by Nollywood. As the industry recovered from the brutal pandemic lockdown in 2021, it still managed to snag about 39.3 percent.

“But [it] surprisingly has failed to hold its own in 2022, with relaxed COVID restrictions and growing global attention.

“In the first half of 2021, about 1,491,530 tickets were sold and Nollywood was able to clinch 964,523.

“Meanwhile, out of the 1,498,934 tickets sold in the first half of 2022, Nollywood sold about 520,656 which is a 46 percent decrease from the previous year.”

The report attributed the decline to what it described as the hype-over-content tendencies in Nollywood.

It said this has led to constant disappointment among cinema-goers.

“With the introduction of streaming, it is cheaper to hedge all your Nollywood gamble on one platform, which costs less than N5000 monthly than go through traffic and spend at least N2000 per film (outside other costs),” it added.

“The audience is afraid to keep gambling and the economy does not make it easier to throw more money to
the wind.”

You can access the full report here.