Brits Prefer James Bond to Babies as Q1 Video Sales Drop

15 May, 2017 By: Erik Gruenwedel

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Sales of DVD and Blu-ray Disc movies in the United Kingdom for the 12-week period ended March 12 declined 13% compared to the previous-year period, according to from Kantar Worldpanel.

The international research group attributed the revenue drop in part to year-over-year comparisons of James Bond sequel Spectre (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment) with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment’s Bridget Jones’s Baby in the current period.

Daniel Craig’s latest turn as Agent 007 generated two-times the sales of the sequel to 2001's Bridget Jones’s Diary, according to Kantar.

Notably, Spectre generated $36 million in combined DVD/Blu-ray Disc sales in the United States, compared with less than $3 million for Bridget Jones’s Baby, according to The-Numbers.com.

Kantar reported that despite an overall decline, video is experiencing strong growth among older consumers, accounting for 18% of sales.

“This is the highest market share ever recorded by this demographic during the first quarter of the year,” James Brown, consumer insight director at Kantar Worldpanel, said in a statement. “Clearly keen to share the movie experience with loved ones, the majority of shoppers over 60 purchased video to gift or to watch with their partner.”

Top-selling titles included Inferno (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Fox).

Interestingly, British grocery giant Tesco beat out Amazon and HMV for top video retailer with 17.2% market share. Amazon remained top overall retailer of combined music, video and video games with 17.8% market share — down 2.7% from a year ago.

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