Day-and-date releases boost November VOD

DIGITAL: Thanksgiving weekend had highest transactions in history

By Jennifer Netherby -- Video Business, 12/4/2009

DEC. 4 | DIGITAL: Video-on-demand rentals shot up 18% in November compared to last year as studios packed more major day-and-date DVD and VOD releases into the month than ever before, according to preliminary numbers from Rentrak.

By far the biggest VOD rental boost came Thanksgiving weekend, when Four Christmases, Angels & Demons, G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra and Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs all debuted on VOD.

“Thanksgiving week was our single highest week ever for transactional movies and VOD,” Comcast senior VP and general manager of video and entertainment services Derek Harrar said.

Transactions across cable and satellite VOD providers were up 61% Thanksgiving week over the previous week and up 15% from Thanksgiving 2008, Rentrak said.

But Thanksgiving week wasn’t the only one to get a boost, as studios released day-and-date titles each week in November. Transactions were up 9% for each of the three weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.

Rentrak wouldn’t disclose the number of transactions. VOD is growing fast, but it is still a miniscule business compared to DVD, with overall VOD revenue projected to be $1.9 billion in 2009, according to some estimates.

Warner’s Four Christmases ($120 million box office) was the most popular title over the holiday weekend, followed by Sony’s Angels & Demons ($133 million), both day-and-date releases.

The other three titles in the top five—Funny People, My Sister’s Keeper and The Ugly Truth—also were day-and-date releases.

Comcast and other cable and VOD companies have said that releasing films day and date drives VOD rentals. The charts seemed to bear that out. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($402 million), G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra ($150 million) and Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs ($196.7 million) all had bigger box-office takes than the top five releases, but all debuted on VOD after DVD, and didn’t perform as well as those titles with day-and-date releases.

Though Warner has said its day-and-date releasing has shown that VOD rentals don’t cut into DVD sales, other studios are approaching simultaneous releases with more hesitancy.

Sony, which released three day-and-date titles on VOD in November as part of a test, said it was too early to discuss results.

More than 110 films have been offered on VOD day and date with the disc this year, compared to 76 films in 2008 and 15 in 2007.

Comcast’s Harrar said the company has found that consistently offering content at the same place with the same release window has been the single biggest thing to drive on-demand transactions. “Essentially, what’s happening with day and date is people are starting to count on it,” he said.

Asked if Comcast would use November’s results to push for more day-and-date releases from studios, Harrar said that’s no longer necessary.

“Everything about this model is really working,” he said. “It’s certainly true a month like November helps it even more. “We’re at the point where we don’t have to take a victory lap.”