In the first half of the year, several high-profile Nollywood films, including “The Man of God,” “Blood Sisters,” and “Chief Daddy 2,” made their streaming platform debuts, bringing the audience with them. Experts blame this movie for the low attendance at movie theaters.
These movies are reportedly a part of the expanding library of content available on the various streaming services that have recently been introduced in Nigeria, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
In the fourth quarter of 2021, Amazon officially launched into the nation and started commissioning its slate of programming, joining Netflix and Showmax in the home-based IrokoTV network.
According to the film industry publication The Industry by Inside Nollywood, Nollywood’s cinema market share decreased in the first half of 2022.
It decreased from 39.3% in the same period from 2021 to 28.5 in 2022.
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“With the advent of streaming, it is more cost-effective to package all your Nollywood wagers on one platform, which costs less than N5,000 monthly, than to go through traffic and spend at least N2,000 per film,” the newspaper observes (outside other costs).
“The audience is hesitant to continue gambling, and the state of the economy makes it difficult to lose additional money.
This is why, in the hopes that other industry participants will take note, they show allegiance to films that are significantly less disappointing.
Anita Eboigbe, co-publisher of the Inside Nollywood publication, commented on the data and told NAN that “there are two challenges here.
“The first is that general moviegoing attendance is not increasing. Except for 2020, the first half of each year has seen the sale of around 1.5 million tickets during the past three years.
“The amount stays the same every year, with just minor variations in market shares among the businesses.
“The second is Nollywood’s declining market share, which is worrying given that it disproves the argument for having numerous sources of income and further slows down the process of acquiring customers for films in Nigeria,” she added.
Eboigbe continued by stating that the method used for distributing movies is gradually losing its appeal among creators.
“The returns are not what they were advertised to be, and they do not appear to be getting better anytime soon, which is the main reason. Distributors and exhibitors do not, however, appear sufficiently frightened to take aggressive action.
NAN
