China's holiday box office plunges by 23% as theaters push prices to record highs

cnbc.com:

BEIJING — Chinese consumer spending on movies plunged during the Lunar New Year holiday last week as theaters raised prices to record highs.

The seven-day holiday that ended Sunday is typically the biggest week of the year for new movie releases in China, the largest box office in the world. Eight Chinese-made films debuted this year.

However, the total holiday box office of 6.04 billion yuan ($951.1 million) marked a drop of 23% compared to 7.84 billion yuan for the same period in 2021, according to online ticketing site Maoyan.

Tickets were on average 8% more expensive this year versus last year, the data showed. The average price per ticket on one day during the holiday reached 56 yuan ($8.80), the highest on record going back to 2017.

«A lot of consumers were complaining [it was] unaffordable for the entire family to see [a] movie,» said Gao Huan, Beijing-based managing director at consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal. «Moviegoers, especially those who have a lower willingness to pay, actually decided to stay at home instead of going to the cinema.»

Covid-related travel restrictions and neighborhood lockdowns have weighed on Chinese consumer spending over the last two years.

Overall tourism consumption during the holiday was 3.9% lower than in 2021 — at 289.12 billion yuan, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. That's well below pre-pandemic levels, and about 56.3% of tourism consumption in 2019, data showed.

Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura, pointed out that this year's drop in the holiday box office comes off a high base in 2021, when the Lunar New Year coincided with Valentine's Day.

Covid-related restrictions and generally weak consumer demand made it even more difficult for ticket sales to