Pay-per-view preem cuts 'Sense' rentals
Short window slows down record-setting sales
After a big opening week, "The Sixth Sense" is still on track to become the biggest pay-per-view movie ever. But "Sixth Sense" saw its biggest week-to-week dropoff in video rentals just as the movie premiered on pay-per-view on April 27, only 30 days after the title set opening-week rental marks in videostores.
Rental revenue for "Sixth Sense" in its fifth week in vidstores dropped to $7.3 million for the week ended April 30, according to VSDA VidTrac. That’s a 39% decline, more than double the percentage drop the previous week.
In exchange for a guaranteed buy-rate, Disney struck a deal with the DirecTV satellite service and the cable industry’s digital pay-per-view service provider, iNDemand, to offer "Sixth Sense" to the digital PPV market more quickly than ever before for a movie of that size.
Although complete purchase information is not yet available from the systems offering the movie to some 11 million homes, iNDemand exec VP entertainment Mark Sonnenberg said initial reports indicate that buy-rates are tracking at record levels.
"I stick by my prediction that it is on course to become the biggest PPV movie ever," Sonnenberg said. He projects buy-rates by the end of the PPV run to be about 20%-25% or even higher, compared with buy-rates of close to 20% for "The Waterboy" and about 15% for "Saving Private Ryan."
DirecTV did not provide information about satellite buy-rates. Although there are many factors involved in the rate and extent of decline in rental activity on any particular video title, "Sixth Sense" had relatively little new competition during the week ending April 30. Fox’s "Fight Club," a much smaller movie in box office terms, surpassed "Sixth Sense" in its opening week in videostores last week. By comparison, the previous top-renting video title, Paramount’s "Double Jeopardy," dropped only 21% in its fifth week of release to $6.1 million against stiffer competition from "The Bone Collector."
"I think PPV is definitely going to eat into (the rental rates for ‘Sixth Sense’)," said Todd Zaganiacz of Video Zone in South Deerfield, Mass. "It depends, area to area, but we do see a dropoff from PPV."
But other retailers believe that the short window could help video rentals. "It’s something of a double-edged sword, because they advertise so heavily for PPV, it sometimes spikes rentals," said Michael Richards, head buyer for nine-store Massive Video in North Attleboro, Mass.
"Just like everyone in the industry, we would like to see bigger windows, but the (PPV) advertising sometimes helps."
