The expanding, shrinking, fascinating business of entertainment

The world of entertainment is fascinating. More interesting is it’s business. The recently released KPMG Media and Entertainment report shows that though some sectors of the entertainment industry are shrinking, the business of entertainment as a whole is growing. Newspapers, magazines are like old neglected parents. The ‘Badshah’ of entertainment, cinema and its younger brother TV have slimmed down and weakened a little while their newborn sibling, the digital platform has grown rapidly and thus benefited both cinema and TV.

Although demonetisation and GST hit the entertainment industry hard and the pace of its growth became sluggish but braving these jolts this industry showed a revenue of about ₹1,500 billion in the financial year of 2017-18.

The credit for this almost completely goes to the increasing digital user base and increase in digital advertising.  It is due to this huge surge on the digital platform that the entertainment industry could deal with the economic shocks of demonetisation and GST and still could record 10.9% growth in the financial year of 2018.

If we look at different sectors of media and entertainment, the print suffered the most due to the economic changes and the changes in our entertainment habits resulting in a mere 3.4% growth. Interesting thing is that the credit of this growth here went to the Hindi and regional press and the English newspapers showed just 1.5% of growth rate. Amid the expanding digital market and shrinking business of English press, it is expected that the print sector will register a growth of 5.9%

TV revenue too dampened a little. The TV advertisement revenue went down a little and the subscription revenue too took a hit, but still, the TV industry registered 10.3% growth and reached ₹224 billion.

After a few years of passive mood, the world of cinema showed some bright glimpses of growth. But here too the regional cinema (particularly Tami, Telugu and Malayalam) grew much more than Hindi cinema. Bollywood box office revenue almost remained. This sector grew at 9.6%

Now we come to the newest and nascent sector of entertainment- the digital platform. This sector expanded quite rapidly at a whopping 35% and its revenue reached ₹116.3 billion in the financial year of 2018. The obvious reason for its fast-paced growth is the huge increase in mobile phone users and the production of mobile-friendly web content. The rural population is increasingly using smartphones and the urban users are fast switching from TV serials to watching more gripping, mobile-friendly web content. This has resulted in the expansion of digital advertising too. This sector is likely to show a growth at 30.6%. The entertainment industry was saved from the slump majorly by this sector.

Stop a moment. There is another sector which is fast-expanding and has supported the entertainment business- and that is the gaming industry.  Growing access to smartphones and the decrease in data prices have prompted Indians to actively participate in digital/mobile gaming. This sector too registered a growth rate of 35% and a revenue of ₹43 billion. The 89 per cent of this revenue came from mobile gaming.

In all, the KPMG Media and Entertainment report reflects that the common Indian is now bored of reading newspapers and magazines, the tear-jerking, loud TV serials too are no longer capable of holding our attention, so now we have started looking for newer avenues of entertainment and digital content is being welcomed with open arms.