The European Audiovisual Observatory releases its first estimates for European cinema attendance in 2016. Building on a strong 2015, the Observatory estimates that total admissions in the European Union continued to grow, increasing by 1.6% to 994 million tickets sold in 2016. This is 16 million more than in 2015 and the highest level registered in the EU since 2004. Including non-EU territories in Europe, 2016 actually saw the highest admission levels of the past decades with estimated record admissions of over 1.27 billion tickets.
Geographically speaking the growth in EU cinema attendance was primarily driven by a strong year-on-year performance in France (+7.4 million, +3.6%), Poland (+7.4 million, +16.6%), Spain (+7.2 million, +7.5%) and Italy (+5.8 million, +5.4%). It’s also worth mentioning the record levels registered in the Czech Republic (+2.7 million, +20.6%) and the Slovak Republic (+1.1 million, +23.4%) which represent the highest levels in recent history. Indeed only two EU markets registered a significant decline in admissions: in Germany cinema attendance dropped by -18.1 million (-13.0%), partly due to a drop in admissions to local films, and the UK registered a 2.1% decline losing 3.7 million ticket sales compared to 2015.
Outside the EU, the Russian market jumped by 9.6% to 191 million after three years of stagnating admission levels. This is the highest level achieved in recent history and further strengthens Russia’s position as the second largest European market in terms of admissions. Turkey, the sixth largest European cinema market, saw its admissions declining for the second year in a row with cinema attendance falling by 3.6% from 60.5 million to 58.3 million tickets sold. Norway on the other hand registered the highest cinema attendance in 40 years with admissions increasing by 9% to 13.1 million.
Cinema data – click for higher resolution
