According to a new report from Technavio, the global theatre management system (TMS) market will grow at a CAGR of 9.75% from 2015-2020, sliding into a billion-dollar position with a total market value of $1.03 billion by 2020.
A TMS is software that helps manage a movie theater. This includes handling operations like scheduling, content distribution, playback monitoring, status monitoring, time, and content management.
At the moment, the APAC region has the smallest market share, but will experience the fastest growth through the forecast period.
On the surface, the growth can be chalked up to a large number of theatrical releases, as well as a relatively large number of viewers in the region.
Interested in media and entertainment services? Check out Technavio’s full report library
If you look a bit closer, India emerges as a key country in this already booming area. In 2012 alone, the country produced 1,602 films—that’s more than the US and China combined. However, in the same year, India had only 10 screens per million viewers, whereas the US had 120 screens per million.
Luckily, the number of multiplexes in India has grown in the past few years. While it was just 900 in 2012, it hit 2,000 in 2015.
The large and growing viewer base in the country (and in the APAC region in general) will certainly give impetus to theatre owners to expand single- or dual-screen cinema theaters to multiplexes, which will in turn drive uptake of TMS.
Popularity of films and shifting focus from developed to emerging markets will cement market growth through 2020
The other reasons for high adoption of TMS are relatively simple—films are becoming more popular than ever, with countries like China registering double-digit box office growth in 2014. And there’s a lot of pressure on cinema owners to open more screens in order to tap into the lucrative market.
More screens means more to organize, which has led to adoption of TMS to manage show times, and track tickets, seating, and other content like commercials.
Additionally, these systems have reached saturation in developed markets, which is leading vendors like Arts Alliance Media, Dolby Laboratories, GDC Technology, Sony Digital Cinema, Unique Digital, and Ymagis to re-focus onto emerging market.
The saturation in the US is above 95%, and above 85% in both the UK aned Germany, which has limited demand in these otherwise large markets.
But with penetration rates of TMS as low as 50% in countries like Japan, Thailand, China, and India, the market opportunities in these areas are huge; increased interest from vendors over the forecast period will be a key trend to watch in the global theatre management system market.
