BSkyB In Bid To Buy UGC Cinemas To Push Digital Offerings
BSkyB is reported to be trying to move into the UK cinema market by buying six multiplex cinemas from UGC in an attempt to push forward and market Sky Digital.
The satellite giant is said to be holding talks with owner of the UGC cinema chain, US private equity firm, Blackstone Group, over the possibility of purchasing six complexes.
The US group has agreed with the Office of Fair Trading to sell half a dozen of its Cineworld chain, with BSkyB thought to be bidding £30 million to secure them, according to Broadcast.
Industry speculation is that the broadcaster will use them to help promote Sky Digital, with the aim to reach ten million subscribers by 2010.
According to BSkyB’s latest results, Sky+ households added 118,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2005 to reach 888,000. Multiroom households enjoyed similarly strong growth, rising by 82,000 in the same period, reaching a total of 645,000 for the full year (see BSkyB Reports Record Profits For Full Year).
Multiplex cinemas offer a variety of marketing opportunities to a captive audience, allowing Sky to showcase its digital offerings as well as demonstrate new services such as high definition TV (HDTV).
Sky is already informing consumers about HDTV through its website www.sky.com/hd, which claims that the broadcaster will introduce a new set-top box to accommodate the high definition signals, with all HD boxes equipped with a hard drive and Sky+ features – ready to be activated by customers’ relevant subscriptions (see Sky Gives Sneak Peak Of HDTV Launch).
BSkyB has also appointed i-level to help drive continued growth in sales of Sky digital and Sky+ via its sky.com website (see Sky Appoints i-Level To Drive Subscriber Growth).
Using cinema as an advertising and information medium however, would help the marketing push even further. According to the latest figures from Nielsen Media Research, UK cinema adspend enjoyed a 7.9% increase year on year and totalled £66 million in terms of revenue for the January to June period (see UK Cinema Adspend Beats Other Media).
All other display media experienced an average increase of 3.8% in revenue for the first half of 2005, with press achieving 2.4% growth and television 5%.
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