Cinema admissions in Scandinavia and the Baltic region will top 60 million by 2005, whilst the Central and Eastern European region looks set to outperform the industry with new cinema developments. These are some of the the findings of new reports by industry analysts Dodona Research.
Baltic region The fastest growing markets will be in the Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where cinema development is just beginning to take hold.
Estonia’s first multiplex opened in Tallinn in March 2001, while a 15-plex is on the drawing board for Riga, Latvia late next year. The largest of the Baltic States, Lithuania, was last to attract interest in cinema development. However, three multiplexes are now being planned.
Scandinavia The Scandinavian markets are more mature and offer relatively limited expansion opportunities, says Dodona.
The exception is Norway, where the dominant municipal cinema sector is being privatised piecemeal, creating competition among private investors and exhibitors from other countries in the region to capture market share in what is, after Iceland, the region’s second highest cinema-attending nation.
Central and Eastern Europe Cinema growth in Central and Eastern Europe is forging ahead, despite lacklustre figures elsewhere, according to Dodona. Updated research shows admissions rising in seven out of the ten countries covered in the report.
Expansion of the market is being fuelled by the spread of multiplexes across the region. With a number of new developments taking place and in the pipeline, prospects in the region are considered bright by Dodona.
“In contrast to some of the disappointments elsewhere, we have found ourselves upgrading some of our forecasts for this region,” says the report’s author Katharine Wright.
