BFI RESEARCH AND STATISTICS STATISTICS PUBLISHED AUGUST 2016 AUDIENCES Credit: The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved. AUDIENCES The audience lies at the heart of a vibrant and successful film economy and culture, yet current insight still provides a limited perspective on audience engagement. While data on cinema-going audiences is robust, new research is needed to show the full picture of the audience on all platforms. FACTS IN FOCUS Television remains the most popular platform for watching film in the UK, followed by DVD/Blu-ray and cinema. In 2015, 15-24 year olds made up the largest proportion of the UK cinema audience, at 29%. UK films were popular across all demographic groups, with a particularly strong appeal for those aged 45 and over. UK independent films were most popular among cinema-goers in this demographic. Pitch Perfect 2 had the largest above-average audience share among the 15-24 age group, while The Lady in the Van had the largest share among cinema-goers aged 55 and above. A wide range of genres appealed to women, whereas men were drawn to films with a strong action element. UK films attracted above-average audiences across all nations and regions, except the North West. Black and minority ethnic groups were over-represented among the cinema audience; disabled audiences were over-represented amongst physical video and digital consumers. AUDIENCES AUDIENCES FOR FILM IN THE UK In earlier editions of the Yearbook, we have been able to estimate the total size of the film audience in the UK based on data from a range of sources. In the last few years, however, while we have been able to track a significant growth in revenues for online services (see the Film on digital video report) we have been unable to define viewing figures for films accessed online via streaming or download-to-own. In an era where a multitude of platforms and devices for accessing film are now available to audiences, a recent survey conducted by Morris Hargreaves McIntyre provides a snapshot of how current audiences engage with film (Figure 1). Linear television was the most popular platform for accessing film, with 86% of respondents stating they had watched a film on television in the previous 12 months. DVD or Blu-ray was the next most popular, with 70% of respondents saying they had used this platform in the previous 12 months, followed by cinema-going, with 55%. Figure 1 Engagement with film by platform/device, 2015 % 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 y a d TV ablet T Cinem DVD/Blu-ra Smart phone eam/downloa Laptop/desktop Not watched film Str Platform/device 85.6 69.5 55.0 45.3 40.7 27.9 19.9 6.1 Source: Morris Hargreaves McIntyre Note: From Measuring Your Reach – a market study report for the British Film Institute. Survey conducted June 2015, survey population 3,000 adults (16+). In the remainder of this report, we look at UK cinema admissions by age, cinema-goers’ film preferences by age, gender, geographical location and socio-economic status, and film consumption by ethnicity and disability. BFI Statistical Yearbook BFI Statistical Yearbook 2016 3 CINEMA AUDIENCE BY AGE Figure 2 shows the age trends of cinema admissions from 2003 to 2015. The relative proportion of admissions for each category has been broadly similar throughout the time period, with fluctuations based on the release of a small number of successful titles with a strong appeal to particular age groups. However, between 2005 and 2011, there was an upward trend in the percentage of the audience drawn AUDIENCES from 15-24 year olds, with an increase from 26% to a peak of 35%. From 2012 the share for this group decreased, with 2015 recording a 10-year low of 29%. As a counter to this decline, the share of the audience associated with the older age groups (45 and over) has increased, most notably for cinema- goers aged 55 and over, due in part to the increased availability of films appealing to this demographic and their comparatively higher disposable income and leisure time. Interestingly, for most of the period the shares of admissions for 7-14 and 35-44 year olds have been very similar, which may be due to parents and carers taking their children to the cinema, a finding reflected in the next section showing films with above-average audiences for the different age groups. Figure 2 Age distribution of admissions, 2003-2015 % 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 7-14 12.4 17.8 15.1 17.2 18.1 15.8 17.9 13.6 14.6 14.4 12.9 14.4 13.6 15-24 30.2 26.0 26.5 31.6 29.6 31.7 30.7 31.8 34.8 33.5 32.5 30.8 29.4 25-34 21.7 20.1 19.9 19.0 17.0 18.5 19.0 23.3 19.3 18.1 19.4 18.0 18.7 35-44 14.9 18.2 17.4 16.0 17.0 15.6 16.1 14.0 14.8 15.8 16.1 15.9 16.3 45+ 20.8 17.9 21.1 16.1 18.3 - - - - - - - - 45-54 - - - - - 9.0 8.8 8.7 8.0 8.7 8.8 9.3 9.5 55+ - - - - - 9.4 7.5 8.7 8.3 9.4 10.4 11.5 12.5 Source: CAA, Film Monitor 2016 BFI Statistical Yearbook BFI Statistical Yearbook 4 FILM PREFERENCES BY AGE AUDIENCES Tables 1-6 outline films with a statistically significant above-average audience share across different age groups to show the range of films that appealed most to each group in 2015. That is to say, highlighting films where the difference between the average audience attendance and each age group attendance for a particular film is greater than a standard statistical threshold. UK films had a significant appeal across all age groups, particularly the older age groups. Animated features appealed most to the 7-14 age group with Home, Big Hero 6 and Minions having the highest significant above-average audiences. Family films and fantasies such as Pan and Cinderella also appealed strongly to this group (Table 1). While action and adventure films such as Fast & Furious 7, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 and Kingsman: The Secret Service dominated the list of films with the strongest appeal to 15-24 year olds, the music-based comedy Pitch Perfect 2 had the highest significant above-average audience. The ‘18’ certified Fifty Shades of Grey also had a high appeal with 30% of its audience comprised of young adults from this group (Table 2). Fifty Shades of Grey also appealed strongly to 25-34 year olds alongside many of the other titles that were popular with audiences from the 15-24 year old age group. (These groups were the only two to have above-average audiences for the Kray twins biopic, Legend, the top earning UK independent release of the year.) The film with the highest significant above-average audience share among 25-34 year olds was the action title Mad Max: Fury Road (Table 3). Family-friendly titles always feature highly among the most popular films with audiences from the 35-44 year old age group, which is made up of a high percentage of parents and carers. Releases with the most significant appeal to cinema-goers in this category in 2015 were Home, Hotel Transylvania 2 and Cinderella (Table 4). The only non-family film to achieve a significant above-average audience in this age category was Fifty Shades of Grey. A variety of genres were popular with cinema-goers in the two older age groups, both of which showed a strong preference for UK films. Releases attracting above-average audiences from both age groups included the latest James Bond outing, SPECTRE, as well as independent titles Far from the Madding Crowd and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The film with the highest single above-average audience across all age groups in 2015 was The Lady in the Van, which generated 74% of its audience from cinema-goers aged 55 and over (Tables 5 and 6). Table 1 Films with a significant above-average audience in the 7-14 age group, 2015 top 20 films and top UK films Title Age group % of film’s total audience Home 42 Big Hero 6 38 Minions 37 Inside Out 32 Hotel Transylvania 2 32 Shaun the Sheep the Movie (UK) 31 Pan (UK) 26 Into the Woods (UK) 26 Cinderella (UK) 24 7-14 age group share of top 20 and top UK audience (%) 16 BFI Statistical Yearbook 7-14 age group in total survey population (%) 14 Source: CAA Film Monitor Notes: ‘Audience’ in this table and throughout this chapter refers to film-going occasions. That is, if a person went to the cinema to see 10 films in the year, that person would have contributed 10 film-going occasions to the audience figures above, unless otherwise stated. Repeat visits to the same films are not recorded in Cinema Advertising Association (CAA) Film Monitor. CAA Film Monitor included 82 film titles (mostly mainstream) of the 759 theatrical releases in 2015. The Film Monitor survey is carried out via a fortnightly omnibus survey of over 1,000 adults and children aged 7+, of those who had been to the cinema in the last three months.