Will Blockbuster Survive?
Uh oh. Blockbuster may be on its last legs. The company has been struggling and recently took out a $250 million dollar loan to help pay off some of its debt. This morning, PC World published a story with the headline, Blockbuster May Shut Retail Stores.
There are 7,400 Blockbuster video stores around the world that could close if the video rental giant can’t complete the financing deals it needs to survive. Now that would really suck. I love the convenience of being able to go down the street browse through the latest releases and rent the latest Blu-ray.
Zip.ca is a good alternative to Blockbuster retail stores in Canada. The problem with Zip.ca is that you can’t always get your hands on the latest DVD. There’s nothing like walking into a store and grabbing a title off the shelf.
If Blockbuster does close its stores I think we’ll see video-on-demand take off. Unfortunately I think piracy will also take off but that’s another issue.
Posted in Movies at 2:57 PM
Comments
I find this rather ironic, after Blockbuster ruthlessly drove virtually all of the Mom & Pop video rental stores out of business over the last ten years or so.
So, what’s the problem? Are people simply not renting movies? With Blockbuster being pretty much the only game in town in most locales, is it the video rental industry in general that isn’t viable, or are they simply mismanaged?
Posted by: Paul on April 7, 2009 6:22 PM
Last year the movie industry had a record year at the box office and this year sales are up 14% yet the rental business is down.
I have no doubt that piracy is hurting the video rental business in a big way and specifically Blockbuster.
Blockbuster shelves only the most recent titles. Their biggest competitor is rapidshare.org and bit torrents. If you want the latest movie at the best price (free) you download it illegally.
Netflix and Zip.ca use a long tail model and rent a lot of niche titles in their large catalog. Are they competitors to Blockbuster? I don’t really think so. Hollywood Video and other video rental chains have disappeared because the business has changed.
So what’s the problem with the video rental industry? I think that is an excellent question and one that needs to be addressed in a new blog post in more detail.
Posted by: jay 
on April 7, 2009 9:56 PM
Blockbuster is in peril because people concerned about piracy are refusing to rent my movies.
Posted by: Johnny Depp on April 10, 2009 4:25 AM
