Toronto- Retailers of CDs and DVDs may be struggling to cope with downloadable entertainment, iPods and video on demand, but there is one sector of the home entertainment industry that is apparently flourishing: pornography.
In the United States, sales and rentals of DVD porn movies are on the rise, and the adult-entertainment business is stepping out of the shadows with predictions revenues will reach US$12.6-billion this year, according to a report this week from California-based Adult Video News.
“Because the majority of [adult entertainment] companies are privately held, hard numbers are difficult to ascertain,” said Paul Fishbein, publisher of AVN. “But when you add up all the segments, from video to magazines to strip clubs and Internet, a number that approaches US$13-billion seems logical.”
Overall expenditure on buying and renting adult videos in the United States grew from US$2.1-billion in 1993 to more than US$4-billion by the end of the decade.
Although the price of porn DVDs is dropping — by 20% in the past year, to less than US$50 — revenues are still predicted to reach US$4.28-billion in 2005, the report says. It offers no reason for the robust sales.
But anecdotally, porn store owners say it’s partly because the industry is becoming more accepted by society.
“Every year more and more people decide that it’s okay for them to explore their sexuality,” said Cory Silverberg, co-owner of Come As You Are, a sex shop in Toronto.
Mr. Silverberg said his customers are mostly women and couples, “people for whom porn-watching is an entertainment activity, and they don’t always want to do it in front of a computer.”
He said television’s Sex and the City, and sexuality-based articles in women’s magazines like Chatelaine or Cosmopolitan have pushed the message that “it’s okay for women to watch porn.”
Movie sales at his store, he says, are up 23%, and rentals are up 30% compared to last year.
Overall, the U.S. home video and DVD industry is said to be worth US$24-billion, but it is under increasing pressure from new technology. “The risk to our future from downloading from the Internet is real and explosive,” said Crossan R. Andersen, president of the main home entertainment lobby group in the U.S., the Video Software Dealers Association, earlier this year.
In November, home DVD rental leader Blockbuster Inc., announced a third quarter 2005 loss of US$24.6-million, or US13 cents per share. Blockbuster chairman and CEO, John Antioco said the company was facing “challenging industry conditions” and there have been suggestions recently that Blockbuster could even file for bankruptcy protection.
Given the pressures that mainstream video is facing, it might be expected that adult movie sales and rentals would be suffering — especially due to the proliferation of pornography on the Internet. For example, Google produces about 196-million hits for “sex,” which is the word most commonly entered into search engines.
Mr. Silverberg says DVDs don’t carry the risk of Internet viruses, and they can be more high-quality than downloaded porn.
According to the Adult Video News survey, home video sales and rentals make up the largest segment of the U.S. adult entertainment industry, producing 70% more revenue in 2005 than the Internet, which is forecast to rake in US$2.5-billion, and three times as much as the total spent on pornography via cable and pay per view television, hotel in room video and cellphone downloads, which are set to make a combined US$1.3-billion this year. The report says consumers will also spend US$2-billion in U.S. strip clubs in 2005, US$1.5-billion on sex toys, and US$1-billion on pornographic magazines.