China has become the first international market to reach more than $3 billion in movie sales despite rampant piracy

April 14, 2014 Leave a comment

Motion picture industry continues to stagger under piracy with mere record-breaking income

Cory Doctorow at 10:00 pm Thu, Mar 27, 2014

image001-2
Once again, the “piracy-stricken” motion picture association has had a banner year, with box office revenue breaking all records (as they’ve done in most recent years). The biggest gains this year come from China — a market condemned by the studios as a hive of piracy.

Some of the best news in the report is that American movies are seeing success in China, which has become the first international market to reach more than $3 billion in movie sales. The Chinese enthusiasm for US-produced movies comes despite the fact that China continues to restrict the number of foreign-made films that can be released in theaters to 34 imports a year.

But the country at the top of the MPAA’s sales charts is also at the top of its piracy target list. Last year, the MPAA placed China on the list of the “most notorious” markets for distributing pirated movies and TV shows. As reported by the LA Times, MPAA spokesperson Michael O’Leary has explained:

The criminals who profit from the most notorious markets through the world threaten the very heart of our industry and in doing so threaten the livelihoods of the people who give it life. These markets are an immediate threat to legitimate commerce, impairing legitimate markets’ viability and curbing US competitiveness.

Despite prolific piracy, China’s increase in sales has been positively “meteoric,” MPAA chief Chris Dodd said at a press conference yesterday, noting a 27 percent increase.

Piracy notwithstanding, MPAA enjoys a “very strong year”—again[Joe Silver/Ars Technica]

 

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment