The number of movie tickets sold in the U.S. this year is the lowest since 1995 excluding 2017.
According to John Nolte at Breitbart, “Americans purchased 1.244 billion movie admissions, which is five percent lower than last year and only a little higher than the number sold in 2017 — and 2017 is the worst year on record since 1995.”
Admissions, obviously, are quite different from the box office gross, which is the number everyone watches throughout the year. The 2019 box office gross was pretty solid — $11.4 billion — down only four percent from 2018’s huge $11.88 billion.
Something that helped the 2019 gross stay afloat was a four percent jump in ticket prices, from an average of $9.16 to $9.37.
Grosses are one thing. The number of tickets sold is something entirely different; that’s the number that tells us how popular and influential movies are, and over the last 25 years, that number is going the wrong way.
To put it in perspective, in 1995, the U.S. population sat at 265 million while today, the U.S. population is 330 million. The U.S. population climbed by 20 percent and despite a massive increase of 65 million more potential customers, ticket sales are flat.