NBC has almost sold out of TV ad spots for Super Bowl 2022

"The 2021 NFL season hasn’t even begun yet, and NBC is almost finished with its ad sales for Super Bowl 56—more than five months before the game will take place.

“As of today, we only have a few units left, and we’re purposely holding them back,” Dan Lovinger, evp, advertising sales, NBC Sports Group, told reporters this afternoon during a press briefing. The pregame show is also “extremely well sold,” he added.

Lovinger said the company has sold its most recent Super Bowl units for as much as $6.5 million per 30-second spot, and secured a matching investment across “other high-profile NBCU properties,” including the Winter Olympics, which will also be in February, at the same time as Super Bowl 56 on Feb. 13."

Source:  AdWeek, 8th September 2021

AMC cinema chain's box office receipts were higher in Labor Day 2021 than in 2019

 "AMC Entertainment broke its Labor Day weekend admissions record, thanks in large part to the $90 million raked in by Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” which drew the lion’s share of the two million moviegoers during the four-day weekend from Sept. 2-5, according to a CNBC report.

This is the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that 2021 attendance was higher than the same weekend in 2019.

“This encouraging surge in attendance at AMC signals that as Hollywood releases movies, Americans eagerly want to return to movie theatres again,” said CEO Adam Aron in a statement on Tuesday (Sept. 7).

“Shang-Chi” raked in $71.4 million in ticket sales from Sept. 3-5, the second-highest opening during the coronavirus outbreak, trailing only “Black Widow,” which saw $80 million in sales in July. The $90 million-plus brought in by the new Marvel hero movie is almost triple the previous Labor Day weekend record set by “Halloween” in 2007 ($30.6 million)."

Source:  PYMNTS, 7th September 2021

101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs sold for $24m

 "The popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection made a splash in the art world this month with its own Sotheby’s auction for a lot of 101 of the Ethereum-based profile pictures. And the recent hype around the randomly-generated ape illustrations extended into the auction, with a winning bid that smashed expectations.

The auction closed today with a winning bid of $24.39 million, well ahead of Sotheby’s estimated range of $15 million to $18 million. That works out to about $241,500 per Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT. The average sale price for a Bored Ape on leading secondary marketplace OpenSea over the last seven days is just above 46 ETH, or nearly $164,000."

Source:  Decrypt, 9th September 2021

The game 'I Expect You To Die 2' 'has generated >$1m in sales in the first week'

 "The sequel to Schell Games’ popular VR puzzle game hit a major milestone just one week after going on sale.

In 2016 Schell Games launched their game I Expect You To Die on Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and SteamVR headsets. In this James Bond-esque adventure, players took on the role of a professional spy tasked with solving a variety of cinematic puzzles within a set period of time. Needless to say, the game was an instant hit, captivating VR players with its colorful setting and unique puzzle-solving mechanics.

Capitalizing on the success of the original game, Schell Games launched I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy and the Liar in August of 2021. Now, less than a month after its release, developer Schell Games is claiming that its sequel title managed to surpass $1M in sales less than a week after launch. This is a huge milestone not only for the developer but for the VR industry in general."

Source:  VR Scout, 9th September 2021

The tube is back to 50% of its pre-pandemic weekday usage levels

 "For some, this is alarming, threatening to repeat past spirals of decline: fewer trains means many journeys become less viable, and rail less attractive. Ominously, industry sources say the areas most likely to suffer service cuts are subsidy-reliant branch lines in the north of England and rural areas – the very areas the government has pledged to invest in. Government figures show private car usage has already surpassed pre-Covid traffic, while public transport wanes. Chris Page, the chairman of the campaign group Railfuture, says: “The rail industry needs to control its cost base to deal with the realities of the pandemic, but cutting services will lead to lower rail usage and declining revenue.”

London, where weekday tube usage is now about 50% of pre-pandemic levels, up from a nadir of 5% in 2020, has fought to restore virtually a full timetable, despite heavy financial pressures. With fare revenues of about £5bn covering almost three-quarters of TfL’s budget, it depends more than most cities on effective public transport – for funding and to function without congestion, says Vernon Everitt, TfL’s managing director for customers, communication and technology."

Source:  The Guardian, 29th August 2021

Amazon 'is operating 164 freight flights a day in the US'

 "More than 70% of the U.S. population lives within 100 miles of an airport where Amazon Air or one of its partner airlines operates

[...]

Last month, Amazon opened its $1.5 billion “superhub” at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, which spans 600 acres and features an 800,000-square-foot robotic sort center, where packages are sorted by zip code and consolidated into trucks before delivery. The hub could handle up to 200 flights a day.

Amazon flight activity has increased 17% over the past six months to an average of 164 flights per day, DePaul researchers said. The researchers predicted Amazon will expand its flight operations by another 12-14%, bringing its daily total to more than 180 by January of next year."

Source:  CNBC, 4th September 2021

2/3 of UK homes subscribe to paid video streaming services

 "One element of the Establishment Survey results that is always of interest is the number of UK households with access to a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service. This update for Q2 2021 shows that access has continued to increase since our last release. The number of UK households with a subscription to any SVOD service is now 18.8 million homes (66%), up from 17.4 million in Q3 2020.

All of the main services have seen growth, with market-leader Netflix increasing to 16.8m households in Q2 2021, up more than 1.5m since Q3 2020. Amazon Prime Video saw a larger growth in households than Netflix, increasing over 2.3m homes to 12.5m. The largest percentage-change in the market was from Disney+, which is growing from a smaller subscriber base than Amazon and Netflix, having launched in March 2020. In Q2 2021, Disney+ was available in 4.8m households, up 24% since last time. NowTV also increased, to 2.3m homes.

With the overall growth of 1.5 million homes lower than the aggregate growth for individual services, it’s also clear that more homes have multiple SVOD subscriptions. The proportion of homes with an SVOD service that subscribe to two or more services has risen to 65.3%, up from 58.3% in Q3 2020."

Source:  BARB's 2021 Establishment Survey, 26th August 2021

Apple Arcade 'has 5m subscribers, with a churn rate of 20%'

 "Based on third party data services (e.g. SensorTower, which tracks downloads), Apple Arcade does not seem to be very popular. Most estimates suggest 5MM or fewer subscribers, which means the service is used by less than 0.5% of Apple’s 1.1B active iOS users.

[...]

Most telling, however, is Arcade’s churn. Roughly 20% of subscribers leave the service each month (implying an average tenure of only five months). This is three-and-a-half times the worst performing SVOD. In fact, Apple Arcade experiences more than twice the churn of HBO in the month after the finale of Game of Thrones… but every month! Note that Netflix’s churn is best in class by some margin."

Source:  Data from SensorTower and Antenna, cited by Matthew Ball in a blog post, 24th August 2021