Decline in attendance: Riccione faced with a seasonal emergency

by Camillo de Marco

26/06/2012 - A strong decline in Italian movie theatre attendance: 52% less this June from last year and 16% less than the beginning of this year. The market is increasingly seasonal and concentrated in the months between September and March.

Representatives of producers, distributors and exhibitors present at the Giornate estive di cinema –Ciné all responded to these negative figures with a call for unity. "The market is telling us that we have almost reached rock bottom" affirmed the president of the distribution company ANICA Richard Borg (photo), "it is for this reason that the dialogue between us can constitute the basis to pick up cinema and bring movie theatre attendance back to its previous levels of excellence."

For Lionello Cerri (ANEC) "We are risking not reaching 100 million attendances by the end of the year. The thing to do now is to write, alongside the distributors, an agenda for releases that aims to solve the problem of seasonality."

(Translated from Italian)