Bad news: DVD sales were down in 2007. Good news: DVDs are still the biggest entertainment format — by far.

One of the things lost amid all of the cool new products debuted at the recent Consumer Electronics Show was the Digital Entertainment Group’s annual report on DVD sales for the previous year. Total consumer spending on DVDs in 2007, including the new high-def formats and rentals, was $23.7 billion, according to DEG. That’s down from $24.2 billion in 2006. (The peak year for the format was $24.5 billion in 2004.)

Sure, DVD sales continued their slight downward trend in 2007, but consumers still spend more on them than any other entertainment format. For example:

Video games: They are the closest competition that I can find. Final figures aren’t in for 2007, although they are expected to be close to a record-setting $19 billion. But a huge caveat is that about half of that figure is for sales of relatively expensive systems and accessories. It also doesn’t include rentals of games. On a comparable figure for just software, video games will probably be right around $10 billion for 2007.  

Music: No monetary figures have been reported for 2007; the industry always wants to express things in terms of albums sold. But with fewer than 600 million albums sold in 2007 (including digital downloads, with 10 songs equaling one album) at an average price of, say, $15-$18, that’s a total of $9 billion to $10.8 billion. 

Books: This is another hard one to figure, because there is no standardized reporting and figures haven’t been listed for 2007. But 2006 sales for reading books (not textbooks, professional books, etc.) was $16.6 billion, according to one study.

Movies: In a record year, Hollywood posted box-office revenues of less than $10 billion for the film industry in 2007.

Theater: Again, no standardized reporting is done nationwide. But Broadway just reported a record year of less than $1 billion in 2007. Adding community and regional theaters across the country surely wouldn’t rival any of the figures above.

Sports: Baseball and the NFL are widely considered to be the biggest thing going, and their recent annual revenues were right around $6 billion each.

To a casual observer like me, DVDs still look pretty darn good. Hollywood doesn’t agree. It’s not enough that people spend more on DVDs; the studios want continued growth. That’s why they’re pushing new high-def discs to reinvigorate the format.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 9:56 am and is filed under CES, DVDs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.