No, Netflix isn’t making people go to the movies less often

For a long while now, traditional movie theaters have been afraid of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu cutting in on their business. If people are spending more time watching movies at home, the reasoning goes, they’ll be less inclined to go to the movie theater. The National Association of Theater Owners (NATO — they may want to change that name) even commissioned a study to find out how big the problem was, and Variety has the results. So what’s the damage?

None. There’s no damage. Everybody can go home.

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Basically, the report concluded that streaming services are not cutting into movie theater receipts at all. Ernst and Young, the accounting firm hired to carry out the research, found that people who bought at least nine times in the past year watched an average of 11 hours of streaming content every week, while people who averaged seven hours of streaming a week only went the movie theater once or twice per year.

In other words, people who go to the movies a lot also stream a lot of video, and those who don’t, don’t. No one’s cutting in on anyone else’s territory — there’s more than enough interest to go around. I mean, god, 2018 is on track to be the biggest year for the American box office in history; what are movie theaters complaining about?

There is one caveat. While streaming services aren’t cutting in on theater revenues, data does suggest that they’re siphoning people away from traditional cable and pay-TV subscriptions. But that’ll be another study.

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