Reel Piracy: The Effect of Online Film Piracy on International Box Office Sales

Danaher, Brett; Waldfogel, Joel

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1986299

Cited by 40 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Ma, Montgomery, Singh, and Smith (2013) use U.S. box office data together with unique Internet file-sharing data and find pre-release piracy can lead to a 20% decrease in box office revenue compared to piracy that occurs post-release. Danaher and Waldfogel (2012) make use of the variation in international release gaps and box office performances in 17 countries, together with time breaks for the adoption of BitTorrent, to identify the effect of release gaps on box office performances. Their results indicate international box office returns were at least 7% lower than they would have been in the absence of pre-release piracy.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic decision-making in Hollywood release gaps

Dalton

Leung

2017

Journal of International Economics

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Hollywood blockbusters are usually released in the U.S. before other foreign markets. The release gaps have declined significantly over time and varied greatly across countries. While movie piracy has been suggested as an important determinant for the release gap decision of distributors, theory and evidence suggest there are other important determinants. In this paper, we use a discrete choice release gap decision game model to disentangle the impacts of the i) release gap effect, which includes factors that provide incentives for a distributor to shorten the release gap; ii) word-of-mouth effect, which provides incentives for a distributor to lengthen the release gap; and iii) strategic effect, which accounts for the incentives blockbusters have to avoid each other. We obtain box office and release gap data from the private industry source Boxofficemojo.com. Our results suggest all three factors have an economically significant impact on distributors' release gap decision.JEL Classification: F14, L82, 034

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic decision-making in Hollywood release gaps

Dalton

Leung

2017

Journal of International Economics

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“…The first, Danaher and Waldfogel (2012) analyze the impact of delaying the release of movies in international markets after their initial release in the domestic market, finding that delayed international release windows reduce box office revenue by an estimated 7%.…”

Section: Citationmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Pre-Release Movie Piracy on Box Office Revenue

Montgomery

Singh

et al. 2014

Information Systems Research

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Digital distribution channels raise many new challenges for managers in the media industries. This is particularly true for movie studios where high-value content can be stolen and released through illegitimate digital channels, even prior to the release of the movie in legal channels. In response to this potential threat, movie studios have spent millions of dollars to protect their content from unauthorized distribution throughout the lifecycle of films. They have focused their efforts on the pre-release period under the assumption that pre-release piracy could be particularly harmful for a movie's success.However, surprisingly, there has been little rigorous research to analyze whether, and how much, pre-release movie piracy diminishes legitimate sales. In this paper, we analyze this question using data collected from a unique Internet file-sharing site. We find that, on average, pre-release piracy causes a 19.1% decrease in revenue compared to piracy that occurs postrelease.Our study contributes to the growing literature on piracy and digital media consumption by presenting evidence of the impact of Internet-based movie piracy on sales, and by analyzing pre-release piracy, a setting that is distinct from much of the extant literature.

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“…In this literature, Moorthy and Png (1992) analyze how a seller can sequentially introduce a high-end product and a low-end product. In an empirical setting, Deleersnyder et al (2002) find that the introduction of online newspapers resulted in a relatively small cannibalization of physical newspaper sales; Biyalogorsky and Naik (2003) find that the introduction of online storefronts for music did not significantly cannibalize physical record sales; Waldfogel (2007) shows that Youtube viewing has only a small negative impact on television viewing; and Danaher et al (2011) show that the presence of the iTunes distribution channel has no statistical impact on DVD sales (but results in a large impact on digital piracy).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is also a long and related literature on the impact of digital piracy on sales in existing channels (see Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf (2010) and Danaher, Smith, and Telang (Forthcoming) for reviews of this literature), in general finding that piracy harms physical sales (see for example Zentner (2005), Hui and Png (2003), Peitz andWaelbroeck (2004), Danaher andWaldfogel (2011), Rob and Waldfogel (2006), and Rob and Waldfogel (2007)). However, a few notable exceptions to this are Oberholzer and Strumpf (2007) who find little displacement of record sales from digital music piracy and Smith and Telang (2009) who find little displacement of DVD sales by digital movie piracy for catalog (i.e., older) content.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Ebook Distribution on Print Sales: Analysis of a Natural Experiment

Chen

Smith

2011

SSRN Journal

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Digital distribution channels introduce several new strategic questions for the creative industries. Two notable questions are (1) how will participation in digital channels impact physical sales, and (2) where should digital releases occur relative to existing "physical" release dates. These questions are particularly salient for book publishing where firms have expressed concern that making ebooks available alongside hardcover titles may cannibalize hardcover sales.We analyze the impact of ebook availability on physical sales using a natural experiment that occurred between April and June 2010. Across all titles we find that delaying ebook availability results in a small (and statistically insignificant) increase in print sales and a large decrease in total ebook sales. However, we also find this effect is moderated by consumers' brand awareness and digital channel preference: delaying Kindle availability for books with strong brand awareness and weak digital channel preference results in a statistically significant increase in print sales for those titles.These results contribute to a growing academic literature analyzing the impact of digitization on marketing strategies in the media industries. Our results also highlight the usefulness of natural experiments derived from rapidly changing media distribution environments for identifying the impact of digital distribution channels on sales.

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Reel Piracy: The Effect of Online Film Piracy on International Box Office Sales

Cited by 40 publications

References 19 publications

Strategic decision-making in Hollywood release gaps

Strategic decision-making in Hollywood release gaps

An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Pre-Release Movie Piracy on Box Office Revenue

The Impact of Ebook Distribution on Print Sales: Analysis of a Natural Experiment

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