More than half of the movie theaters in Spain are already digitalized

AIMC, in its sixteenth Cinema Theater Census, detects a 34% increase in digital theaters and a stabilization of 3D ones. More than two thirds of the theaters in Madrid, the Basque Country, Castilla y León, the Canary Islands, Asturias and Extremadura are digitalized.

The Association for Media Research (AIMC) has just released the conclusions of its sixteenth Census of Movie Theaters, which it prepares with the collaboration of the three largest exclusivists/advertising distributors in the cinema medium: Discine, Movierecord and Yelmo.

This document, which provides one of the most precise visions of the panorama of film exhibition in Spain, is based on the previous census, dated April 1, 2012, and has been completed through important research work. The basic units analyzed are exhibition venues, screens/rooms and seats, and the date of April 1, 2013 has been taken as a reference.

Slight decrease in rooms/screens, venues and seats

For the second consecutive year, there is a slight decrease in the number of premises, rooms/screens and seats. The number of exhibition venues stands at 745, decreasing by 11 venues (-1.5%) compared to the last census. The number of rooms/screens is also reduced compared to the previous year (from 3,886 to 3,813, with 87 added and 160 deleted), presenting a slight decrease (-1.9%) if we compare with the situation that existed a year ago.

Regarding the number of seats, it is set at 868,624, producing a decrease of 20,123 (-2.3%). Compared to 2011, the accumulated decreases are somewhat greater, both in venues (-2.4%) and in theaters/screens (-3.0%) and seats (-3.4%).
A relevant fact is the progressive increase in the percentage of rooms/screens in venues with 10 or more rooms, which has gone from 10.8% in 1998 to practically half (48.9%) in 2013.

Good pace of digitization

The 2,148 rooms/screens with digital projectors are now the majority (56.3%), thanks to the strong increase of 540 screens and 14.9 percentage points in one year. If we look at the number of stores, 374 (50.2%, just over half) already have at least one digital room.

Spain has 904 rooms with the capacity to project in 3D, representing 23.7% of the total. These data show a stabilization of this type of rooms compared to 2012 (+17 and +0.9 points). A total of 338 stores (that is, 45.4%) have at least one 3D room in their facilities.

In absolute terms, the communities with the most rooms of these types are Catalonia (with 398 digital rooms and 170 in 3D), Madrid (with 381 and 147) and Andalusia (with 267 and 111). At the other extreme, there are La Rioja (19 digital and 8 3D), Cantabria (14 and 8) and Ceuta and Melilla (1 digital and 3D).

In relative terms, the communities where digital rooms already account for more than two thirds are: Madrid (74.4%), the Basque Country (69.7%), Castilla y León (69.6%), the Canary Islands (69.4%), Asturias (68.9%) and Extremadura (66.7%). On the contrary, the Balearic Islands (44.6%), Andalusia (39.7%), Cantabria (36.8%) and Ceuta and Melilla (12.5%) are the autonomous communities that have the lowest proportion of digital rooms.

Regarding the communities with the highest percentage of 3D rooms are the Canary Islands (37.5%), Castilla y León (33.6%), Aragón (29.9%), the Basque Country (29.8%), Asturias (29.7%) and Galicia (29.3%). At the other extreme are Castilla-La Mancha (17.6%), Navarra (16.7%), Andalusia (16.5%), Murcia (14.8%) and Ceuta and Melilla (12.5%).

It is interesting to note that 55% and 54% of the Spanish population resides in municipalities where there is at least one digital/3D room, respectively.

Geographic distribution

The communities with the highest number of rooms are Catalonia (with 737), Andalusia (with 673) and Madrid (with 512), which together make up half of those in Spain. Regarding the ranking by province, Madrid with 512 rooms is in first position, followed by Barcelona (502), Valencia (199), Alicante (184), Seville (157) and Málaga (156).

The number of municipalities with at least one movie theater is 469 (3 more than in the previous census), which represents 5.8% of the total, with an average of approximately 1.5 locations and 8 theaters per municipality with a movie theater. 62.6% of the Spanish population (-0.5 compared to the previous year) resides in one of these municipalities with a cinema.

On the other hand, there are 2,575 rooms (67.5%) that are located in towns greater than 50,000 inhabitants. Furthermore, 95.1% of the people who live in these municipalities have a cinema in their area, compared to individuals in towns of less than 50,000 inhabitants where only 27.1% have one.

On the other hand, the trend towards stability with respect to the characteristics of cinemas that began five years ago continues. The average number of seats per theater / screen went from 230 to 229 units in this last year, which contrasts with more abrupt and continuous decreases that were seen each year from 336 seats in 1998 to 232 in 2009. On average, each venue has 5.1 theaters (the same as in 2012), a figure that previously grew non-stop year after year from 2.8 in 1998 to 5.1 in 2009. In the case of summer cinemas, the capacity per theater is usually greater, with 637 seats on average compared to 217 for conventional ones. However, the average number of rooms per location in this type of cinema is lower: 1.2 rooms compared to 5.7 for conventional ones.

58.7% of the stores, that is, a total of 437, have more than one room/screen. The Kinépolis cinemas (25 rooms) in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid), Cinesa Parc Vallés (24 rooms) in Terrassa (Barcelona), Cinesa Las Rozas (24 rooms) in Las Rozas (Madrid) and Kinépolis Valencia (24 rooms) in Paterna (Valencia), occupy the first positions in this regard.

There are approximately 81 movie theaters per million inhabitants, one less than in the previous census and eleven less than in 2007. The communities that appear with 90 or more theaters per million are Navarra (102), Catalonia (97), Murcia (92) and the Basque Country (90). The provinces with the highest density are, in this order, Valladolid, Tarragona, Girona, Lleida, Guipúzcoa and Soria, which exceed 105 rooms per million inhabitants. On the opposite side are the communities of Ceuta and Melilla (49), Extremadura (51), Castilla-La Mancha (59) and Cantabria (64), with the provinces with the lowest concentration of theaters being Melilla, Ourense, Cuenca and Teruel, which do not exceed 45 theaters per million each.

In terms of capacity, the average density is approximately 18 seats per 1,000 inhabitants, a decrease of one seat compared to the last census in 2012 and four compared to 2007.