Cinema market share in South Korea 2020
Cinemas in South Korea
As of March 2022, there were 100 cinemas operating in Seoul with a total of 617 movie screens. In 2019, prior to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, a record number of around 226.7 million movie tickets were sold in South Korea, a number which crashed thereafter. The box office revenue showed an increase of around 5.5 percent in the same period, resulting in a revenue of around 1.91 trillion South Korean won, with a corresponding drop in revenue thereafter.
Cinemas and COVID-19
Due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the beginning of 2020, an increasing number of people avoided public places. After the huge success in 2019, ticket sales plummeted during the outbreak. While the ticket sales revenue in January 2020 was at around 140.7 billion won, two years later the sales revenue was at only 55.6 billion won. The number of visitors went down from 16.8 million to 5.7 million during the same period. While regular cinemas are struggling, consumers find other ways to watch movies, for example by visiting drive-in cinemas.