More than 70% of the Romanian cinema attendance is located in 10 cities, survey says

Over 10 million viewers were recorded in 2017 in the cinemas of ten Romanian cities with a total population of four million inhabitants, these cities concentrating 72% of the national cinema demand, according to the data offered by the National Center for Cinematography, and analyzed by the real estate consultancy company Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.

In 2017, the overall number of spectators which attended the cinemas in Romania was 13.9 million, 6.4% up from the previous year, while the frequency of visits per capita increased from 0.67 to 0.7.

The largest cinematographic markets in Romania are: Bucharest (4,944,978 spectators in 2017), Cluj-Napoca (918,022), Constanta (824,477) and Timisoara (802,416), cities that represent 54% of the demand.

“The cinema industry has benefited greatly from the development of shopping centers in the recent years, considering the fact that in 2017, around 90% of the cinema halls in Romania were found in shopping malls, attracted more than 90% of the total number of spectators. The investments in cinemas are extremely high, but they bring substantial benefits for the shopping centers’ image and overall traffic, increasing also the more and more important social aspect of cinemas,” said Bogdan Marcu, Partner, Retail Agency, Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.

At the end of last year, 41 shopping centers in Romania had a multiplex cinema, the average number of cinema halls being 7.8. On average, developers have set up a cinema hall for every 5,000 square meters GLA of a shopping center.

In terms of Romanian cities with the highest frequency of visits per inhabitant, the most important ones are Suceava (3.14 visits per inhabitant in 2017), Constanta (2.9), Deva (2.84) Cluj-Napoca (2.83) and Bucharest (2.63).

In terms of the spectator increase compared to 2016, the first places are occupied by Bistrita (+ 229%), Targoviste (222%), Piatra Neamt (213%) and Vaslui (165%), four cities which had no functional cinemas in 2015, but re-entered the circuit one year later. The next places are occupied by Galaţi (59.4%), Craiova (30%) and Târgu Jiu (26.7%).

The cities with the highest use and occupancy of existing cinema infrastructure are Iaşi (1.53 spectators / seat / day), Bistrita (1.44 spectators / seat / day) and Satu Mare (1.4 spectators / seat/ day), followed by Oradea (1.18 spectators / seat / day) and Sibiu (1.15 spectators / seat/ day).