Hollywood has managed to maintain their audience and tap global markets, but they face growing competition from both the high and low end. On the high end, streaming video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime already have a contentious relationship with Hollywood. Not satisfied with simply being retail outlets for Hollywood productions, their investments in their own entertainment properties have seen notable success. While data on how exactly how popular their own shows are is not public, they had critical success with House of Cards. The series won a slew of awards and nominations from the Golden Globes, the Emmys, the SAG awards and other lesser known awards shows. This clearly shows that the chinks in Hollywood’s armor are significant and that digital disruption has created serious competition in the high end of the market.
On the low end, the decline of the home DVD market, due to the rise of internet video streaming services has almost destroyed that entire segment. Illegal file sharing hasn’t helped either. According to research by PWC, they estimate that physical home entertainment revenue will decline 28% from $12.2 billion last year to $8.7 billion in 2018. This year 2015, the total revenue from video streaming will match that of physical home sales.
