Strong rise of new players in Saigon cinema market
The HCM City cinema market has become much more competitive with the closure of Galaxy Nguyen Trai, one of the most important cinemas of Galaxy Cinema, and the rise of several newcomers.
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Galaxy Cinema announced on its official website that Galaxy Nguyen Trai had to close on August 15 after 10 years of operation.
The cinema chain did not reveal the reason behind the decision to close Galaxy Nguyen Trai. However, analysts said it was not a plan in the chain’s business strategy, because Galaxy Nguyen Trai was one of the most crowded cinemas of the Galaxy chain.
The cinema is located in an advantageous position, near shopping malls, schools, office buildings and residential quarters in district 1.
The analysts also commented that the closure could bring advantages to Galaxy which is in fierce competition with other powerful cinema chains such as CJ CGV, Lotte Cinema, BHD and Cinebox. With the closure, Galaxy now has one cinema – Galaxy Nguyen Du - in central district 1.
Meanwhile, the other three cinemas are in non-central areas. Galaxy Quang Trung is in Go Vap district, while Galaxy Tan Binh in Tan Binh and Galaxy Kinh Duong Vuong in Binh Tan district.
The HCMC cinema market in recent years witnessed the strong rise of new players. Mega MS is one of them.
This is the cinema brand belonging to Golden Screen, a fast-growing firm in the television sector with focus on film production and TV reality shows.
Mega GS is building more cinema complexes in districts 1, 5 and Binh Thanh, and all of them are located at shopping malls under construction.
Cinestart is another new rival with two complexes, whose owners are investors who once worked for Megastar, a strong cinema brand in Vietnam.
New cinema complexes can make money from different sources -- selling tickets, food, drinks and ads, but also from selling space to business brands.
Businesses pay money to cinema owners for the right to have one or several cinemas bearing their brands. At Mega GS, for example, there are cinemas with Oppo (mobile phone) and Pepsi (drink).
According to CJ CGV (which was Megastar in the past), the revenue from film tickets in Vietnam has been steadily increasing over 10 years. In 2006, the revenue was US$5 million, while the figure soared to US$25.7 million in 2010, US$47 million in 2012 and US$82 million in 2014.
CGV’s representative said that Vietnam in 2015 found its name on the list of movie markets with more than US$100 million.
