From the report's executive summary:
"Digital cinema has opened up opportunities for alternative forms of content to be shown in cinemas, including live streaming or relay of recorded performances of arts events ('encores'). There has been a rapid growth in the exhibition of this content in recent years, with the format now commonly referred to as 'event cinema.' In this context Arts Council England and the British Film Institute jointly commissioned this research to improve understanding of this emerging sub-sector and consider impact on the broader arts and cultural sectors. The research was exploratory, aiming to identify and where possible obtain relevant data that exists to describe event cinema, undertake brief consultation with key stakeholders to complement the data and to produce a narrative report to set the scene and help direct any subsequent studies."
Key findings include:
1.) "Event cinema is an attractive business prospect for content producers, allowing them to make their content more accessible to new audiences who otherwise may not be able to experience productions due to the costs or their geographic proximity to events."
2.) "For cinemas, event cinema provides an opportunity to fill otherwise empty seats at off-peak times; although, anecdotal evidence suggests that in practice event cinema can compete with traditional film for key weekend transmission slots."
3.) "The UK is a global leader in event cinema. It has 35 active distributors of content and has formed the only trade body for the industry in the Event Cinema Association. In 2014 event cinema was worth over £35 million in the UK and Ireland and accounted for over 3% of total box office sales."
4.) "Audiences of event cinema tend to be more heavily engaged in the arts than those who haven‟t seen any live screenings. In terms of audience demographics, individuals who have viewed live screenings are more likely to live in a city than those who haven‟t. They are also more likely to live in London and the surrounding areas than elsewhere in the country."
5.) "The key challenges for the continued success of event cinema often reflect the infancy of the genre. There is a perceived lack of public awareness of event cinema that cannot be remedied by marketing campaigns due to the limited budgets currently available. Word-of-mouth, which can provide momentum for film releases, cannot be relied upon for one-off events. Concerns have also been expressed that there is a general lack of consistency in the quality of productions."
