The Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria has reported that ticket sales brought in N514.7 million in May, which is down N52 million from April.
According to Nairametrics, the drop was attributed to issues such as naira scarcity, the cash crunch, bad network service, and a lack of movie releases during the election period.
However, the National Chairman of CEAN, Mr. Opeyemi Ajayi, expressed optimism that cinema lovers may look forward to a fun June thanks to the arrival of top-notch films.
“In May, 197,242 customers purchased tickets at the box office, a decrease of 23,539 from the 220,781 tickets sold in April.
“Also in May, we were able to generate N514,653,363 with 197,242 viewers admission,” said the National Chairman of CEAN, Mr. Opeyemi Ajayi.
In March, cinema operators in Nigeria disclosed a significant decline in sales for February as sales decrease to N278 million from N819 million in January. This decline might be attributed to the impact of the currency scarcity earlier this year.
According to the National Chairman of the Nigerian Cinema Exhibitors Association, there were 122,295 gross admissions during the time period under consideration.
“The decline in sales can also be attributed to the fact that Nigerians’ attention was being directed toward voting nationwide during the Presidential and National Assembly elections, we missed a weekend of sales.
“The theatres are also being impacted by the cash shortage and POS issues that are harming business in general.
“A lot of film distributors and producers delayed opening new films around election time. Consequently, the content was also somewhat constrained,” he said.
