Samba TV has provided an update on the number of U.S. Smart TV terrestrial households which have tuned into Disney+ Premier’s Black Widow with a running cumulative U.S. household viewership of 2 million.
Last weekend, Samba TV reported that 1.1M U.S. households bought Black Widow in its first weekend. That means an additional 900K households bought the Scarlett Johansson film from Monday, July 12 through the pic’s second weekend ending July 18. Disney did not report any update on the performance of Black Widow on Disney+ Premier after its first weekend exclamation that the pic took in $60M WW on the service; a bulk of which came reportedly from U.S. purchases.
Samba TV measures streaming viewership in 3M Smart TV terrestrial households which tune into a piece of content for 5 minutes. Samba’s sample poll doesn’t include mobile viewers. While these Disney+ Premier numbers on Black Widow aren’t complete, in back of the napkin estimates, it indicates that the U.S. Disney+ Premier revenue for the film is estimated to be at least $59.98M to date in Samba TV households. Disney doesn’t keep every cent from their Disney+ Premier revenues as they must share around 15% with platform providers like Amazon Firestick, AppleTV+, etc. This puts the estimated net of SambaTV’s measure at $50.98M. Black Widow‘s updated domestic total per Disney through its first ten days is $131.6M.
Yesterday, the National Association of Theatre Owners protested Disney’s theatrical-day-and-date Disney+ Premier release of Black Widow after the film posted the biggest second weekend drop for a Marvel title at -68%; the updated second weekend being $25.8M. NATO in a press release wrote that Disney’s theatrical day-and-date Disney+ model “ignores that Premiere Access revenue is not new-found money, but was pulled forward from a more traditional PVOD window, which is no longer an option.” Essentially, a severe collapse of the PVOD window is occurring with Black Widow coupled with a subtraction in dollars at the domestic box office in this day-and-date plan. It would be a different story if Disney released Black Widow exclusively in theaters: The film would bank more box office, and conceivably have a longer tail in its subsequent PVOD window. Also impacting Black Widow in its B.O. and Disney+ Premier day-and-date availability is rampant piracy.
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“Despite assertions that this pandemic-era improvised release strategy was a success for Disney and the simultaneous release model, it demonstrates that an exclusive theatrical release means more revenue for all stakeholders in every cycle of the movie’s life,” continued NATO.
Concluded NATO, “The many questions raised by Disney’s limited release of streaming data opening weekend are being rapidly answered by Black Widow’s disappointing and anomalous performance. The most important answer is that simultaneous release is a pandemic-era artifact that should be left to history with the pandemic itself.”
Samba TV also reports on the updated 10-day household viewership of Black Widow that 258K households have tuned in the U.K., 116K in German households and 47K in Australian households.
Breaking down Samba TV Black Widow households further:
–The overall audience skewed younger (54 and below) and non-white (Black +46%, Hispanic +25%, and Asian +24%).
–Of the top 25 largest U.S. DMAs, Los Angeles over-indexed the most (+30%), followed by Miami (+23%) and Raleigh, NC (+19%).
–In the U.K., Wales over-indexed the most (+23%), followed by North West (+20%).
–In Germany, Bremen over-indexed the most (+51%), followed by North Rhine-Westphalia (+19%).