1
Installed Base of Cinemas in the European Union
The purpose of this chapter is to provide vital statistics
on the installed base in order to provide:
· a picture of the
average European cinema, to enable industry and public authorities to benchmark
their position against the European average
· as far as possible,
an account of the differences and similarities in the capacity of the exhibition
sector in EU member states.
In order to understand the results better, we felt it
was necessary to add to the statistical picture a dynamic analysis of long-term
trends towards the restructuring of the installed base as well as of the
most recent changes. The impact of cinema building and refurbishment in
the UK and Ireland, for example, should be viewed against the background
of the fall in capacity which occurred in those countries during the 1970s
and 1980s; this trend is not found to the same degree in the other EU countries.
Five simple indicators were chosen to describe the installed
base in this introductory chapter:
· total number of screens
and screen density
· number of admissions
per head of population
· average number of
admissions per seat
· geographical distribution
· number of seats per
establishment
