Germany's largest cinema circuit, Cinestar, has agreed a VPF deployment deal with Arts Alliance Media (AAM) to facilitate conversion of up to 450 participating screens to digital. Deal will be financed by parent company Amalgamated Holding Limited (AHL) over a two-year period. AHL is in turn owner of the international Greater Union cinemas group of which Cinestar is part.
As part of the deal, AAM will provide VPF management services for Cinestar's participating sites as well as providing both its theatre management (TMS) and library management systems. For AAM, deal is the first signature in the German market and follows its most recent signing of Finland's largest circuit, Finnkino circuit in June.
Analysis
The German market has emerged as a relatively even battleground for third party facilitators, with each major player now having signed at least one key client. This deal is latest flurry of activity in the market, which had previously lagged behind the more rapid roll outs underway in UK and France. The delay in part was derived from legacy of a potential all-encompassing territory conversion model which never got off the ground, despite some concrete plans coming to fruition.
By Q3 2011 just under 40 per cent of German screens were converted but rate of new installations is likely to increase dramatically following the string of recent circuit deals including Cinemax/Sony and Cineplex group members/Ymagis. Kinopolis has now practically completed its conversion (only one of top German circuits to have done so) following a VPF deal with XDC in 2010. As a result, the latest signings complete a full house for the top five German circuits which have now all finalised their upgrade plans through third party VPF networks, with the exception of UCI Kinowelt (as part of Odeon UCI) which is orchestrating digital conversion through its own third party set up, known as DDA. This benchmark will undoubtedly spur rest of the market forward. IHS Screen Digest forecasts that almost two thirds of German screens will be digital by end 2012, and to put that into context, that is a comparable point to relative digital progress in the UK as at now, but ahead of both Spain and Italy, where respective top five circuits have not all finalised digital road maps.
Find Out More > IHS Screen Digest Cinema Intelligence