In line with the high levels observed in the previous two years, the European Audiovisual Observatory estimates that total admissions in the European Union decreased only slightly by 0.7% to 985 million tickets sold in 2017.

While this is 6.6 million fewer than in 2016, it still represents the second highest admission level registered in the EU since 2004.

In contrast to 2015 and 2016, admissions developed in a less homogeneous manner across Europe in 2017: cinema attendance increased in 13 and decreased in seven EU markets, while remaining stable in five of the 25 EU markets for which provisional data were available.

Geographically speaking the moderate decline in EU cinema attendance was primarily caused by a major drop in Italian admissions (-14.7 million, -12.9%) as well as a comparatively poor year-on-year performance in France (-3.8 million, -1.8%).

It is too early to analyse EU admissions by origin, but the first figures already available would seem to suggest that both European films and US films registered a slight year-on-year decline in admissions. As in 2016, it looks as though there were no break-away successes as no single film seems to have generated more than 30 million admissions in 2017. Top ranking films in the EU include Star Wars: The Last of the Jedi (US), Beauty and the Beast (US) and Despicable Me 3 (US).

Compared to 2016, national market shares of EU films increased in 11 and declined in 13 of the 24 EU markets for which 2017 data were available.

France and the UK (including US studio inward investment films) were once again the EU markets with the highest national market share (both with 37.4%) followed by Finland (27.0%).