Because Oscars are – these are the countries where going to the cinema is the most expensive

The Oscars will be awarded for the 95th time on the night from Sunday to Monday at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. The big favorites in the “Best Picture” category are “Nothing New in the West” and “Avatar: The Way of Water”.

In Swiss cinemas, the second part of Avatar was a blockbuster. With almost a million visitors, “The Way of Water” is the most watched film in Swiss cinemas and number 10 in the all-time list according to “Pro Cinema” in the cinema year 2022/23. Thanks in particular to James Cameron’s visual masterpiece, the Swiss film industry can look forward to a fairly successful year.

It is currently recovering very slowly from the corona pandemic, with cinemas having to close for weeks in some cases. In 2022, Swiss cinemas registered 8.7 million visitors. That’s almost two-thirds more than last year, but still only 70 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels and a piece of cake compared to 2002, when nearly 19 million films poured into Swiss cinemas.

There are many reasons for the cinema crisis: on the one hand, competition for festivals, concerts and open-air events has increased, especially in summer, and on the other hand, digitization is making it difficult for cinemas. Many people spend the time in the evening with social media and Netflix. Swiss young people still enjoy going to the cinema, but less often than before.

The reason for this is also the price: according to the Federal Bureau of Statistics, a cinema ticket in German-speaking Switzerland costs an average of almost 16 francs. A ticket in one of the multiplex cinemas, which is very popular with young people, costs over 17 francs. This is too expensive for many young people.

The American financial company NetCredit came up with even higher Swiss cinema prices at the end of 2021. Ticket prices for more than 250 movie theaters in 120 countries around the world (one to three movie theater chains per country) were calculated manually from the website and then converted to US dollars. The $ 22.43 for Switzerland may seem a bit high, but for Austria ($ 11.56 / 10.1 euros according to WKO) and Germany ($ 10.18 / 9.26 euros according to FFA) the prices are almost correct .

The figures should be good for a global comparison: it is not surprising that Switzerland occupies a top position in the NetCredit ranking, only Lebanon and Kuwait have cinema prices higher than in Germany. With the exception of Azerbaijan, the remaining top 10 countries are all Western industrialized countries.

Going to the cinema is cheapest in El Salvador, it only costs half a dollar to see a movie there. This puts the Central American country at the forefront of movie ticket affordability: the $0.52 that has to be paid for a ticket is equivalent to about one percent of the country’s average weekly wage. Only Luxembourg can keep up.

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