Admissions Sweden 2020 drop 63%, local films double their market share

Sweden was hit hardest in the Nordics by Covid-19 as local films didn’t compensate for the lack of US films as much as in the rest of the Nordic region.

The only Nordic country to resist a full lockdown, Sweden still took the biggest hit, with a 63% drop of admissions year on year, from nearly 16 million in 2019 to 5.6 million last year. This compares to a 57.6% drop in Iceland, 57% in Norway, 54% in Finland and 47% in Denmark.

Box office earnings fell 64% from nearly SEK 1.9 billion in 2019 to SEK 676 million in 2020.

Looking back, 2020 did look promising early in the year, according to Peter Fornstam, head of the Cinema Association Sveriges Biografägareförbund and CEO of Sweden’s second biggest chain Svenska Bio. Five films released in December 2019 – the US blockbusters Frozen 2, Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, the Swedish film A Piece of My Heart, Sune-Best Man as well as the Palme d’or winner Parasite, continued to perform strongly in the first quarter of 2020, until Covid-19 hit. Most cinemas were then forced to close, including the biggest chain, Filmstaden (part of AMC Theatres) which remained shut most of the year.

According to Fornstam, cinema attendance regained strength in July but “the recovery was dwarfed by the 50 person per screen rule, which was a much lower bar than in the rest of the Nordics,” he said, adding: “The cinema sector could not recover enough before the second wave when the bar was lowered to max 8 persons per screen from December, and movie supply started to dry up again.”

With most tentpole films postponed to 2021 and beyond, and a few releases shifted earlier to VOD, US films that usually drive the Swedish theatrical market, ended up with a 55% market share, against more than 70% the previous year.

Swedish films moved in to fill the gap and doubled their market share, from 13.22% in 2019 to 26.83% last year, with 1.52 million ticket sales in 2020. The Swedish slice of the market could have been much higher, argues Fornstam had the screen restrictions not been as drastic.

Four Swedish films were in the Top 10, 2020: Edward af Sillén’s musical A Piece of My Heart ranked second, while My Father Marianne was number 8, followed by the franchise films JerryMaya’s Detective Agency-The Mystery of the Train Robber directed by Moa Gammel and Sune-Best Man by Jon Holmberg.

The two best-selling Swedish documentaries were Catwalk-from Glada Hudik to New York by Johan Skog, released in January by SF Studios, which sold 72,532 tickets, followed by Nathan Grossman’s acclaimed I am Greta. The film released November 20 by TriArt sold 6,102 tickets before moving to the streamer SF Anytime four days later.

Two animated films were the most popular Nordic-non-Swedish- films: the Norwegian animated film Ella Bella Bingo (7,243 admissions, Scanbox), and the Finnish animated Arne Alligator (7,019 admissions, Folkets Bio). The Icelandic drama A White, White Day came third (6,026 Folkets Bio).

To see Sweden 2020 - January to December 2020 Admissions Charts: CLICK HERE.