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White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, Kansas City, MO, USA

Attendance and spending at community entertainment venues

We’ve been writing a lot about spending and attendance trends at community-based entertainment (CBE) venues. Here’s some more data for you.

Both participation (attendance) and spending at CBEs is related to income. The participation rate varies the greatest based on income. For those households that do participate, the amount they spend does not show as great a variation.

In terms of overall market share, the highest income households still control the lion’s share of CBE spending, as a larger percentage of them attend and they spend the most.

When we examine households based on the age of the head of the household, here’s how the participation and spending looks.

Attendance is highest with those households with householders up to age 44, but average spending by participating households is highest with the older households.

Here’s where it gets interesting. When we look at which age group spends the most and how it has changed over time, it is counterintuitive to what most people probably believe (spending is inflation adjusted).

The households that account the largest share of all community-based entertainment spending are those headed by householders age 45-54. Those households account for one-quarter (24%) of all CBE spending. The second highest group is households headed by age 35-44 households, spending 22% of all CBE. Third are age 55-64 householder households with 18% of all such spending. That age group has seen their spending share has grown by 2/3s (65%) since 2000. Households with householders age 65+ account for 15% of CBE spending and have seen their share grow by almost one-half (47%) since the year 2000.

The younger households that many people might except to be the big CBE spenders are not. Households headed by age 25-35 householders only account for one-sixth (17%) of all CBE spending. The youngest households, those age 25 and younger, account for only one-twentieth (5%) of all CBE spending and their share has decreased by one-quarter (26%) since the year 2000. That decrease is a long-term trend, not something triggered by the Great Recession. 

What this shows is that households headed by Millennials are not where the big dollars are when it comes to CBE spending. It's the households headed by Gen-X and young Baby Boomers who account for almost 2/3s (64%) of all community-based entertainment spending.

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