COS COB, Conn.—Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment is reporting that Monthly Active Users (MAU) for Redbox, Crackle, and Chicken Soup for the Soul advertising-supported streaming services has grown by 50% to 60 million.
“We’ve had a record-breaking start to the year driven by what we’ve long expected – big movies are beginning to come back,” said William J. Rouhana Jr., chief executive officer of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment. “We see success across many of our business areas, including our record TVOD week, a meaningful increase in kiosk rentals, and the growth of our AVOD monthly active viewers to 60 million. As the year progresses, we will see even more movie titles come into the pipeline. More movies mean more rentals and more revenue. As previously announced, we reiterate our guidance for the year of $500 million of revenue and $100 – $150 million in Adjusted EBITDA.”
The company also announced that it had the largest Transactional Video-on-Demand (TVOD) revenue week in the company’s history. The Redbox streaming platform hit record revenue with the premium release of "Avatar: The Way of Water" and the premiere of "Creed III". The simultaneous release of Plane at the kiosk and standard Video-on-Demand (VOD) also contributed to this success.
Redbox kiosks also saw rentals grow dramatically, driven by the beginning of the return of new movies being added to kiosks on a consistent basis. New release rental titles in kiosks rose 102% for a rolling three-month period.
The company said expects this momentum to continue throughout the year due to the release of many new major films as more titles return to theaters.
