Vivendi Surveys Post-Lockdown Entertainment Habits

The study was conducted during lockdown across nine countries to figure out “how people’s entertainment habits changed during confinement and what they believed they would be doing coming out of confinement,” Maria Garrido, chief insights officer at Havas Group and SVP of brand marketing at Vivendi, told Pollstar.

89% of those surveyed had discovered new forms of entertainment they had not previously considered, including digital media and services. 60% stated that they used more paid services than before and for 1 in 5, it was even the first time they had paid for such services.

The study indicates three different futures for life after Covid-19. Looking at all respondents, 55% said they would go back to their previous entertainment habits. 

The remaining two quarters responded that they would change their entertainment habits post-lockdown, with one quarter (23%) opting for more virtual experiences, and the other (22%) for more physical, face-to-face experiences.

The “virtual” group consisted mostly of families with kids, who really worry about their own and especially their kids’ health. 

Those who said they would leave their home more often going forward, in order to meet people face-to-face at their entertainment offering of choice, were mostly young people, aged 18-23, without kids. They were much more willing to go back to collective activities and also place greater emphasis on communities and togetherness.

Garrido’s marketing department, led by insights director Maryline Pellerin,  took the time to compile the study’s findings with a focus on concert goers exclusively for Pollstar.

While, again, roughly half of respondents (52%) said they would return to their previous entertainment habits, 25% said they would go for virtual entertainment post-lockdown, and 22% said they would leave the house more often going forward.

Most of the concert goers in Vivendi’s study are 25 to 44 years old. This age bracket includes a lot of families, who are more likely to choose the “safe” stay-at-home option over out-of-home experiences.

One question was worded in such a way as to find out how many concert goers would make it a priority to leave the house again post-lockdown. Of the concert goers, 64% said they would “go back to out-of-home entertainment activities as a priority right after the Covid-19 outbreak ends,” as its worded in the study.

When looking at the entire sample that got questioned for this study, not just concert goers, only 44% made it a priority to go out immediately post-lockdown.

Concert goers were also asked, which form of entertainment they’d go for post-lockdown, and live music concerts rank second (24%) behind cinema (33%) and ahead of theatre/opera (21%). Live sports rank fourth (20%). This order changes when looking at the entire population, which ranked live sports third and almost on par with live music.

“Generally speaking, concert goers over-consume all forms of content vs. the general population. Across everything we looked at, they’re more anxious to get back to content in every shape and form,” Garrido explained.

Concert goers, who’ve made the return to physical live experience a priority, have less kids and are younger. Those with kids will increase their consumption of live streamed online music videos by 15%. The operative word here is live, as they’re not interested in pre-recorded footage.

Splitting the numbers between the U.S. and Europe shows, that the urge to leave the house again to see people face to face is almost twice as high in Europe (31%) as it is in the U.S. (17%).

Vivendi sees this as a good sign for the continent’s businesses. “The challenge for the industry is to build the right business model around this kind of approach. We saw a lot of live digital concerts happening over the confinement, but most of those were free. Coming out of lockdown, our industry needs to innovate around physical, digital and the crossroads of both in live entertainment experiences,” said Garrido. 

Summary: Concert goers are more interested in entertainment than the rest of the population, and they intend to go to more out of home entertainment after the lockdown than they did prior. 

The difference between families and singles is remarkable, as is the split between the U.S. and Europe.

There an overall demand for both interactive, digital experiences, as well as physical ones, which is useful information for an industry that needs to find back to old strength by utilising all revenue generating opportunities available.

About the study:

Vivendi’s marketing department works across the entire organization both internally and with external clients, to help brands find new spaces for expression across different types of content models. Proprietary studies, insights and intelligence are a part of that. 

For this study, Pellerin’s research team conducted 7,200-plus interviews, of which more than 1,300 were concert goers according to the above mentioned definition: respondents, who had attended a concert at least once a month prior to the lockdown.