Talk:Box office territory

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This page risks confusing as much as it enlightens. For example the reference to Mexico as the largest box office in 'Latin America' sits uneasily with the earlier references to North America, which as a geographical entity clearly includes Mexico, and whilst the cinema industry often defines "North America" as US and Canada only, no-one else does. The implication that the UK box office consists of the UK and Ireland ignores Malta which, according to Box Office Moho, also forms part of the same reporting unit.

The twelve box office units most often reported (and which account for about two thirds of worldwide ticket sales) are, I believe: USA and Canada (counted as one), UK, Ireland and Malta (counted as one), France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. The data I found is a few years out of date and I believe China would now be well up this list, and Japan also. Of these fourteen, twelve are individual countries that readers would instantly recognise, the remaining two being the US and Canada (already spelled out as such on many film pages) and the UK, Ireland and Malta - which is a dogs' dinner not easily described under any terminology. Nevertheless with these two exceptions, the reporting units are all separate countries, uncombined.

I've added Malta after finding a source. I also added Benelux since three countries are treated as one box office territory. I'll find a source to clarify that Mexico is not treated as part of the "North America" box office. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 19:33, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Mexico's exclusion from the North American data is uncontroversial from all sources. Nevertheless it remains geographically part of North America and the latter, generally accepted, definition of the continent is the one we should use on this site, to align with our own definition on the

talk) 21:35, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply

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The book The Movie Business says in defining North America as U.S. and Canada also says "their respective [dependent] territories". To be fair, I cannot find mention of Puerto Rico and Guam besides The Numbers identifying them, so we could drop that due to insufficient weight. I assume part of the problem is that territories and possessions' contributions to the box office grosses would be relatively small, so there is less coverage about them directly. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 19:34, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we can take it as read that any country's data includes its dependent territories (in my view simply a further argument as to why the word is best avoided in the first place). Otherwise we will be listing out a string of far flung islands for both the US and the UK, without even knowing whether they have a cinema in the first place?

talk) 19:49, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply

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I removed the Puerto Rico/Guam mention. Not finding a clear definition beyond the aforementioned book. If we find something, we can reference it. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 20:25, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure that these three countries are reported together for box office purposes? Your link appears to establish that they often are reported in aggregate (for various general purposes), but doesn't (unless there is offline content) specifically refer to box office. Box Office Mojo simply reports the data as from Netherlands, whereas the UK page is clearly annotated to mention Ireland and Malta. Our own

Yes, see the related reference because I inserted the relevant quote from it. This also does not surprise me because when I write about box office coverage in films' Wikipedia articles, I see "Benelux" mentioned by the relevant sources when they discuss the so-called territories. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 19:56, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Only your second citation appears to do so. Nevertheless it is remarkable that - unlike with both the US and the UK - this is nowhere acknowledged on the Box Office Mojo site, which defines the data as from the Netherlands.

talk) 21:32, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply

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I agree that it is remarkable. Seems like there should have been criticism about the warping of the term "North America" at some point. Perhaps when China surpasses "North America", that event can open discussion about how box office territories work. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 22:34, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

On Benelux I see that I was wrong in that there are some remnants of the co-ordination between the countries left over from the pre-EU period. Nevertheless this doesn't affect film and it would be sensible to find a second source to confirm that the Netherlands data does indeed cover all three countries, given the absence of mention of this in the principal sources?

talk) 23:03, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply

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Yes, I reused the term from the Wikipedia article since I thought it would be uncontroversial. As for reinforcing it further, I saw sources that definitely mention "Benelux" but not really in depth. Still looking for one that will explain it clearly. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 23:10, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have looked at the Dutch film industry sites (mostly in a Dutch), linked to from our own stub page Netherlands Association of Film Distributors, and have found a lot of Netherlands data but no reference to it including sales from any other country. Further, the publications produced by the International Union of Cinemas provide data for Luxembourg separately, with one reference to separate data for Belgium. On the main international box office websites, those that provide Netherlands data again make no mention of it also including Belgium or Luxembourg. Thus, while I agree that these countries are sometimes considered together for various purposes, I do not think we can consider one general reference in a book as authoritative - without any actual evidence that these countries' data is routinely aggregated, as we know is well evidenced for USA/Canada and UK/Ireland?

It also occurs to me that it makes some sense for the industry to treat Canada as part of the wider US market, and Ireland with the UK, given the common language and cultural ties between these countries. But in the Netherlands they speak Dutch, in Luxembourg they speak Luxembourgish (considered a variant of German), and in Belgium either French or Flemish. For a medium like film, it would surely be challenging to treat these countries with their different languages and cultures as one market?

The Movie Business mentions Benelux here. Chicago Tribune mentions Benelux here. Deadline.com mentions it here. From what I can tell, despite multiple languages, I think that this territory shares the same distributor. That might be a unifying factor. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 13:18, 15 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know. Your first citation may be using geographical terminology, rather than defining markets (since, if alternatively we take it literally, 'Scandinavia' is combined and includes Iceland, Australia is combined with New Zealand, and Latin America is all one market also. Yet your third source specifies a Scandinavia that excludes Norway and refers to Australia and New Zealand separately). Indeed none of these sources really help that much - imagine for a moment that the actual accounting unit for box office is the country in every single case - it would still be possible to write articles referring to terms like 'Scandinavia', 'Benelux', 'Latin America' or wherever, according to how the writer wishes to describe and aggregate the data; so such references establish nothing. What we need to know - and actually all we need to know - is how data routinely reported for worldwide box offices (such as that on Mojo, which many people seem to use) is actually compiled. Or, indeed, we recognise that the terminology is fundamentally flawed and simply refer to other countries or other markets without struggling to define them (since we both know that the vast majority of references are trying to say "everywhere apart from the US, Canada (and their dependent territories)".

talk) 14:40, 15 December 2016 (UTC)[reply

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Box Office Mojo is not the only source used. It appears that Deadline.com uses

comScore (which keeps its data proprietary), and Deadline.com's articles use Benelux (as well as Scandinavia, actually). So we may want to reflect some ambivalence. It just means that different sources will do different kinds of reporting. For what reason? Not sure yet. Like you said, "North America" is the most consistent here. Other arrangements will vary, probably for different business purposes that we have not determined yet. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 15:14, 15 December 2016 (UTC)[reply

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Thanks - just out of interest, we should both keep digging. Although it does occur to me that if there is no industry standard but, as you suggest, different data aggregators do different things, then does the term have any real specific meaning that can be defined? If we get to a position where some reporters combine the data and others do not, then aren't we really just talking about country data - the same as for any other socio-economic topic?

talk) 15:58, 15 December 2016 (UTC)[reply

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I've only plumbed Google, but there may be more answers in sources behind walled databases. Box Office is a print magazine that has some online content that uses "territory" or "territories", but I do not see anything detailed in its Google results to add more. I don't know if reporters are combining the data or not; it seems more likely that it is the source they use. In the case of Deadline.com, I suspect that Benelux and Scandinavia are reported as one box office territory each, and they draw from that. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 17:03, 15 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I found the page on Box Office Mojo with a drop down menu to choose the box office you want a league table for. Mojo reports Netherlands and Belgium/Luxembourg separately, but the latter two combined. So I am not sure what value we add with any reference to Benelux? Unlike comscore they also have Scandinavian data but separately for each country (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland). So there is no 'Scandinavian' territory. That the data is sometimes aggregated for journalistic purposes is not really noteworthy for WP?

I also found this: Canada data is available separately if people want it,[1] as is Ireland^[2]

I conclude that: a) different reporting agencies collect data from different places; there is no standard coverage, and b) 'territory' is simply lazy terminology by the industry and does not represent anything substantive that can be defined. There is simply a common practice of (generally) aggregating one total for each of US/Canada, and UK/Ireland (& sometimes Malta).

Makes sense that comScore used to be Rentrak; I recognize Rentrak and was wondering if comScore was new. Anyhow, I'm not sure what you want to do here. Even if groupings beyond "North America" are perceived to be lazy, sometimes we get these groupings in sources and cannot separate the numbers into individual countries. One idea is that we could contact Deadline.com's international box office journalist, Nancy Tartaglione, to understand how Benelux and Scandinavia are factored in. I do find it strange that the above list of countries does not include any Scandinavian countries, so it may not be complete. Want to contact the journalist? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 18:34, 15 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am confident the list is exhaustive. If you look at the world movie page at comsource.com, there is a promotional video, aimed at potential customers for the box office data, that cycles through the same list of countries whilst colouring in a world map. It's there to show the extent of their coverage. Amusingly, when they get to Netherlands, they colour in Denmark by mistake. The finished map shows their global coverage - Belgium and all of Scandinavia (excepting Denmark) are not coloured in.

Of course when people report all sorts of data, they sometimes lump data together - for example with economic data you might find a report of the GDP of Benelux. And 'territory' is an easy word when one uses groupings like that. But it wouldn't make any sense to write an article about the territories used for reporting GDP data; it's just a fuzzy word being badly used.

talk) 20:07, 15 December 2016 (UTC)[reply

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That makes sense. Funny about the Denmark mistake. :) I emailed Nancy Tartaglione asking about all the items we've been discussing. She can't be cited as a source for Wikipedia's purposes, but it may help inform our discussion and perhaps point us in a particular direction. I'll let you know if she responds. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:53, 16 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Different data gatherers use different geographical definitions of what constitutes a "territory". With the exception of "North America", it is arbitrary whether, for example, Maltese data is added to UK, and there are various other examples of different practice. So how can it make any sense for WP to carry an article attempting to define the indefineable - the recently added 'ranking' of territories by is surely a meaningless nonsense given that different providers aggregate their data in different ways? Personally I would suggest deleting this article entirely, on the basis that it contains no useful information, it is simply a dictionary entry. MapReader (talk) 12:05, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It is not simply an dictionary entry. Such an entry would not be able to venture to explain that box-office North America is different from geographical North America, which is a very important part of this concept to explore. This article is essentially about a concept and the workings of it, and multiple reliable sources significantly cover what it means to be a box office territory and what the top-ranking box office territories are. The rankings and the changes are discussed within the prose, and the list is simply based on the prose. There is no source for what is after India, so we would not go any further at this point. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 12:22, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If we can find a dynamic source for the list of rankings, I would acknowledge that as an improvement. But I don't find that the current rankings are controversial. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 12:26, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]