TL;DR
A videographic from V1 Analytics charts the rise and fall of Blockbuster, showing its massive expansion in the 80s and 90s and collapse in the 2000s. Today, only one franchisee-owned Blockbuster location remains, down from 5,734 units at its height.
That second lesson is demonstrated elegantly in a videographic from V1 Analytics, which uses data from Blockbuster’s public financial reporting to show the franchise’s massive expansion throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s and its precipitous collapse in the second half of the 2000s.
Today, a single franchisee-owned Blockbuster location continues to operate in Portland — down from 5,734 units at the franchise’s height.
While the rise of Netflix is typically blamed for the death of the brick-and-mortar video-rental industry at large, it’s worth noting that Family Video, a relatively small competitor to Blockbuster in the ‘90s and ‘00s, is still operating more than 700 units, suggesting that Blockbuster’s demise cannot be attributed entirely to external factors.
In this story
This story was originally published in 1851 Franchise on June 26, 2020. Burnaze summarizes and links to the original reporting.
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