For many people nowadays, it’s hard to imagine watching anything without streaming. We have access to thousands of movies and tv shows across multiple streaming platforms, but it wasn’t always like that. To watch a movie at home, you would have to buy or rent a physical copy from a store, and no other company had as much power in this field as Blockbuster.
Blockbuster was once the king of video rentals, with its many stores spreading across the country. They were the number one place to rent movies and video games, making it hard at the time to see them fail in any capacity. However, their dedication to their rental format ended up becoming the seeds of their future issues, leading them to become a shadow of what they once were.
The troubles began in the year 2000, when Blockbuster refused to buy out its future competitor, Netflix. This would end up being a big mistake for Blockbuster, as Netflix’s mail-order DVDs cut into the market as an alternative form of doing rentals without late fees. Blockbuster got most of its revenue from late fees, so they were not too keen on removing them. This began to frustrate consumers, who were then seeing more rental services offering cheaper prices.
Even then, Blockbuster was still too big to fail and was doing fine until the introduction and growing popularity of streaming. Streaming was simply an easier way to watch TV and movies, and provided huge amounts of both for monthly subscriptions. Blockbuster did not steer away from its rental format until much later in 2004, when it launched its online service. However, at this point, Netflix and other streaming services had taken the lion’s share of the online market, making it impossible for them to find their footing. They slowly began to lose revenue and filed for bankruptcy.
In the end, it was a lack of vision that killed the company. If they were faster at adapting to the times, they might still be around today. Now, they serve as a reminder to all that nothing is too big to fail.
