Piracy: Idumota Marketers At Risk
If the activities of movie pirates are not curbed, marketers may be in for big trouble as investigations have revealed that pirates are currently feeding fat on movies, especially Yoruba.
Investigations further revealed that marketers are losing an average of N120 million to pirates fortnightly, especially on every release date.
A market analysis shows that a marketer spends an average of between N250,000 to N300,000 on a low budget film, while a high budget movie costs over N3 million.
P.M.Entertainment gathered that after the printing of jackets and posters as well as radio and television commercials, marketers sell to Lagos distributors at the rate of between N180 and N190, while they in turn sell at the retail price of N210 and N260 or more for those outside the state.
A close source told P.M.Entertainment that an average marketer spends about N4 million on release dates, while 30 films are released fortnightly.
P.M.Entertainment findings also revealed that pirates under the guise of end users buy a copy each of the films released, dub them on digital video disc (DVD) format as either eight-in-one, print their own jackets and sell at the rate of between N60 and N65 or even less.
A marketer who does not want his name mentioned told P.M.Entertainment that unlike before, when marketers print and sell an average of 35,000 copies or more, they now print about 17,000, while some even produce as low as 5,000 copies.
According to the marketer, “we are in serious debt, we are owing banks, while we cannot feed well. In fact, we are in trouble.â€
Investigations further revealed that despite the gravity of the offence, all a pirate gets is an average of six months imprisonment or an option of fine.
Recently, 26 movie pirates arrested by the Idumota marketers were sentenced to six months imprisonment with an option of N50,000 each as fine.
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