Redbox is an easily recognizable business seeing as it has thousands of disc kiosks. It has been a reliable operation for those who want to rent movies conveniently, but that will soon be gone as the company decided to shut down its operations.
Redbox Rentals Are No More
Redbox has been around for decades since it began renting DVDs. Since 2002, it has served millions of customers in the US with more than active 24,000 kiosks. Just like other DVD rental companies, it is finally succumbing to the lack of business with the emergence of streaming services.
The owner of the rental service, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment has already filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and was approved by a judge, which means that its nonexempt assets will be sold to repay creditors.
Judge Thomas Horan said that there is no longer any means to continue to pay employees, and bills, or finance the case. "It is hopelessly insolvent." There's also the "possibility of misappropriation of funds that were held in trust for employees," as per The Verge.
With the business closing to an end, the remaining 1,000 employees will be laid off and the business would be liquidated. Streaming operations will be discontinued and the recognizable red kiosks will be sold off as well.
This will be to pay the outstanding debt that the company has accumulated due to poor business, including the multimillion-dollar payment owed to NBCUniversal and the payroll for employees that the company failed to provide.
DVD Rental is a Dying Business
Newer and better things always come to replace old practices, and in this case, streaming services are the better option since it's more accessible and holds more options than DVD rentals. Just last year, Netflix also ended its DVD-by-mail service.
By early October 2023, Netflix mailed out its final discs from its remaining distribution centers such as California, Texas, Georgia, and New Jersey. Those who received the DVDs would get to keep the disc as the business shut down, as per AP News.
Unlike Redbox, it wasn't that big of a loss for Netflix, especially since it managed to keep up with the times and developed its streaming service just as the DVD rental business was starting to lose customers, and now, it is the top streaming service in the industry.
During the peak of Netflix's DVD-by-mail operations, there were about 20 million subscribers to the service and Netflix had over 100,000 titles in its catalog. Now, Netflix has over 269 million subscribers and is continuing to grow.
Even cable is already being overshadowed by streaming services. The latter not only provides subscribers with a lot more content to choose from, but users also have the freedom to what whenever and wherever they want, with as many titles as they can watch.
Of course, there is a a possibility that something better would also come along that would shake the streaming service industry, and it may just happen seeing subscribers are already complaining about the rising prices for such services.
