Those red DVD kiosks peppering Walgreens across the country may have reached their end.
Last week, media company Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, which owns Redbox, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Court filings revealed the company had $970 million in debts, compared to only $414 million in total assets. Creditors demanding payment from Chicken Soup include media giants Universal Studios, Sony Pictures, and BBC Studios Americas, as well as retailers Walgreens and Walmart.
It seems Redbox has not been a good deal for Chicken Soup, which took on $325 million to acquire the DVD rental chain from Apollo Global Management in 2022. Since then, the company has been sued by CVS, Sheetz, NBCUniversal, 828 Media Capital, and several other vendors for unpaid royalties and commission fees, among other complaints. And it now owes its employees $3.52 million in unpaid wages and $2.24 million in health and welfare benefits, having been unable to make payroll since the beginning of June.
Redbox’s demise isn’t just reflective of broad corporate mismanagement; it also demonstrates the demise of the DVD. The kiosks are pretty much the last hanger-on of an earlier era of technology. Blockbuster, Redbox’s storefront equivalent with its now-quaint mail-in DVD service, filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Netflix launched its streaming service in 2007, revolutionizing the video-viewing market.
Overall, DVD sales have plummeted in recent years. In 2023, DVD purchases had dwindled by 92% since the industry’s peak almost two decades prior. Back then, DVDs made up 64% of the home video market. Now, that statistic sits at under 10%. The populations purchasing DVDs is also telling about the technology’s demise. Whereas one might expect an older crowd to be invested in DVD viewing, a recent Statista report found that it was 18- to 29-year-olds who purchased DVDs and blu-ray at the greatest rate.
At best, DVDs are the next vinyl craze, becoming a nostalgic media piece to be collected and displayed. At worst, they’re tossed into landfills around the world.