People with 40 years old or more must remember a time where everybody went to a Blockbuster store to rent some movies for the weekend. The pace was always full and provided to their customers a great number of titles. I used to go there with my girlfriend and rent a drama movie and an adventure one.
In time, Blockbuster became the major rental company of the world. It was easy, you entered the store, chose a movie, took it home, saw it, and on the other day, just needed to put the VHS tape in a box to deliver it. It was practical and funny, in those days people watched a great number of movies to see in their homes.
Then technology took its place. VHS was retired and the DVD and blu ray came to the market. People bought new electronic devices and continued to rent movies in places like Blockbuster. It was kind of a ritual to go to the store, in those days, there weren't too many film releases and people competed to rent a “blockbuster”.
It's worthy to mention that Blockbuster started in the year 1985, as a simple VHS Tape rental company, by David Cook. The first unit was installed in Dallas, in the state of Texas, USA. Blockbuster means the movies that were successful in cinema halls, it's like the word “Bestsellers”, for books. The company itself became a success worldwide.
Blockbuster conquered the market due to several factors. They had a great number of copies of the new releases, a longer opening time then the occurrence, and did a lot of research to see what kind of movies would be acquired. It quickly became a successful franchise not only in the USA, but all around the world.
However, as technology continued to advance, the internet became a powerful tool worldwide, giving people the chance to access information in many forms, including texts, images, videos and more. Meanwhile, Blockbuster was sold to the giant company Viacom in 1994, and became a cultural icon in the USA.
In addition, Blockbuster got at the time 3,6 thousands of stores in America in 1996 and entered the stock exchange in the same year. New units emerge in other countries of Europe, Asia, Oceania, and Latin America, including Brazil. They had more than 65 millions registered customers in the whole world.
The company saw the transition of VHS to DVD as an opportunity to grow evenmore. Blockbuster started to rent videogames and a little after, the blu ray format. They had the chance in the year 2000 to buy a new company called Netflix for US$50 million but the deal didn't go ahead. Well, It could changed the company's future.
Due to some market errors, Blockbuster couldn't keep itself on top and shrank 75% in 2005 in comparison to its last year. A new model of rent became successful in the USA, with people renting the movies online, using the internet. Worth to observe that this new kind of technology took a large number of clients from the company.
Inside the company, a great number of depths from old owners, especially Viacon, ended up destroying the financial health of Blockbuster. This scenario prevented a deal with the company with Google. It was dark years and to go even worse, the streaming services took place all over the world with the new Youtube.
Blockbuster launched a streaming service in 2004, called Blockbuster Online, but they were late, and other services took place in the market. In fact, this new technology made all the rent stores useless, considered things from the past. Three years later Netflix started their stream service and became the leader of the market.
In the year 2010 Blockbuster sank into debt, and declared bankruptcy in the USA. The company Dish Network bought the assets of US$320 millions in an auction. The problem is that their restructuring didn't work out, and they closed stores all over the country. In Brazil the giant company Lojas Americanas bought their national operation.
Since 2019 only one Blockbuster store still works worldwide. There's no plan to close its doors. IT's a small unit in a little city called Bend in the state of Oregon, USA. The administration of the store is independent, via licensing by the couple Ken and Debbie Tisher. They have a few clients and survive by selling merchandising.
In the year 2022, Netflix launched a series called Blockbuster making fun with the company. The giant of streaming had a service like their rivals, renting movies by correspondence, but closed it. Well, we can say that it's the end of an Era, the streaming services and the internet changed the way we rent movies, maybe for the best…