Oscars bounce drives Wuaki on-demand rentals

Streaming service Wuaki.tv has attributed a massive spike in new release rentals to Sunday’s Academy Awards.

Wuaki released seven-Oscar winner Gravity on Monday and this became the site’s biggest ever rental title on its first day of release. Rentals were 273% higher than average day one new release sales.

Throughout the week, Gravity has continued to double the average rental figure for a new release.

Another Academy winner, Blue Jasmine, saw its rental figures climb 40% on the previous week after its star Cate Blanchett won the Best Actress award.

“It’s clear bagging an Academy Award creates a huge amount of interest in a movie amongst our customers and subscribers – especially with new releases,” said Simon Homent, content director, Wuaki.tv.

“We expect we’ll continue to see an increase in rentals of Academy Award winners and nominees through the week, especially with all the media attention around the ceremony, and the world’s ‘most shared selfie’. The real peak will come at the weekend, when more of our users will get a chance to sit down and watch the winners they’ve been reading about all week.”