Adult Entertainment Industry Description

Companies that own, operate, manage, and provide adult entertainment and erotica, including movies, books and magazines, Web sites and software, nightclubs, adult cable networks, pay-per view services, telephone and online services, retail stores, and catalogs.

Summary

Moral questions aside, sex sells, and the adult entertainment industry is here to stay. When all its different incarnations are combined – strip clubs, magazines, Internet sites, TV programming, DVDs – the industry rakes in more than $13 billion a year. That’s more money than the annual sales of traditional Hollywood entertainment. The industry has grown through the years by taking advantage of every new media technology. Adult entertainment moved from movie theaters into homes with the inventions of the VCR and DVD player, fueling mass consumption of eroticism. Next came pay-per view services and the Internet, both of which continue to grow at an incredible rate. The latest distribution channel to show rapid growth is porn over wireless devices, which could become a $1.5 billion segment by 2012.