Redbox Closing 500 Kiosks

It seems Redbox’s growth has hit as bit of a snag as of late. For the past few years, it seems there’s not many places you could go without seeing one of their kiosks. From restaurants to grocery stores, it seems like they were everywhere – and that was a good thing for them. But now it seems as if they’re running out of room to grow – and they’ve made the decision to close some 500 of their rental kiosks. While an exact number of their kiosks isn’t known at this time, it is known that Redbox has over 40,000 of them.

Even with all of the extras Redbox has offered over the last couple of years (Blu-ray movies, video games), their revenue only grew by about 3 percent in 2013. I didn’t realize this before, but some of the kiosks even tried to sell concert tickets – but that apparently didn’t go over very well as they’ve given up on that idea.

When Redbox first debuted, there was no better deal – getting a DVD for $1 a night? Who could pass on that deal? Of course it did add up rather quickly if you forgot to return it in time, but that’s another story. Over the years there have been inevitable price jumps, naturally, but Redbox is still a good deal however you look at it.

And it seems what they do best is what they’re going to be most successful at – renting out movies on the cheap. Their streaming program hasn’t been successful at all in the scheme of things, and one wonders if them closing these kiosks is an attempt to get back to the basics.

How do you use Redbox? Let us know in the comments section below!

[Image via lehighvalleylive]

SOURCE: http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/23/5745288/redbox-will-uninstall-over-500-rental-kiosks-this-year