Report: South African Porn Industry in Shambles

LOS ANGELES—An article posted today by IOL highlights the extent to which a once-thriving local adult entertainment industry—South Africa, that is, not L.A.—has been reduced to a shell of its former self because of "piracy and the boom of online content." The news site adds, "Over the past decade, sales of DVDs have dropped by as much as 90 percent, distributors say. And while there is a huge demand for local content, nobody wants to take the risk of bankrolling expensive films that will only have a few thousand sales because most of the buyers are picking up pirate copies." It was only three years ago, according to the article, that the nation as a whole, and Cape Town in particular, were "on the cusp of breaking through. At the time, film-makers were quoted saying the local porn industry was generating as much as R300-million [US$27.5 million] a year." But the globalization of all content, including adult content, has made it difficult for local producers to make enough money to ensure that the entire production food chain can get paid. “I have 1 000 actors, actresses and models who are willing to participate,” said director Tau Morena. “But the challenge is we haven’t found an innovative way to bring the product to market in a sustainable way so that everyone involved can make a decent income.” The result has been an increase in so-called amateur porn—"thousands of people shooting their own content at home and uploading it to the net," says IOL—but a decrease in sales of professionally produced porn distributed via DVD, a story by no means unique to South Africa. Indeed, AVN noted the first locally produced porn film in 2010, Mapona. The above-mentioned Morena was the director, and he recounted the roller coaster experience of making and distributing the film to IOL, which observed, "It was a hot commodity at the time. DVDs were flying off the shelves of 250 adult stores which couldn’t restock the porn film fast enough." But according to Morena, “The success was relative. The distribution of the movie was limited to adult stores and the fact that these are only available in developed cities there were a lot of places the movie didn’t reach… legally.” Morena also told the site that with the release of the movie came a wave of pirates. “They made a killing with the DVD because they don’t have to obey laws. They sold it everywhere within hours of its release.” He added, "I have a conservative estimate that there were over a million pirate copies sold. I would meet guys in all corners of the country selling me a pirate copy. Till today, if you travel to most taxi ranks anywhere in the country you can get a disk ranging from R20 to R50 in the streets." Luckily, his popular website picked up some of the slack, and still does. “We still average around 800 000 plus visits per month and generate over 7 million page views," he said. Still, the ultimately unsatisfactory experience with DVD production has Morena and others wondering what is in store for the local industry. Not everyone agrees, of course. South Africa's so-called porn king (does every country have one?), who heads JT Publishing, the country’s largest distributor of adult films, says there is still demand for local content—including Afrikaans titles, which he says still “sell exceptionally well”—but he admitted that the tide was running in favor of better-financed and produced professional content from overseas and against local producers aspiring to porn heights. That aligns with Morena's view of the future, in which more people are shooting porn on cell phones and more women are sitting at home in front of web cams, or as IOL put is, "Anyone with a smartphone and a sense of exhibitionism."