There are not many stores of Blockbuster, left open. Now there has been an announcement for the closure of the remaining two outlets in Alaska, which is set to be a deathblow for Blockbuster. The General Manager of Blockbuster in Alaska had confirmed the news through a post on Facebook that rental operations that were on in Fairbanks and DeBarr Road would cease to exist from next week before the stores get reopened for selling off inventory till the end of August.
The reports from Anchorage Daily News suggest that Blockbuster, the video rental chain has remained endangered for some years now. The year 2013 had only 13 outlets of Blockbuster surviving, and by the time 2016 came, the number had fallen to just nine. Due to the closure of the outlets, right now only one store of Blockbuster remains in the United States.
The journey of Blockbuster stores becoming obsolete had started off from the year 2013, when their parent organization, Dish Network Corp’s CEO Joseph Clayton had acknowledged the fact that there was a shift from video entertainment to a digital distribution system. They had announced of closing down their last 300 retail stores, but the promise was also made that they would keep on serving their customers online via an On Demand app. Still, those who have been the faithful customers of Blockbuster for all the years, very well knew that online platform could never take the place of an official physical store.
Two months back, the host of the show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver had tried to rescue the Blockbuster store in DeBarr Road through the donation of the jockstrap, which was used by Russell Crowe in Cinderella Man. Though this memorabilia had tried to create interest on the minds of the customers for a short duration and hence increase their footfall, still the strategy was not enough to secure the future of Blockbuster’s chain of stores. In Alaska, the stores of Blockbuster have kept alive for a more extended period because of the state’s internet, which is costly, and hence not many people view content online.
