Part
01
of one
Part
01
What is the market size for the private art & design collection market? How many collectors are there?
The market size for private art and design collection lies within the range of $28 billion and $32.5 billion. Furthermore, it is estimated that the global figure of art collectors lies between 8,000 to 10,000. Below you will find a deep dive into my findings.
Market size for private art
Firstly, I considered it would be best to learn about the global art market, before concentrating on the private dealer sector. There are two significant reports (TEFAF Global Art Market and The Art Basel-UBS), affirming two different estimations regarding the private art market, so I have cited them both.
The TEFAF Global Art Market Report acknowledged the global market estimation to be around $45 billion in 2016. The market expansion occurred briefly in the previous year, which is mainly attributed to the dealer sales growing by nearly 25%, easily compensating for the auction sales declining (America by nearly 41%, European countries by 13% and 1.6% in Asia). Moreover, the report included that private undertakings via dealers explain global sales by 62.5%. Thus, Pownall, the author of the report, put to trial a distribution analysis in order to calculate the all-out dealer sales and concluded that it was $28 billion, which is 62.5%, exceptionally so in Europe.
On the other hand, the summary of the report by Art Basel and UBS calculated the total value of all dealer art at $56.6 billion. It headlined a hike in dealer sales by 3% in 2016, for $32.5 billion for that segment. Deterioration in the growth of the economy, accompanied by the dubiety in global politics, led to guarded demand and supply. Despite market polarization, 2016 marked public auctions hurting growth, but the dealer market was relatively stable.
Therfore, given the above, we can conclude that the market size for private art collections is between $28-32.5 billion for private dealer art.
number of collectors
Collectors are defined as individuals with more than $1 million in cash who actively buy and possess contemporary art. Larry's List specifies further conditions for being collector such as the collector has to be alive, active in this market, and so on. The website Larry’s List was extremely helpful in finding information concerning the market size for private dealer sector and its first report clearly concludes the presence of 8,000 to 10,000 collectors on a global scale. The website further contains 3,111 visible collectors, with 7,000 or more present in the market on a more private level. This estimation arises out of 27,000 individual sources.
The average age for collectors is 59, with America in the lead, followed by Germany, Britain and China. Larry's List says, '71% of the collectors are males. 12% own a private museum, 12% share their collections via online web pages and 37% are actively engaged in public art institutions'. They are more influential than they were two decades ago, and are expected to be more so in the future.
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, Larry's List estimates there are 8,000-10,000 collectors from at least seventy countries. Also, as mentioned before, though both reports state different estimations, we can conclude safely that the results must lie between $28 billion and $32.5 billion.