In May 2020, online sales continued to dominate in volume but delivered little in value

In May 2020, online sales continued to dominate in volume but delivered little in value

Posted by Pi-eX Research on 6th Jun 2020

After April 2020, when 100% of the sales were online, the month of May at the top 3 auction houses consisted again of all auctions being online except for a few auctions at the end of the month, which were arranged live in Paris as the country reopened.

1. Online auctions dominated the offering in May 2020:

The number of auctions arranged in May 2020 by Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips is a testament to the efforts made by the top three auction houses to keep the public auction trade going during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite the global pandemic and the continuation of confinement restrictions in most of the auction houses key locations, which forces the cancellation of 38 Live auctions, Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips were able to arrange 58 auctions in May 2020, 55 purely online and 3 Live auctions.  This represented a 43% decrease versus the number of auctions arranged in 2019.

2. Revenue generated by the May 2020 auctions represented 3% of the revenue generated by auctions in May 2019

With key Impressionist and Contemporary auctions from the so called New York MEGA Week postponed, the remaining online auctions were not able to generate much revenue for the auction houses.

As clearly shown by the graph above, revenue in the month of May has traditionally been generated by high profile evening sales where artworks sell in the millions.  May 2018 brought the highest revenue ever at Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips with almost $3.8B.  May 2019 saw a 24% decrease in revenue versus 2018, but still brought a healthy $2.9B.  Then came May 2020, with a total revenue for the month of $93m.

With such results, the key question for auction houses is whether the disappointing results are due to the current Covid-19 environment or to the online format. 

As Live auctions started to resume, at least in some locations, results at these auctions will tell us whether format is a driver.

For more information on results in May 2020 at the top 3 auction houses, consult Pi-eX MACRO May 2020 Reports.