Entertainment Merchants Association

The Entertainment Merchants Association - or EMA - is an international trade group that represents the home entertainment industry.

EMA was formed by the merger of two former trade associations, the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association (IEMA) and the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA). The resulting group is a not-for-profit trade group that intends to advance the interests of the $35 billion home entertainment business globally.

Its member companies operate 35,000 stores within the United States and 45,000 around the world. EMA represents both brick and mortar and online stores. Members include retailers of all sizes, distributors, divisions of movie studios, video game publishers and other related businesses and entities.

EMA states a mission to protect the right of the industry to sell and rent entertainment products and content. In the United States, EMA has been one of the most vocal critics of, and has been involved in legal challenges against, state legislation that seeks to ban the sale of violent video games to minors, and to establish non-industry age ratings and classifications on video games.

EMA emerged victorious against a California law that prohibited the sale or rental of such video games to minors in 2011 after a Supreme Court decision found the law to conflict with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.