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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Patrons per auditorium to offset ops costs
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Richard C. Wolfe
Master Film Handler
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Posts: 250
From: Northampton, PA, USA
Registered: Apr 2000
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posted 08-09-2000 09:50 PM
What is the break even cost?There is no way that that can be determined as it varies from theatre to theatre and even auditorium to auditorium. A theatre manager may not know the answer to this question for his particular theatre as he is not aware of all the costs involved, but an owner or proprietor certainly should be. Is it 5 or 10?, maybe 25 or 50? It all depends on the individual house overhead, ticket prices, concession sales, and film rental. As an example...I own and operate a single screen subrun theatre with an average ticket price of $2.00. My weekly overhead is $2,850 with a concession per cap of $1.25. My film rental averages 40%. My normal schedule concists of 11 shows per week...therefore I have a per show cost of $259.00. I need 128 tickets sold per show at $2.00 for a gross of $256.00. Deduct 40% film rental and I'm left with $153.60. Those 128 people purchase $160.00 in concessions. My share is 66% or $105.60. Add my share of both ticket revenues and concessions and I'm left with $259.20 or a profit of $.20. In other words I need 128 people to break even per show.(1,408 per week) Naturally the weekend shows do much better then those figures and therefore the weekday shows don't need to do that much. In my case the weekdays probably need about 65 to 70 people to break even. If I schedule any extra shows the cost of those shows only include the extra payroll and utilities as all the other expenses are fixed and already budgeted to the original 11 shows. Therefore the cost of any extra show only costs me about $30.00 and only needs 15 people to break even unless it's a bargain matinee ($1.50) when I need 25. I can't imagine that those 10 million dollar megaplexes can have a per screen overhead much lower then mine even with the shared costs over all screens. They are running at tremendous loses on weekdays. And we wonder why Carmike and soon the others are bankrupt. I have often been to those theatres on a weekday afternoon when a 16 plex had only 25 people in the whole place!
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Brad Miller
Administrator
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Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
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posted 08-11-2000 02:07 AM
I agree. If someone goes to the trouble to come to your theater, run the flick! Turn them down once and you risk losing their business forever.There was one time though this didn't work out too well. Anyone had this happen to you? We were running "Scent of a Woman" with some ludicrously late start time. Being almost 3 hours with trailers (9 reels), the practice was to not start it until a ticket was sold on that last show, for rarely did it do any business that late. Well, a guy came wandering in apparently just as I was walking downstairs to shut things down. The night was a fluke, as for some oddball reason, we had not sold a single ticket for any of the last shows. I was going to do my closing duties, run to the bank and go home early! Not quite. So I get downstairs to lock the front doors and the cashier tells me to run "Scent". Now doesn't this just suck? Here is the longest movie, scheduled to start last, and it's going to fire up a full half hour late! Oh well, it's my job. I run upstairs and thread it and fire it up immediately. Needless to say, the man was quite pleased, for not only did he get a private screening, but we held it...just for him. ![](http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/smile.gif) I do my duties and about the end of the first reel I'm done! I do the bank run and am back about halfway through the second reel. What to do? Well I decided to go give a little personal service and check every single person in the building to make sure they are comfortable. But wait, the guy's not there! Bathroom? Perhaps. Nope. The guy's gone! I check every auditorium and clear the entire complex and sure as can be, he must've not liked the movie and skipped out. This why I am against non-operator side platters with conduit stretching from the front of the machine to the wall, preventing a speed wind to get through the rest of the film. By the time I was absolutely certain the guy was nowhere in the building, the splice to the head of reel 4 had just passed, and 4 reels is just to much to consider running the film down to the next reel change and dropping 8000 feet of film back in the center. It was a lovely night.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
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Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 08-11-2000 05:47 PM
We ran Columbia's "Godzilla" over the 4th of July weekend (the year it came out, that is....not this year! ). We had 2 shows scheduled for the 4th. As it happened, during the early show there was a giant thunderstorm in town, and our electricity went out repeatedly. When the first show got out, we were about 15 minutes past the second show's start time, but nobody had shown up yet.... so we prepared to take off and go shoot fireworks. AT that moment, and AFTER the lights were all turned off, one of our best customers (who lives in a neighboring town, 25 minutes away) showed up for the late show. I warned her that further power outages might happen and so on, but she wanted to see the show! So the fireworks display was delayed until 11:45 at night. (But at least the customer stayed until the bitter end!)
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Richard C. Wolfe
Master Film Handler
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Posts: 250
From: Northampton, PA, USA
Registered: Apr 2000
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posted 09-13-2000 08:57 AM
Considering the discussion of how many people it takes to cover the cost of running a show, I would like to make a prediction. Given the fact that several, and soon possible many more major chains, are filing chapter 11 bankruptcy it will be necessary for them in addition to closing unprofitable theatres to trim the overheads on their remaining theatres as well. This will require a close scrutiny of the cost of all phases of operations. That which doesn't cut the mustard, will have to go. I believe that one of the doomed segments of current operations will be continuous weekday matinees. We all know that aside from summer vacation and other holiday periods, weekday matinees do not come close to supporting themselves. It is not uncommon for a sixteen plex to have only twenty five people in the entire complex on any given weekday afternoon. This doesn't even begin to cover the costs of operation. During the depression matinees disappeared from many theatres only to return during World War II. Then in the fifties when TV just about doomed the theatres, those that didn't close gave up matinees again in order to survive. The final blow for matinees almost happened when the large downtown movie palaces closed in the late sixties and early seventies. They depended on the walkin trade that the downtown location provided, and when the theatres relocated to suburban shopping centers and freestanding locations, that walkin trade didn't exist. Most theatres during that period either ran one matinee and then closed to reopen around 6:30 for the evening shows or only ran one midweek matinee on Wednesday afternoons. In my area the majority of theatres didn't run weekday matinees at all. In the late seventies and throughout the eighties, with the building of multiplexes, some matinees returned, and finally during the nineties with the arrival of the megaplex continuous daily matinees returned to most of the nation. However considering the present financial situation I believe that over the next few years we will see them disappear once again, except for in the largest markets.
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