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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Author
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Topic: Let people to all the movies they want for the price of a single ticket
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Frank Cox
Film God
Posts: 2234
From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada
Registered: Apr 2011
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posted 08-16-2017 05:13 PM
$10-a-month pass that lets you go to the movies every day
quote:
As movie theaters struggle with tepid sales, Mitch Lowe has an extreme proposal for how to get more people into seats: Let them come to all the showings they want for about the price of a single ticket each month.
Lowe, an early Netflix Inc. executive who now runs a startup called MoviePass, plans to drop the price of the company’s movie ticket subscriptions on Tuesday to US$9.95. The fee will let customers get in to one showing every day at any theater in the U.S. that accepts debit cards. MoviePass will pay theaters the full price of each ticket used by subscribers, excluding 3D or Imax screens.
MoviePass could lose a lot of money subsidizing people’s movie habits. So the company also raised cash on Tuesday by selling a majority stake to Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc., a small, publicly traded data firm in New York. The companies declined to comment on terms of the financing but said MoviePass intends to hold an initial public offering by March. Helios and Metheson shares rose 5.7 percent to US$2.95 at the close Tuesday in New York.
Ted Farnsworth, chief executive officer at Helios and Matheson, said the goal is to amass a large base of customers and collect data on viewing behaviors. That information could then be used to eventually target advertisements or other marketing materials to subscribers. “It’s no different than Facebook or Google,” Farnsworth said. “The more we understand our fans, the more we can target them.”
Theater operators should certainly welcome any effort to increase sales. The top four cinema operators, led by AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., lost US$1.3 billion in market value early this month after a disappointing summer. The number of tickets sold in the U.S. and Canada last year declined slightly, while box office revenue rose just 2 percent thanks to pricier tickets, according to the Motion Picture Association of America, a trade group. The cost of a ticket has almost doubled in the last two decades, according to the website Box Office Mojo. The average price is about US$8.89 this year, though it can be much higher in some cities. Shares of theater companies fell Tuesday on concerns that MoviePass’s pricing would hurt studios or exhibitors. AMC’s stock declined 2.6 percent to US$13.25 at the close. Investors may be misinterpreting the MoviePass business model, Eric Wold, an analyst at B Riley & Co. wrote in a note to clients. If MoviePass can drive more people to theaters that would benefit the exhibitors, although the overall impact is “more negligible than anything,” Wold wrote.
MoviePass was founded in 2011, originally with a business model similar to a gym membership. The company hoped to turn profit from subscribers who paid US$30 or more per month but didn’t use the service often enough to justify the cost. Lowe, a fixture of the home video business who helped get Netflix off the ground and served as president of rental-kiosk operator Redbox, was named CEO last year. The privately held company declined to disclose subscriber numbers or financial information. Lowe said the data-based business model is still “years in the future.”
With the new strategy, MoviePass hopes to resolve what Lowe sees as the biggest factor to blame for the theater industry’s decline. He said the high price of tickets, not competition from Netflix or Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video service, is a big part of what’s keeping people away. “People really do want to go more often,” Lowe said. “They just don’t like the transaction.”
First I've heard of this thing. It looks like a no-lose deal for the theatres if this outfit actually pays full price for the tickets, though.
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Martin McCaffery
Film God
Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 08-16-2017 05:29 PM
At least AMC thinks it is too good to be true...
quote:
AMC Theatres is threatening legal action against MoviePass, a subscription based service for cinema-goers.
In a statement, the world’s largest exhibitor dismissed MoviePass as “a small fringe player” and said that its model “is not in the best interest of moviegoers, movie theatres and movie studios.”
On Tuesday, MoviePass announced that had sold a majority stake to Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc., a publicly traded data firm, for an undisclosed price. It said it was using the capital injection to fund an overhaul to its pricing model. It will now enable customers to see movie a day in a theater for a $9.95 monthly fee, far less than the cost of a ticket in many major markets.
MoviePass re-sells the tickets to customers. It claims it boosts attendance by 111% and that its customers buy more concessions. But exhibitors have preferred to bolster their own loyalty programs instead of aligning themselves with the service, with AMC investing heavily in its Stubs rewards program.
In the statement AMC said it is consulting with its attorneys to determine if or how it can prevent a subscription program offered by MoviePass from being used at its locations.
“MoviePass envisions paying AMC its full ticket price without discount,” the company’s statement reads. “The AMC average ticket price for watching a movie at AMC Theatres in the most recent financial quarter was $9.33. From what we can tell, by definition and absent some other form of other compensation, MoviePass will be losing money on every subscriber seeing two movies or more in a month.”
In an interview on Tuesday morning, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe acknowledged that his company was subsidizing ticket buyers. He argued that it will be able to prove its value to movie theaters and studios, and that in the future they will cut the company in on their additional profits.
“We’re hoping that if we can drive a meaningful increase in attendance we can share in that success,” said Lowe.
AMC does not sound like it wants to endorse MoviePass’s ambitions.
In the statement it said, “that it is not yet known how to turn lead into gold,” adding, “In AMC’s view, that price level is unsustainable and only sets up consumers for ultimate disappointment down the road if or when the product can no longer be fulfilled.”
The company said that reducing pricing to accommodate the MoviePass model would negatively impact the customer experience and would leave them unable to “operate quality theatres” and will have a chilling effect on the creative community by cutting them out of the income they receive from movie theaters.
“While AMC is not opposed to subscription programs generally, the one envisioned by MoviePass is not one AMC can embrace. We are actively working now to determine whether it may be feasible to opt out and not participate in this shaky and unsustainable program,’ the company’s statement reads.
[URL=http://variety.com/2017/film/news/amc-moviepass-1202528974/
]Variety[/URL]
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 08-17-2017 07:24 AM
Most things that sound too good to be true, are. We are in a multi-billion dollar industry. For this thing to work, it has to be financially sound. If they are taking a loss up front, they HAVE to make it up somewhere. So data will have to be sold on its customers (fine, that is their problem if they choose the service) but they also fully intend to back-end this with the theatres. And, just like with credit cards, they intend to charge theatres fees. And if the exhibitor doesn't pay those fees, then they will lose their customers. It wouldn't surprise me if they could also regulate YOUR ticket price by saying, Movie Pass will only pay "X-amount" regardless of what you want. Don't like, it lose your customers and we'll flag you as a non-participant. Sure they won't do it up front, they'll wait until a significant amount of moviegoers are subscribers that are used to Netflix type $10/month rates. And that is the goal isn't it? 1st run or streaming, the price is $10/month (or whatever inflation drives it to).
I see this thing as turning very evil.
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Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
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posted 08-17-2017 08:54 PM
quote:
quote: Dennis Benjamin
clicking around to see what theatre locations accept movie pass was impossible.
Apparently all of them:
quote:
The fee will let customers get in to one showing every day at any theater in the U.S. that accepts debit cards.
It sounds like subscribers get some kind of a special debit card and just use that when they go to the show. The chap selling the tickets may not have to know or care if it's a regular sale or a subscription redemption.
quote: Travis Cape
there's a noticeable difference in the behavior and appearance of the crowd between the cheapest matinee and the later shows.
The fix for that is called properly supervising the auditorium.
Behave, or leave. I don't see that as being an exceptional policy, or is it?
MoviePass assumes 91% participation, because they buy tickets the same way anyone else would. Yes. Members get a MasterCard-enabled "gift" card, into which MoviePass will deposit the price of your ticket. This way, it acts like a regular credit card so, if you take plastic at your theatre, you're assumed to be "participating".
The flaw in this is that MoviePass is scrounging around for someone else's money in order to fund the difference between subscription income and what goes out. The idea that they'll "seed" larger attendance by short-term losses, only to ask for a piece of the "additional profits" seems like a deceptive way to generate false income.
Basically, those "extra profits" were a transfer of outside money into the theatres' revenue stream. MoviePass will simply insert themselves into the theatres' "trough", while offering nothing tangible in return.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when they ask the studios for a piece of their "additional profits".
Seems like something that's destined for a loud, noisy crash... but you never know about this world these days.
Oh... on behavior... My experienced prediction is this would signal the end of most decent theatres. As a whole, the respect people tend to show the places they patronize roughly compares to what they have invested in the experience. From my days, running a theatre with $5 carload admits, I can tell you I would never, ever go back to a deeply-discounted model, just to attract more bodies. With a few exceptions, they behave badly, toss garbage everywhere, buy very little concessions, abuse the staff and trash the bathrooms. I paid more money per-capita, cleaning up and repairing after that field than I ever made from the "increased patronage".
Tossing them out doesn't work. They didn't pay you much so they didn't lose much. A subscription-based admission will further separate the payment from the admission. In many of their minds, they're getting in free, so what if they do get tossed? Fully utilized, the net cost to the customer can be as low as 33 cents per day... likely much less than the cost of gas to get to the theatre. So... no big deal, right?
As a rule, how many dollar houses did you ever see that were well-equipped, maintained, staffed and appointed? All the ones I saw around here, when we had them, became so trashed and dangerous, even the bikers eventually left.
No, thanks.
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