Unless the theatre is not accurately reporting its grosses, who could Disney be "not aware"?
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Wakanda and Strange World for $1.50
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I have a feeling that area of the country has enough "bigger city" locations that this particular place is just flying under the radar, so to speak.
I struggle with the price issue and absolutely hate it when I have to raise prices, but we are still about half the price of the "city" theaters and not one person ever complains about our ticket or concession prices. (Currently $8.75 for adults, $6 for kids) On the contrary, in our online reviews, anytime people mention the prices, they comment how low they are. So, I'm in the camp of "let's make some money and put in some improvements once in a while." Also we have a bank payment to make, so there's that.
I am well aware that "most people" never go to the movies, but I think even if tickets were a buck apiece, "most people" still wouldn't go. Most people don't go to basketball games, either. It's just all in what people want to do for out-of-home fun.
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This is a great thread and a subject I am very interested in.
I report my numbers every week. I know our reps look at them because they have contacted me when there has been a tech issue or when they have a question. Our prices are listed on those reports, including our low prices and any showing we have for a dollar. I know our studio reps look over our reports. It was based on these reports, Disney allowed us out of our agreement to keep Black Panther for three weeks.
From my understanding from talking to the studio reps, theaters are ranked based pretty much by how much money they make the studio. If I sell a million tickets for a dollar each, I would be ranked high and could get the movies on the break and the perks that come with it. If I sell tickets for $10.00 each but only sell 100 tickets I would send the studio small checks and my ranking would be low.
It also help us that we have no near by competition. The nearest theater to us is about a half hour drive. If we were seen as taking business from a theater that makes the studio more money, we might not be able to get the movies on the break. The studio is going to take care of the theaters that take care of them. I think a great deal of this comes down to the bottom line. If the theater that charges $1.50 is making enough money to make the studios happy, and not seen as taking away from higher priced theaters, they have a better ranking. If they are in an area that doesn't have any competition, their ranking might not need to be that high.
That is my understanding based on what the reps have told me.
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I eliminated ticket categories and now do a flat 7.00 across all showtimes and ages. Never heard a word from anyone about the change and it never appeared to change fluctuations on certain days/times. Sunday matinees still do as well as when they were all 5.00 a head. We ran 7.00 adult and 5.00 12 and under for the first couple years we were open. Im lucky in that I own the building outright, so there's no mortgage hanging over my head. However, this is my primary job that cuts me a paycheck to eat. I'd sweat charging 1.50 per person and hand over 65% of that. What we get from admission really does help pay the bills.
Like Mike, we often get comments about being half the price of any plex close to us. There are two within a fairly short drive of us. The price reflects not only my need to keep my own home warm and the ability to eat, but what happens when there's a major mechanical failure that needs addressed ASAP. I need to charge enough to always have padding for the "what ifs". But there's certainly merit in running discount specials/days for sure but a 1.50 normal price seems insane. Perhaps the reps for that area of the country just run differently and really aren't noticing? A mystery.
This is also why I generally encourage new folks to keep open grosses. I think it helps all of us when we can compare similar locations and see what works and what doesn't. It's also nice to see just how much smaller locations actually do contribute. The bigger guys could care less about me and more often than not, us smaller folks are almost never competing.. Although it would be nice if you could see grosses nationally rather than district. It's funny to me that we can't see upper peninsula locations as they belong to the Minneapolis branch yet we're in the same state!
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Originally posted by Mike Blakesley View PostI am well aware that "most people" never go to the movies, but I think even if tickets were a buck apiece, "most people" still wouldn't go. Most people don't go to basketball games, either. It's just all in what people want to do for out-of-home fun.
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Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen View Post
There will be a correlation between ticket price and tickets sold, but it will be very hard to quantify. Ever since the pandemic and the general inflation going on, movie ticket prices around here have seen a serious bump. What I hear from people that generally go to the movies, is that they claim to have become more selective in the movies that they go to. Still, there is often a discrepancy between what people say they do and what they actually do...
Our biggest issue is that we have 3 cinemas in 1 town. 1 being a commercial cinema with 8 rooms. 1 arthouse cinema backed by the comercial cinema (The building that is the arthouse cinema now used to be the old commercial cinema, it has the same owner. And ourselves. We are a independent arthouse cinema, backed by the local government.
Our regular tickets are 9 euros, and 6,50 for children up to 12 years old.
The other Arthouse cinema asks 12 euros for a regular ticket whereas their commercial counterpart has a regular ticket for 10,70
So although we're the cheapest in town, people have a hard time finding us. Ofcourse because we're an arthouse cinema our audiance is different and more select, even still....I don't see a correlation for us at this point.
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There might be something special going on with Wakanda Forever.
The theatre down the road from me (in a town that's about about three times bigger than here but still a single screen) did a free admission show of Wakanda Forever last Sunday for their Santa Claus Day.
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Originally posted by Frank Cox View PostThere might be something special going on with Wakanda Forever.
The theatre down the road from me (in a town that's about about three times bigger than here but still a single screen) did a free admission show of Wakanda Forever last Sunday for their Santa Claus Day.
You can always ask your Disney rep if you can do a free showing like the theater down the street. The Disney rep will tell you want is possible.
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Originally posted by Martin McCaffery View PostUnless the theatre is not accurately reporting its grosses, who could Disney be "not aware"?
I had a theater in my area go to $6 all the time pricing. This caused an uproar and when I reported it to Disney they said that they'd look into it. They (and the others studios) allowed it because they were getting 100% film rent at that price, that kept their grosses per ticket in line with other theaters in the market.
They would not have allowed a theater to charge $1.50 as that would (in a competitive area) attract everyonne to the discount theater and Disney would lose money.
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But they do get BOR's and electronic reporting to Comscore means the distributors can see exactly how many people bought how many tickets at what price. And you know they have apps written to do just that. I've had distributors request corrections over .01 rounding errors in a BOR.
I told the story elsewhere on here about how well Disney watches over all of us, but will repeat it now. About a year ago we showed the National Theatre Live performance of the play War Horse. We sent the grosses to Comscore. A few days later we were contacted by Disney politely inquiring whether we had cleared the screening of War Horse and if so, when and with whom. They, of course, thought we had screened the Steven Spielberg movie based on the play, which Disney owns. They accepted our explanation and no harm done. But they are watching.
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But they do get BOR's and electronic reporting to Comscore means the distributors can see exactly how many people bought how many tickets at what price.
So my guess is still that this theater is just posting decent enough numbers for their population and the studios haven't bothered to drill down to see the actual number of tickets being sold. As Archie Bunker once said, "They have bigger fish to fly."Last edited by Mike Blakesley; 12-06-2022, 05:35 PM.
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Originally posted by Martin McCaffery View PostBut they do get BOR's and electronic reporting to Comscore means the distributors can see exactly how many people bought how many tickets at what price. And you know they have apps written to do just that. I've had distributors request corrections over .01 rounding errors in a BOR.
I told the story elsewhere on here about how well Disney watches over all of us, but will repeat it now. About a year ago we showed the National Theatre Live performance of the play War Horse. We sent the grosses to Comscore. A few days later we were contacted by Disney politely inquiring whether we had cleared the screening of War Horse and if so, when and with whom. They, of course, thought we had screened the Steven Spielberg movie based on the play, which Disney owns. They accepted our explanation and no harm done. But they are watching.
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Originally posted by Mike Blakesley View PostSo my guess is still that this theater is just posting decent enough numbers for their population and the studios haven't bothered to drill down to see the actual number of tickets being sold.
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Of course I'm sure they have much more data than they need. That doesn't mean they're looking at all of it. The machine that spits out the red flags probably has a human assigned to it, and that person's job is to pick their battles. They probably can't get to everything.
I told our booker about this place and he is guessing that they are probably paying studios the minimum per-cap on the tickets and making it up on quantity of concessions sold. It could be a family operation that's run on a shoestring and who knows, maybe the owner is a rich person using it as a tax writeoff.
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