7 ms·
Makes me wonder if the small subset of people who would regularly watch the same movie multiple times in a theater are: (1) movie buffs, highly likely to see a
by drewmol 8y ago
Makes me wonder if the small subset of people who would regularly watch the same movie multiple times in a theater are: (1) movie buffs, highly likely to see a movie even if it can't be the same, and
(2) high concession spenders?
If it's not sold out, seems a bit like licensing already built software: (if it's going unused and doesn't cost to on-board new users or otherwise affect higher paying customers, might as well get butts in the seats)
- cwyers 8y agoExcept MoviePass has no discount on purchasing movie tickets -- they pay full price.
- jjeaff 8y agoIs moviepass able to restrict who charges to the card? When I read about how their preloaded charge card system works, it made me wonder if someone with a square reader could just create a business with the word theaters in their name and charge the value of the ticket while in the theater lobby.
- dawnerd 8y agoThats why they're requiring ticket stub photos now. I imagine they also have some auditing tricks to find people using the card at non approved locations based on transaction history.
- panarky 8y agoTo get the funds loaded on the prepaid debit card you must check in to the movie on your phone, with GPS turned on, and within 100 feet of the theater, and purchase the ticket within 30 minutes of check-in. And you're restricted from using one account on multiple phones.
- digikata 8y agoPerhaps MoviePass can make a case to studios or theater chains directly that giving a break to their higher-volume customers might help drive more business overall...
- cwyers 8y agoWhy would they cut MoviePass in, though? They're a middleman without a clear value add to anyone involved except for "they can lose VC money."
- Jtsummers 8y agoTheaters can cut them in because movie pass puts butts in seats. And theaters make the vast majority of their income from concessions and not ticket sales. Most of the ticket revenue goes back to the studios.
- jjeaff 8y agoI imagine theaters are reticent to turn encourage people to get on a service that is essentially putting themselves between them and their customers. If they give discounts and support moviepass, then moviepass could eventually wield enough power to force discounts on theaters or else the theater will get blacklisted.
- cwyers 8y agoRight, but how much money do you think it costs to add a MoviePass-like feature to their ticketing system and their phone apps, compared to paying MoviePass a cut? If it really is a revenue-driving system, they can just implement it themselves. Or if they want to do it cross-chain, I bet you Fandango could implement such a functionality pretty easily. The part about developing a service like this that costs money is eating the loss on tickets, not the software engineering. MoviePass isn't a value add to this process. It's like Groupon, which quickly established a market but they had no "stickiness" for consumers and they've been swirling the drain ever since.
- digikata 8y ago
- fru2013 8y agoPerhaps users were sharing their pass with their friends and they're trying to curb this?
- dlhavema 8y agothat was my thought too. i go see Star Wars on Monday you go see it on Friday and we share the subscription price.
- mvid 8y agoIt would be tough, you can’t sign into a different phone that often, you need to share a physical card, and you need to check in
- giancarlostoro 8y agoOr buy the same ticket more than once and hand it to your friend. Hence take a picture of the ticket being a requirement now.
- 0xCMP 8y agoIn my experience people who have access to a theater during their daily work/chores/gym-run/etc. will buy tons of tickets using their account to help get groups in to a movie. I saw black panther for free thanks to my friend getting like 8 tickets for 6 of us. He had so many tickets he didn't even know where all of them were or how many he had so we found another couple in his car a few days later. Movie pass just puts on the money on the card, but they're unaware of what you're actually buying with that. You can buy the same movie for a date in the future over multiple days. I'm sure many will try to do the same using up movies they don't care about.
- djrogers 8y agoYou do know that's fraud, right?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jonas21 8y agoAs the article mentions, the issue isn't that people would watch the same movie multiple times, it's that people would buy tickets and resell them: "we saw some people turning MoviePass into a cottage industry, standing in front of a theater selling their tickets to Star Wars, or whatever," This actually sounds like a pretty reasonable way of cutting down on abuse to me.