MoviePass and Amazon Prime aren't the same, because Amazon Prime produces a lot of its own content, and is the consumption point for the other content it serves

MoviePass and Amazon Prime aren't the same, because Amazon Prime produces a lot of its own content, and is the consumption point for the other content it serves. Amazon buys the rights to shows, and produces shows - so it has a fixed cost. It then sells access which has practically 0 marginal costs. MoviePass sells subscriptions and then buys tickets. For each extra subscriber they've got an increase in marginal cost. You might argue they can make a profit by charging more for the subscription than they pay for the tickets, but there's lots of factors working against that: 1. When they IPO their suppliers will know their revenue and can demand high prices to match, seriously threatening their marginal cost. 2. Their suppliers already have scale and so will be difficult to leverage - further hitting marginal cost. 3. Their suppliers are extremely capable of producing a competing product undercutting them- destroying the lock-in component. The suppliers control access to the content not MoviePass.