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AMC Is Beating MoviePass at Its Own Game
- empath75 8y agoThis was inevitable. Moviepass was the dumbest startup idea I’ve ever seen.
- nimos 8y agoWell they don't put anyone's lives at risk so surely that gets them out of say, the bottom 5%?
- tnypxl 8y agoThe idea is fine. The execution was garbage. They created a race to the bottom that no one felt compelled to join.
- RodgerTheGreat 8y agoThe race to the bottom seemed to be an attempt to capture a userbase which could then be directed at particular films whose publishers paid MoviePass or used directly as a cudgel in negotiating better pricing from theaters. Might have worked eventually if they had been able to keep bleeding money. As a consumer, I think I got a much better deal out of AMC crushing this particular middle-man before things got out of control.
- kardos 8y agoOnce MoviePass folds, what would be AMC's incentive to keep A-List going?
- ceejayoz 8y agoAMC gets concession revenues. It may well be that losing money on tickets is made up for by increased sales of popcorn, drinks, candy, etc.
- rtkwe 8y agoThey still want to pull in more people that may buy high margin concessions. Their per user costs are pretty low they can cut the price per ticket down to pretty much the amount they have to pay the studio.
- wvenable 8y agoIt was the clearest example of a start-up designed to build marketshare without any idea how to profit from that marketshare. Anybody can create a business trading $5 for $6 dollars and get millions of subscribers but that doesn't make that business idea good.
- daveFNbuck 8y agoMy understanding is that their entire idea is the race to the bottom. What's the fine idea I'm missing?
- imtringued 8y agoThey started the subscription service at $50 per month which was sustainable. It only started going downhill when they reduced the price to $10 per month. They had to reduce the selection of movies you can watch. Cutting 80% of the price obviously means cutting at least 80% of the service.
- CodeWriter23 8y agoThe idea is a feature, not a standalone product.
- bsder 8y agoNot really. If they had stuck with trying to move people into just cheap tickets up front, nobody would have complained and they might have been able to reach critical mass. The problem is that the VC's wanted to cash out in 18 months or go broke--well they're getting what they wanted. Movie theatres have a lot of unsold inventory on off times. They probably would have been willing to cut all manner of deals for those times. However, they were never going to give you chunks of primetime unless you had a huge cudgel.
- dawnerd 8y agoOne of the big problems now they’re making it near impossible to see movies during the cheap times. You’d think they’d incentivize people to go to the Tuesday cheap ticket shows.
- jtcond13 8y agoI tip my cap to all the loyal users of MoviePass out there; I have long waited for the day when investors would be willing to subsidize my hobbies and you've been living in that world for months. Bravo, ladies and gentleman. I have to wonder, though, why you'd want to go to the movies regularly these days, with all the dreck that Hollywood has been putting out in recent years. Maybe it's time for you guys to hit the $1.99 rentals on YouTube/Amazon/iTunes more often.
- godzillabrennus 8y agoTo get out of the house with my girl and not spend a fortune. To use it as an excuse to join other members and see more films with new friends. To get out of the hot summer sun and enjoy a few hours of entertainment inside a nice cool theater. To simply enjoy blowing movie pass investor money that they were too dumb to hang onto because it’s hard to spot a unicorn and pets.com was taken this cycle.
- gammateam 8y agoits really amazing how many people don't realize that money is simply thrown around as frivolously as it is in this sector
- Someone1234 8y agoGoing to the movies is just asking for a talker or phone user to ruin it. Most of the major chains have a warning about it, but it continues to happen on a regular basis. You have the options of either risking a fist fight or missing a good 10+ minutes looking for staff. I want a "movie theater" that is essentially a private room with a TV that me, the spouse, and kids can watch it in. We can also pause for bathroom breaks and get food ordered/delivered. That's often why I just wait for the BluRay release and watch at home, the experience at the big chains is terrible.
- PhoenixReborn 8y agoI don't know if Alamo Drafthouse is in your area, but it's a movie theater with a very strict no talking/phones policy. If you violate that policy they promptly kick you out of the theater. Watching movies there has really made me appreciate the benefits of the big screen again.
- clay_the_ripper 8y agoMoviepass tried to do the same thing ClassPass did. ClassPass launched with a too good to be true business model, grabbed huge market share and is now successfully pivoting to a more sustainable model. The difference is that ClassPass has leverage with the studios, because there are thousands of small, one location gyms out there. Movie pass doesn’t have the same leverage because they are providing access to much larger chains with lots of locations. Yet another example of reason from first principles :)
- cjhopman 8y ago... wait, what? ClassPass is making money?
- clay_the_ripper 8y agoNote I said “more sustainable” :) They’ve been pivoting around in search of something that can make them profitable eventually.
- draw_down 8y agoFirst principles, eh?
- jrnichols 8y agoi'm happy for moviepass, even though I never signed up. I like that it's brought some change to the movie theatre market, and as a result i can now use the Cinemark subscription plan that sprung up recently. It's a total win for me. :)
- LaikaF 8y agoI actually ended up doing my first credit card chargeback on movie pass after the changes they announced at the beginning of August. I had canceled and there was one more month but then they announced the movie selection thing. Suddenly when I went to look on a saturday no theater within 10 miles of me had a show time for anything they had selected. Part of the reason I got it over Sinema is because moviepass worked at my local indie film theater. The moviepass selection would probably never include things I wanted to see. Side note if that theater offered an unlimited pass I'd jump on it in a heart beat. Their screenings are never full and they tend to bring back older things I'd want to see. When the Ghost in the Shell live action came out they showed the original anime version for example.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Reedx 8y agoI was surprised to learn that MoviePass has been around for 7 years! They started in 2011 and only had 20k subscribers in 2016. It wasn't until late 2017 that they sold majority stake to Helios and dropped the price to $10. That's quite a Hail Mary pass. What lead to that after ~6 years? Were they out of money? Out of patience?
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoThe disrupted is disrupting the disruptor in the [var] market. Arguably this is going to be the case going forward. Increasingly, incumbents can move as fast as "disruptors" because information flows so quickly and nearly every major incumbent has learned that "disrupting yourself" is key to long term survival. Incumbents can see threat trends as they are gaining traction, rapidly invest in an in-channel copycat (because they have so much cash on hand) and since they already have the user base, deploy the solution more easily. I'm increasingly convinced that the orthogonal flanks that startups have been able to do to incumbents in high tech over the last 20 years, is not viable anymore.