Slashdot Mirror
Low Cost Cinema Through Dynamic Pricing
cinesprocket writes "EasyJet, the European pioneer of LowCost airline travel has broadened its horizon into the entertainment field. easyCinema is to open tomorrow in Milton Keynes, England, offering cinema-goers cheap rate tickets as low as 20 pence (33 cents) using the same formula that made their airline company revolutionise the industry in Europe. However, according to the the BBC, easyCinema is being given the bird by Hollywood who will not allow it to show it's high cost movies for a low price for fear that it will create a domino effect in the future, like the airline industry has felt (in Europe). Given that easyCinema is willing to pay the movie producers the same price as the other multiplexes, it shouldn't matter what price they sell on the tickets at for we poor folk? Their success depends upon showing the big films and their lawyers are reported to be already mounting a case. Given that the case will be heard in England, where the MPAA have less of a hold on the government, it will be interesting whether they can bring the behemoth to its knees."
Tickets to the Matrix 2 would've cost $5,402,302.49 each.
Courts? Why are there courts involved? Is easyCinema trying to force the MPAA to sign a contract? Is the MPAA trying to get easyCinema shut down even though they aren't doing business with each other?
should be US-only problem. If something, in this case rights to show a movie in a theather, is sold to europe, MPAA should not have ANY say in the matter. As long as both parties of the deal which gives those rights follow the deal.
It makes me angry to even think about any meddling from MPAA part on british, or any european film avenue for that matter.
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
The money for the release locations is in concessions. Get the body in the door, then make your dime. Ticket price is not the principle motivating factor in the business model of most theaters, regardless of whether they are first-run mega-plexes or indie houses. SUre enough tickets are revenue, but that's not your profit center when you run a theater.
- Frequent viewer miles - Standby viewings - Movie ticket scalping - Last minute rushes for extremely low prices - Progressive/preferential seating and all those other "niceties" ^_^
I sincerely hope that easyCinema appears, enjoys a lot of success, and causes exactly the domino effect that the MPAA fears. I want to see movie prices come down, and more importantly, I want to see this change affect the music industry as well. Finally, I hope that such a powerful domino effect causes laws like the DMCA to get taken out of the books.
As it stands, in some parts of the not so rich world , movie tickets are just about equel that in value.
So what if the lowest possible ticket price is 33 cents? it's just like booking a really cheap flight.. teh cheapest one being the 3 a.m flight which you have to book 6 months adead for.
Why not have it like in a real theather, where the better seats, say smack right in the center, are more expensive then the left most seat in the front row?
You get to advertise cheap and you have the option of paying less for a crappy seat.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
This is yet another venture by Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the seventh of his easy* ventures. One of these is easyJet, but he's no longer involved with the management of that company.
1. Sell movie tickets for a loss.
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
Tell me again why people who think the airline industry is a good place to turn a profit have a viable business model here?
...would be to not only have cheap tickets
...and then charge $20 to use the bathroom
but to sell those super duper jumbo sodas really cheap
seriously the only time you ever have to pee worse than when you wake up in the morning is right after sitting through a movie in the theatre, or is this just me?
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
So, if they're following the airline business model, does that mean that you can watch the movie for free, but you have to buy a ticket in order to listen to it too?
-Elentar
The wheel it turns, around and around, with an ancient rumbling sound.
The boys presenting this scheme have a good, solid idea which has been used to before by some other industries (e.g., the airlines). Fact is, actual attendance is dismally low compared to seating when you adjust for all times, around 1/5 of the theater seats available. Decreasing price results in increasing attendance; Econ 101 tells you that in many cases the improved attendance will actually result in *more* profits, not less. That is:
Fill 20 seats at $7 each = $140
Fill 50 seats at $4 each = $200
Fill 100 seats at $2.50 each = $250
And so on.
But the MPAA isn't interested in the basics of the free market. What they're interested in is control, pure and simple - and price fixing is one very obvious, and very effective, method of maintaining control. If you can no longer enforce price fixing then you lose one of your more important tools for controlling not only the theaters that run your movies, but also of moviegoers.
How's that? It's really very, very simple: the higher the price the less movies the consumer can afford. Because the consumer can only see x number of movies, advertising can be used to 'herd' the consumer into spending his limited movie income on movies the MPAA chooses to push. The higher the price, the more limited the options, the more likely the consumer will spend his money on something being heavily promoted by the MPAA.
Lower the price and the consumer can now make more movie choices. The consumer, blast his heathen soul, might decide to use some of this disposable income to see movies *not* promoted by the MPAA - perhaps smaller, independent films. The consumer, that communist scumbag, might actually begin to believe that he has a more options - he might even take some of that 'movie money' and spend it on something else! After all, if all he wants to see are two films a month, and they're now half the price that they were, he might spend the other half of the money on something radical, like a book.
Bad, bad consumer!
In any event, remember that the MPAA is at the top of the heap. Like any organization that's king of the hill, change is a threat to the status quo and one that must be quashed regardless of the possible upside. To the invested, change is evil and must be prevented at all costs.
This particular change takes some power out of the hands of the MPAA and puts it into the hands of the consumer. Despite the fact that it would most likely increase overall profits, the loss of power is simply unacceptable and cannot be tolerated. Price-fixing *must* be maintained.
For organizations like the RIAA, the MPAA, or monopolies like Microsoft, profit takes a big back seat to power. The free market is of no interest whatsoever to these folks; in fact, the less free, the better.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Milton Keynes was the first place in Britain to build a multiplex cinema.. The Point opened in 1985, but (I have heard) is having to close as it is has been unable to compete against the new Xscape cinema/indoor ski/health centre.
Incidentally, Milton Keynes is also home to probably the world's only herd of concrete cows.
"E pur si muove!" - attributed to Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
More like a cartel, then.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
easyJet works because, for the large majority of people (i.e. everybody who has been on a plane at least once before and aren't in >= Business Class), flights are an enormous pain in the ass and only serve as a means to an end (get to where they want to go). Their pricing model is reasonably transparent and you know what you're getting in terms of service (not a lot).
Whereas the traditional carriers have hideously arcane and obscure pricing models and clearly are charing way over the odds for flights. The cats out of the bag on that one.
Transpose this to the cinema industry and you find that it doesn't work. People *like* the cinema experience; the upturn in cinema attendance after the collapse in the late 80s (at least in the UK) was due in part to the far higher quality of cinema experience (pleasant environment, better seats etc etc). Going to the cinema is not just a means to an end, it's an end in itself.
In any case, 'going to the cinema' is right up there in the top 5% of 'impulse activities'. No one is going to book 10 days in advance for a film. Personally speaking, I can seldom decide which film I'm going to see until 10 minutes before it starts. :)
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
First a point of order and then an opinion...
:-P
At the risk of pissing in the wind here... the answer to quite a few questions that are above this are in the article.
Those confused by the viability of the business model: NOTE: Not *all* the tickets will cost 20p. In fact, probably relatively few. As the article says, you could actually pay 5 pounds, which is more than my local cinema charges now. Sure, the tickets will be on average cheaper but this 20p thing is clearly an advertising gimmick. And as such it seems to be working so far.
I wonder how succesful this will be. Flying, if the experience as a whole is reduced in quality is fine; its a functional activity getting from A-to-B. (EasyJet=no "free" inflight snack or drink, no "free" papers, the crews do the cleaning etc, you are herded on, you are herder off) You don't fly for the sake of it. Going to the cinema on the otherhand is about more than the film itself. Depending on how far corners are cut (maintenance, technical specs of equipment, cleanliness etc.) it might be a bit unappealing as something you might do for the sake of it.
Personally I welcome this if only because I can grandly goto a more expensive cinema round the corner and be able to watch in peace without rowdy teenagers annoying me. All for a few extra quid. Seems like a bargain to me. Everyone will be happy
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
I am a foreign student currently studying abroad in Europe, meaning that probably I represent one of easy*'s biggest demographics. I (and all my friends) almost always fly easyJet to travel, we rent easyCar to drive to France or Andorra, and we check our e-mail abroad at easyInternetCafe. easy is the real thing--it's cheap as hell, especially if you book really early. On the other hand the "customer experience" leaves a lot to be desired. For example, in an effort to cut costs even further, easyInternetCafe literally fired all their employees except for about 15 at the home office. No actual easyInternetCafe employees, work in the easyInternetCafes. Which is at once dumbfounding and frustrating. If your computer crashes or the machine eats your money when you try to buy time, well, you're fucked. No recourse. Lots of the computers are broken, people leave their trash laying around, there are always wierdos looking at really sick, graphic porn, and worse, the cafes are unsafe. Twice now I have seen people brazenly mugged, in broad daylight, in nearly packed easyInternetCafes. Similar experiences on easyJet; they farmed out the personnel contract (at least here in Spain) to some company named EuroHandling, whose ticket agents are assholes and unwilling to help you out in any way, especially if you arrive after 40 minutes before departure time. So I'm a little skeptical of easyCinema, even though I'd probably give it a whirl if it came to a town near me. But sentences like "All we ask is that you don't leave any litter behind" sounds like a sweet way of saying, "we're not paying for janitors, please don't trash our theaters." Personally, I'll gladly pay the extra 2 to avoid sitting on someone else's half-eaten nachos, but hey, that's me.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
concessions £3.50, members £3.50, adults £4.50
Weekday after 6pm:
concessions £5.00, members £4.50, adults £5.50
Weekends, Friday after 6pm:
members £4.50, adults £5.50
This is for York City Screen, a Picturehouse Cinema, that shows lots of non-mainstream European and American movies, but also show blockbusters like the Matrix and Lord of the Rings.
Not too much of a rip-off; London prices are exorbitant though, granted. Mostly to do with property pricing I expect.
Though funnily, for ethnic food, London tends to be *cheaper* than north England.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut