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Netflix Co-Founder's Crazy Plan: Pay $10 a Month, Go to the Movies All You Want (bloomberg.com)
Mitch Lowe, a founder of Netflix, has a crazy idea. Through his new startup MoviePass, he wants to subsidize our film habit, letting us go to the theater once a day for about the price of a single ticket. From a report: Lowe, an early Netflix executive who now runs a startup called MoviePass, plans to drop the price of the company's movie ticket subscriptions on Tuesday to $9.95. The fee will let customers get in to one showing every day at any theater in the U.S. that accepts debit cards. MoviePass will pay theaters the full price of each ticket used by subscribers, excluding 3D or Imax screens. MoviePass could lose a lot of money subsidizing people's movie habits. So the company also raised cash on Tuesday by selling a majority stake to Helios and Matheson Analytics, a small, publicly traded data firm in New York. [...] Theater operators should certainly welcome any effort to increase sales. The top four cinema operators, led by AMC Entertainment, lost $1.3 billion in market value early this month after a disappointing summer.
>> subsidize our film habit
Not sure I have a "visit theatre" habit anymore. I thought about going to see a couple of movies this summer but the cost/hassle/commute wasn't worth it, so I'd have to say the last time I set foot in the theatre was for Star Wars commando movie, and even then it was the full 3D experience (because otherwise why bother).
to beggers on the street
... to kick out all teenagers and people with small kids?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Yes but to the average dipshit on the street who can't do the math his idea will seem awesome.Personally I have no problem with the current ticket prices either, its the movies that suck.
Comic book movies, movies about fucking wizards, remakes of shit that was a bad idea the first time around. Tome Cruise/Hanks, Adam Sandler etc. Its an endless stream of utter shit and piss.
So, in conclusion, fuck the cinema.
I bet the business model is to make money on the people who will rarely use this and hope the devil customers don't sign up in droves. Figure by next year they will start implementing limits like a lot of these crazy unlimited services do
They're hoping to collect marketing data. I am skeptical that the marketing data is worth that but even so it strikes me as a bad deal for everyone.
what about places like Hollywood Blvd that have 1 food item minimum??
and if this takes off then what happens when that 1 food item minimum?? starts at $5-$6 for say an small popcorn or $4.50 for a coke?
Their website calls it a "Theater Network", which immediately conjures up the idea that it doesn't work everywhere. But there's no way to see in advance (that I could find) which theaters participate in their service. The FAQ has this specific question listed, but it just tells you to go back to the main website, where there is no apparent way to find this info without signing up for the service.
Yeah, you get a 1-month trial just like Netflix did/does, but I'd still like to see in advance if it's even worth pursuing.
Recurring revenue is all companies can think about and it is destroying things
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Actually, the issue is online entertainment is eating Hollywood's lunch. Netflix, AMC, et all, are out producing original content that is actually entertaining so you don't need to go to the movies anymore. It's the same issue broadcast TV is having.
That's not to say they are not putting out garbage. They are doing that too... I'm just saying that there is more to this issue.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Remember folks, theaters make very little if nothing on ticket sales. Most of that goes directly to distributors & media companies, (and middlemen).
Where theaters really make their money is concessions. So hey, why not let in a bunch of people for basically free (nets the theater zero$), in the hopes you'll triple the amount of popcorn & sugar water sales!! To the average Joe they have just 'saved' thirty bucks on tickets & may drop the same into local establishment's fun-food instead. Really.
I don't see many movies in theaters either, but if I had this service then I'd damn well make sure I got my money's worth. Someone out there is going to literally see a movie every day of the year just to do it.
I don't see how the business model is sustainable without making deals with the theaters.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
No, you're not. $9.95 is a great price point.
Well it could work. This could lead to greater attendance at the cinema, I expect for this to work, it would probably need to be for movies that are a week old, so we are going to the cinema for under capacity shows.
We may like this, as we can go to the movies, without having to worry so much about budgeting.
Cinema would like this as there will be more people in the cinema, more people buying concessions.
Key problems that I see, would be the number of people you can bring with such a service. Normally people like to go to the movies with someone else or their family. So $10 a month for one person would end up being $20 a month for 2 people and $40 a month for a family of 4.
But still that may be better then just staying home.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Tickets sales are WAAY down.
The actual evidence says otherwise. Movie ticket sales have been a good approximation of constant for the last decade including last year. Revenues are up substantially as they are charging more per ticket.
Yes but to the average dipshit on the street who can't do the math his idea will seem awesome.
I can do the math, and it seems awesome to me. My wife and I go on a date every week, and we go to a movie 75% of the time, so we see roughly 36 movies per year in theaters. $120 / 36 = $3.33 per movie. Not bad at all.
Until it goes belly up, anyway.
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It's a family outing every once in a while.... maybe two or three times a year. We go to one of the places that has dining, usually. Often we go Sunday afternoon, or during the week when it's not crowded.
As far as this MoviePass scheme goes, though, it makes no sense as a business model. All you have to do is see more than one movie a month, and they lose money because they are paying the theater full price. That they raised money to help cash flow doesn't make any sense, either - that money will dry up and they will go out of business. They think they can make it up selling movie-goer data to advertisers? If the average ticket price is $9, factor in the average number of movies people will go to (a lot more than they go now, likely) - while some may already go once or twice a week, with a pass like this many people will go nearly every day. Even if it's only 5, on average, every month, that's a $35 shortfall (not even counting overhead). That's a LOT of advertising.
As a consumer, it sounds like a great deal.
What I envision is a few people making a giant pile of cash off the initial IPO, then dumping their stock while the company tanks.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The service will definitely lose money on me, IF my local chain buys in to it -- I just sent them an email inquiring. I've seen approx 75 movies in '16/'17. That would be $170 under their model. Let's call it an average of $12 a ticket, that's $900 in ticket prices, a savings to me of $730, ignoring concessions since we're just talking ticket prices. Add my wife in, and the savings are YUUUUGE.
I just don't see how this would be long-term viable, especially since I'd create a new email address just for this service and would buy a debit card and/or set up a new PayPal account just to lightly fox their attempt at gathering info on me. Some info I'd willingly give them, but not all. I guess their money would be made in people who sign up but aren't smart enough to maximize the value, like paying for a gym membership and letting them hit your bank account every month, yet never using it. Still, I just can't see them lasting long-term. But if my local chain buys-in, I'll use it.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Yes but to the average dipshit on the street who can't do the math his idea will seem awesome.
Hi. We already have that in france ( at around 20 euros per month, bit less for 2 people - single price adult ticket being (I take the price in paris were I lived) 11.5€ ( +1€ if 3D, +1€ if booked seated ) . So it cost just over 1 movie per month.
And i can tell that it's not only about the price.
Sure, at the very beginning i was student - lot of free time - i was using my card to the max, so that made complete financial sense with about 4 movies a week. Then i ended up having no time for it, but I still kept the card. Why ? Because it allows you to take more risks with the movie you go see. You can go for this obscure romanian movie with 1 review on imdb, and 1 line synopsis. And even if it end up being bad, you don't feel so bad about it because you didn't technically paid 11.5 for it.
I've seen tons of awesome movies i'd never had seen if I had to pay full price for it.
Also : free booking, line-cutting, free tickets for friends (on a point acquisition basis) ... being a subscribers usually brings tons of little + .
Obviously, the advantages goes away if your cinemas options are limited. If you live countryside with 1 cinema playing only the 3 most current blockbusters ... but this kind of subscription cinema may push cinemas into taking more risks in their programmation also, knowing at least part of their subscribers will come to see for free any movie , out of sheer curiosity .
I think people aren't getting why a lot of us don't think this will work. If it were a particular movie theater, or a theater chain, then you might figure they make the money back on concessions, and obviously some of them do that, but that's not what this is at all...
MoviePass is an independent third party that pays the theater the full price for the ticket. Then you go into the theater and maybe buy concessions... that's more profit for the theater, NOT MoviePass. MoviePass hopes to make it's revenue selling viewing habits. At nearly $10 for an average ticket, there's absolutely NO WAY they can recoup that money from advertisers. You are worth pennies, maybe a buck, but not $10. And then, again, unlike theaters that often sell advertising to show before the movies begin, MoviePass and their advertisers have NO DELIVERY PATH for their "targeted" advertising. They don't show you the movie, the theater does. Where are they going to advertise to you?
The very idea absolutely DOES sound crazy. This is NOT comparable to a gym membership, or an individual theater or chain selling passes - this makes very little sense to me. I'd be glad to admit I was wrong if people could actually argue for this business model, and not compare it to something it's not comparable to.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
But unlike Planet Fitness, they've got a second cash-flow: Charge outrageous prices on cheap junk food to the people who actually use the service. And they might be more willing to pay for it because they got a "free" ticket. So I think this actually works out decently well for them.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
People aren't getting this - MoviePass doesn't make money when you buy concessions, the theater does. The same theater that MoviePass is giving FULL PRICE for your ticket to. The theater doesn't have some arrangement with MoviePass - they don't know or care where the money for the ticket is coming from. The theater wins, the film companies win because more people go to the theater, but MoviePass loses - it doesn't make any business sense.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
bazmail sneered:
Am I right?
For me? Yes, you are. But only because the movie-going experience so thoroughly and comprehensively sucks, here in the 21st century version of America.
Back when I was young, and we rode our pet dinosaurs to school (uphill both ways), going to the movies was a compleely immersive experience. No, we didn't have sooper-dooper Dullby sound systems, or especially convincing special effects, and the seats weren't nearly as comfortable as they are these days. But what we did have was a culture of respect for the experience. People might talk during the "Let's all go to the lobby!" concessions promo, but the absolute picosecond the newsreel started (yes, I'm that old), everyone in the theater shut all the fucking way up, and we all merged into that singular, collective creature: an audience.
There weren't any cell phones in those days, so, if you wanted to make a phone call, you had to go to the lobby to do it. There were theater employees called "ushers" (and usherettes), who would stand at the back of the auditorium (there was only one per theater back then - and, blelieve it or not, it usually had a balcony section to increase its capacity still further). Their job was to escort lobby-blinded patrons back to their seats, and to be on the lookout for "hijinks" and that most despised of all sub-human species, "talkers".
Talkers got ONE warning. That was it. Open your yap again, and you would be politely escorted out of the building. Get escorted out of the building too many times, and you would be banned from re-entering. Forever. And if you tried to pick a fight with an usher, well, there were plenty of aspiring knights-errant who were willing to lend him/her a hand in escorting you out of the building, only minus the "politely" part.
And that - plus the sheer size of the audience - made the experience an entirely different one that what modern movie-goers are subjected to. Everyone (except those hijinks-prone kids) was there to watch the movie. Not make and recieve a half-dozen phone calls, check their Facebook feed, chat with their posse, or carry on a shouted conversation with/exhortation to the characters on the screen. The screen was huge, the house was usually full, and the experience of seeing a movie with a room full of strangers, all raptly attentive, was satisfying in a way that watching the same movie in a theater today simply can't be. It wasn't a matter of degree. It was a matter of kind - an experience of a kind that simply no longer exists in the 21st century.
At least, not here, in the land of the free and the home of the entitled nitwit it doesn't. In other countries, YMMV - and it probably does. But in the USA, we've fully embraced out inner oaf, and the theater owners sit with folded hands and let their patrons progressively degrade the movie-going experience to the point where I, personally, would not go to the theater if you paid me to do so, because I just don't need the aggravation.
So, instead, I sit in my living room, with my 7.1 sound system, and watch (mostly pirated) movies on my modest, 40-inch flat screen. And, although I really miss the movie-going experience I remember so fondly from my youth (Just as a for-instance, I was lucky enough to live in Honolulu when 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered - it was one of only 6 cities in the USA which enjoyed the distinction of an exclusive, 6-week engagement - at the Cinerama Theater on King Street, downtown. It was a reserved-seat performance, and I was lucky enough to get a center seat, albeit in the third row, which turned out to be just a little bit closer to the screen than would have been optimal. When the lights went down and the curtain opened up, a hush fell over the audience. Which, y'know, was pretty normal for then. What was very different was that there was no concessions pitch, no newsreel, no previews of coming attractions. Instead, when the screen lit up, we were in
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I'm guessing that while it obviously won't work with the business model as publicised, they have plans to make it work. I can see two ways that this would work for them:
Partner with theater chains for a lower ticket price. The only part of this that is difficult is that there's no motivation to partner if they get full price if they don't, and members don't want to only have access to certain chains. Perhaps if they gain a significant share of the market, they could force it.
Partner with the studios to get them to subsidize it. They're getting most of the money back from the theaters, so they'll still make more money if they get more people in the seats.