MoviePass Limiting Subscribers To 3 Movies Per Month (npr.org)

nolaguy shares a report from NPR: Movie theater subscription service MoviePass will not be raising prices, as it had announced last week, but will instead be capping the number of times that subscribers can visit movie theaters. For $9.95 per month, MoviePass subscribers used to be able to see a movie in theaters every day, if they so chose. Beginning on August 15, the service will instead provide three movies per month. The change replaces a previously announced plan to raise prices to $14.95 a month. The beleaguered movie theater subscription company is also canceling two other recent changes -- "peak pricing" surcharges for popular movies and a ticket verification process -- that were intended to stop the company from bleeding money.

Comments

Enough

[dohzer]

Three movies per month should be enough for anyone.

Re:Enough

[mattyj]

They're still 10's of millions of dollars in the hole, just to get to even, much less profitable.

They say that the problem was people that 'abused' the system, meaning people that took them up on the original offer as stated. Even at three movies a month, they're still buying tickets at full price and selling them for less. So yeah, I think they'd need about 90% of their subscribers to pay them each month and choose not to see any movies. Good luck with that.

Re:Enough

[ShanghaiBill]

They say that the problem was people that 'abused' the system, meaning people that took them up on the original offer as stated.

No, some of the abuse was much worse than that. For instance, I installed my Moviepass app on my burner phone so I could loan it to other people. My wife watched several movies per week, my daughter used it, and she also loaned it to her friends. We were probably doing 20 movies a month, costing them 20 times the subscription fee.

For three movies per month, we will likely still keep it.

not be raising prices?

[fahrbot-bot]

For $9.95 per month, MoviePass subscribers used to be able to see a movie in theaters every day, if they so chose. Beginning on August 15, the service will instead provide three movies per month. The change replaces a previously announced plan to raise prices to $14.95 a month.

So, instead of a max of 30 movies/month for $14.95 (up from $9.95) it will be a max of 3 movies/month for $9.95. How is this not effectively a price increase? Fewer at the same price is equivalent to the same number at a higher price.

For example. It's like smaller rolls of toilet paper but at the same price, because customers notice the "price point" not actual value. If you haven't noticed, toilet paper used to be 4.5"x4.5", then most switched to 4.5"x4" or 4.25"x4", now it's 4"x4" or 4"x3.92" -- but all at the same price as 4.5"x4.5". (Google: toilet paper smaller)