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MoviePass couldn’t afford to pay for movie tickets on Thursday

money.cnn.com

11–20 of 275 posts

Re: MoviePass couldn’t afford to pay for movie tickets on Thursday

#11
post #2

A couple months ago there were optimist articles about how they'll "make it in the long run", having "enough money to keep going before being profitable". Cinemark even announced something similar. Guess it didn't last THAT long. I'm scared for other services with the same pricing scheme.

I believe AMC is doing a subscription service where you can see up to 3 movies a week for $20/month.

Re: MoviePass couldn’t afford to pay for movie tickets on Thursday

#13
post #2

A couple months ago there were optimist articles about how they'll "make it in the long run", having "enough money to keep going before being profitable". Cinemark even announced something similar. Guess it didn't last THAT long. I'm scared for other services with the same pricing scheme.

It's eye-opening that there are companies that forgets about cash-flow and profitability...

Uber, Spotify...plenty of other examples, I'm sure.

Re: MoviePass couldn’t afford to pay for movie tickets on Thursday

#14

Was the entire play of MoviePass to pay for people's movie tickets until they make it and then jack up the prices + negotiate with cinemas for better deals? What was the "make it" condition? Is this a common strategy? It also loosely reminds me of the dotcom era strategy. It doesn't matter if we're not making any real money, we have a lot of users. Surely that can be converted into money somehow. We're worth billions…

Is this a common strategy? Are you kidding? The entirety of Silicon Valley is predicated upon and funded by this business model. Almost every service provided by a SV startup is subsidized.

Re: MoviePass couldn’t afford to pay for movie tickets on Thursday

#15

Was the entire play of MoviePass to pay for people's movie tickets until they make it and then jack up the prices + negotiate with cinemas for better deals? What was the "make it" condition? Is this a common strategy? It also loosely reminds me of the dotcom era strategy. It doesn't matter if we're not making any real money, we have a lot of users. Surely that can be converted into money somehow. We're worth billions…

What do you mean? This is literally B2C Strategy 101. If you even try to build a company that is profitable on day 1 or early in its life it gets labeled as a "Lifestyle Business" and VCs won't get near it.

Re: MoviePass couldn’t afford to pay for movie tickets on Thursday

#17
post #7

Was the entire play of MoviePass to pay for people's movie tickets until they make it and then jack up the prices + negotiate with cinemas for better deals? What was the "make it" condition? Is this a common strategy? It also loosely reminds me of the dotcom era strategy. It doesn't matter if we're not making any real money, we have a lot of users. Surely that can be converted into money somehow. We're worth billions…

I think of Moviepass as the pets.com of 21st century VC madness. That said, they clearly had a great pitch, I'd love to see their series A pitch deck.

I guess the upside is that they will fail fast!

Re: MoviePass couldn’t afford to pay for movie tickets on Thursday

#18
I think the subscription model for theatres makes a lot of sense for all involved. Getting more people to the theatres (where they buy other stuff) and creating larger audiences who didn't previously visit theatres. The pricing and terms of MoviePass are unsustainable, but I think there will be more subscriptions for theatres that are tried.

Re: MoviePass couldn’t afford to pay for movie tickets on Thursday

#19
post #16

How many movies a month does their average customer watch? Is there a small group of users costing them the most money?

With moviepass, I got once a week plus get a large popcorn discounted because of all the points I get from free movies and buying a popcorn.

Movies in my area are $13 so even going to 1, I win

Re: MoviePass couldn’t afford to pay for movie tickets on Thursday

#20
If I am a traditional 'tech' company - I can afford to lose money when I am investing it in my platform or technology. It's like borrowing money to invest in your assets.

For MoviePass, they are losing money and passing it off to theaters - it's like borrowing money to buy more ingredients for a failing restaurant. You can't charge less than the marginal cost, it doesn't make sense!

I am trying to wrap my head around what MoviePass is trying to do - especially given the number of friends I have who say they would easily be willing to pay 2x or 3x for the service. The data they are gathering cannot be more valuable than the cost of a movie ticket.

I have to imagine they were making a play at building up a huge enough audience to strongarm theaters into lowering their rates. Well the joke is on them - everyone knows that they have no bargaining power. Plus, signing up was so hard, their audience is skewed towards power users and people persistent in their cheapness.

An emergency loan with no change to the service whatsoever? They are really having a deer in the headlights moment.

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