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

money.cnn.com

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

#171

Post by mehrdadn »

legitster wrote: post #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…

> it's like borrowing money to buy more ingredients for a failing restaurant.

Well, they're gathering people's information & movie consumption habits as well. I could imagine a similar business losing money on the movie cost but making up for it by exploiting people's data. Not sure how "well" they're doing on that front though.

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

#172

Post by astrodust »

gamblor956 wrote: post #148
ironjunkie wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If MoviePass represent let's say 50% of your customer and suddenly they remove your theater from the list, I will bet you will lose about 90% of those MoviePass customers, so you will lose about 45% of your customers. I have a MoviePass, and when they removed a big AMC theater around my place a couple months ago, I simply drove two more miles to the Century theater. I have zero loyalty to a specific theater//chain, I…

MoviePass' problem was that their biggest users were stingy as fuck. They would smuggle in their own snack and drink, instead of purchasing from the movie concessions stands. This might not have been much of an issue (since MoviePass pays full price for the tickets), but they tried to make a play for all of a theater's concessions revenue rather than just the revenue traceable to MoviePass customers.

It's the GroupOn problem. You're allowing people to self-select for being cheap, wanting deals.

The MoviePass system was probably pitched like a health-club membership with the expectation that nobody would ever use it, or like a streaming service people forgot they were subscribing to, but it seems they've captured a base of enthusiasts taking full advantage of the program.

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

#173

Post by __jal »

ironjunkie wrote: post #158
reaperducer wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An emergency loan with no change to the service whatsoever? They are really having a deer in the headlights moment. Reminds me of a startup I worked with once. The goal wasn't to make a viable product. It was to make a big splash and get bought. 10 Start a product/service 20 Make a big hype and get lots of publicity 30 Get bought by some larger company that sees you as a threat/opportunity 40 Founders get big cash pa…

This unfortunately is probably the untold goal of 80% of startups around the Bay area that have unsustainable business models. What I find ethically borderline is that no founders will admit this, they will all pretend their goal is to make it a super successful sustainable company. As you said, the issue is that founders will usually get a moderate payout (a couple Million$), while even early employees will get almo…

It is slimy, and I had to learn that the hard way. There is a lot of sleaze in our industry.

But as someone who has spent his entire career working startups, and just a human who has seen other scams before, I think the cliche about not being able to con an honest person is fairly true. If you buy the hype that you'll make an unreasonable amount of money in a short period of time, well, buyer beware.

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

#174

Post by inetknght »

balls187 wrote: post #165
ironjunkie wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This unfortunately is probably the untold goal of 80% of startups around the Bay area that have unsustainable business models. What I find ethically borderline is that no founders will admit this, they will all pretend their goal is to make it a super successful sustainable company. As you said, the issue is that founders will usually get a moderate payout (a couple Million$), while even early employees will get almo…

The problem isn't necessarily one of ethics, it's that employees aren't able to appropriately assess a companies business strategy. 1. What is your monetization strategy? 2. What is your plan for profitability?

I have to 100% disagree about your assessment of ethics. If you're hiding things from your employees so you can get your bailout and shaft everyone else, how is that ethical?

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

#175

Post by lechiffre10 »

legitster wrote: post #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…

I listened to a podcast from the CEO about what their ultimate objective would be. The idea is to at one point have MoviePass be sponsored or paid ( or get a cut) of recommending things aside from the movie experience. For example, you'd get a deal with Uber to get to the theater or a list of great restaurants to try close to the cinema. Package an overall experience. I also think the data collected from movies that people are most interested in seeing would be of great use to publishers ( Box-Office seems to already help satisfy that). Problem is I think their cash burn rate won't allow them to get to that stage soon enough and I can't really see a light at the end of the tunnel for them especially considering AMC has started its own similar experience.

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

#176

Post by learc83 »

lbotos wrote: post #154
misterprime wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to go to a different chain is nice. For example, near home there is Regal theater, but near where everyone hangs out there is an AMC. I'm considering switching from MoviePass to AMC A-Stubs or whatever it's called, but will lose out on the opportunity to walk to my local theater for a free flick.

The best part about this is that you called them "free flicks". Are they actually? I was under the impression you were paying something for them?

If you're paying $10 a month, you normally see 1 movie per month, and you're thinking of the monthly fee as paying for that one movie, any additional movies you see are effectively free.

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

#177

Post by pandasun »

astrodust wrote: post #169
acchow wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't charge less than the marginal cost, it doesn't make sense! It worked for Uber tho. And now they've raised prices in markets where they are established.

If by "worked" you mean "burned through ten billion in cash" then sure, it worked.

True, I think that maybe Uber found the fine line (could be pure luck) between creating enough buzz right before running out of cash (several times) and simply going bankrupt.

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

#178

Post by vonzeppelin »

mi100hael wrote: post #163
Spooky23 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the upside is that they will fail fast!

I'm not sure 7 years and a mostly-acquisition counts as "fast." Quite frankly it's impressive their charade has lasted this long.

They were a lot more expensive until recently though.

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

#179

Post by mawburn »

djrogers wrote: post #160
scarface74 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMC doesn’t show 12 different movies in a month. At most, they probably have a turnover of 5-6 movies per month. As I said earlier, the price they pay for the studio for each movie a subscriber sees is around $4-$6. They still make a lot of money on high priced concessions.

> AMC doesn’t show 12 different movies in a month At my local AMC, they currently have 18 movies showing, and pre-sales already running for 10 new movies opening between now and Aug 15th. I think you're either vastly underestimating the number of movies out there, or you haven't been to a theater in a while.

Yeah, but of those how many of those would your average subscription holder want to see? I suspect not that many.

But, I am definitely debating on getting the AMC subscription now that I know it's a thing. $20/mo sounds like it's very worth it.

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

#180

Post by stuckinarut »

jsgo wrote: post #152
martin_bech wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moviepass is not available in the EU.

true, but I think their point is that if the policy catches on there as popular, what is to prevent the US (or others) from implementing similar laws? Relying on a business model that could reasonably be illegal after the stroke of a pen by a legislator is not a good thing. And legislators are at least putting on the appearance of being concerned about user data after the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica thing would caus…

Regulatory capture, bribes (AKA lobbying), a culture that devalues privacy, a culture that places corporate rights over individual rights, a culture that doesn't like sane limitations on contracts, etc...

So long as Google is an 800B behemoth who invests more than anyone else in lobbying, monetizing customer data (and sucking up massively more data than needed) is going to be legal.

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