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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

#151

Post by goostavos »

crooked-v wrote: post #118
chrisseaton wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the studio gained audience but (excluding the MoviePass susididy) not any money so what’s the benefit of that? In fact they might be setting an expectation that film tickets should be lower in people’s minds! If you give me free tickets to the cinema I might go. If you say now I’m in the habit can you charge me $1? No thanks not worth it now.

The benefactee in this scenario is the theater chain, not the studio, as they make most of their real profit from concessions, not selling seats.

Is the thrifty MP user the same one that buys overpriced stuff from concession stands, though? I suspect the old candy in the pocket ahead of time trick would be in use.

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

#152

Post by jsgo »

martin_bech wrote: post #107
Robin_Message wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weaponizing customer data like that would literally be illegal in the EU, so doesn't seem like the best plan... Other ideas might work!

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 cause one to exercise even more caution.

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

#153

Post by talltimtom »

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…

“...be more valuable than the cost of a movie ticket.”

That’s the gamble right there. You think a movie ticket is worth what the movie theaters is telling you. MoviePass is calling their bluff by undercutting them on their own service if they get enough of the market theaters will have to cut them a deal they can survive on.

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

#154

Post by lbotos »

misterprime wrote: post #141
scarface74 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the movie theatres just created thier own subscription service. Why should they pay a third party?

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?

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

#155

Post by ironjunkie »

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.

I agree and that's the issue when you compete and differentiate on price in the low market. The customers that subscribe, will do everything possible to save a couple $s.

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

#156

Post by mulletbum »

reaperducer wrote: post #147
jacobush wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that would be something... what would happen if Universal Pictures stepped in with a subscription model (or whatever Moviepass does) for their movies?

Why build when you can buy? Universal just has to buy MoviePass. Assuming it has the cash. From what I've read over the last few years, the big Hollywood studios are not cash-rich.

I forgot where I read it, but I though Moviepass's ability to geolocate and push money onto a credit card was considered a good idea and could sold.

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

#157

Post by gamblor956 »

crooked-v wrote: post #118
chrisseaton wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the studio gained audience but (excluding the MoviePass susididy) not any money so what’s the benefit of that? In fact they might be setting an expectation that film tickets should be lower in people’s minds! If you give me free tickets to the cinema I might go. If you say now I’m in the habit can you charge me $1? No thanks not worth it now.

The benefactee in this scenario is the theater chain, not the studio, as they make most of their real profit from concessions, not selling seats.

Only if the MoviePass customers actually buy concessions. One of their issues with trying to leverage smaller theaters is that MoviePass customers didn't purchase sufficient concessions to justify cutting MoviePass in on any of the theaters' revenue streams.

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

#158

Post by ironjunkie »

reaperducer wrote: post #143
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…

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 almost nothing.

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

#159

Post by justizin »

MusaTheRedGuard wrote: post #51
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 crazy. The data is basically worthless. I honestly don't know if they will survive for more than a few months. I was just thinking, what could they possibly do to survive as long as possible? They could introduce incentives to reduce the number of movies people saw a week? Maybe some kind of credit system, where customers built up points towards a premium membership. They could also start taking the most expensi…

> They could introduce incentives to reduce the number of movies people saw a week?

Since I joined, they pretty much did this by limiting people from seeing a movie more than once. There just aren't that many movies, and nobody really wants to see every movie that's out.

It's pretty frustrating how they sold me a year-long subscription and then immediately started changing what I bought. I'd rather they used some of this borrowed money to refund the remainder of my year.

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

#160

Post by djrogers »

scarface74 wrote: post #124
dwighttk wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it’s sustainable Is it? 3 movies/week for $20/month is about $1.67/ movie. I think it is just around until movie pass kicks the bucket (at least at that price)

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.

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