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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

#211

Post by pbreit »

dlwdlw wrote: post #99
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…

Not saying it’s a good strategy but amazon seems to have done/is doing something similar. Each purchase is a loss when shipping is taken into account. But if the bleeding is slow enough the created ingress can be enough to shift the landscape so that there are new opportunities. Cultural lockin followed by price increases is a typical one. Like the hub and spoke model of pizza shops. Basically bet that spoke opportun…

Amazon has pretty much always been margin positive even after shipping so not a good comparison.

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

#212

Post by mjevans »

learc83 wrote: post #176
lbotos wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Offhand, I don't think I actually see 12+ movies a year on average.

In recent years it's mostly been Marvel films + a random other thing that I also happened to be interested in seeing (E.G. Incrediables 2).

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

#213

Post by fotbr »

Reedx wrote: post #202
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…

> The data they are gathering cannot be more valuable than the cost of a movie ticket. Yeah, but they think they can get the loss low enough that it becomes feasible to overcome that with data. And it goes beyond just knowing what movies someone is watching. For example, they know the exact location and time of where people are going to be (the app requires location to work). So MoviePass can use that info to upsell…

If I run a restaurant near a theater, why would I want their data?

I already know the clientele that visits the area, whether that's relatively high-end, working folks on their one-movie-night-escape a week, high school kids on date night, etc.

I can already trivially find show (and run-) times from the theater and plan to stay open later or otherwise staff accordingly.

I can advertise, in the theater even, for not a whole lot of money, and reach the people who saw "movie x". Theaters are happy to take your money for a 30-second spot in between pre-roll movie trivia clips.

If I'm an uber/lyft/taxi driver, the same thing applies -- it's easy to find out when movies are out, so it's easy to be in the area.

I guess I just don't see the value in "exact location and time" (at the theater, shortly before the movie starts) or any other data they can provide.

What am I missing? What use-case is there for that data that makes it worth paying for?

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

#214

Post by rtkwe »

sf_rob wrote: post #138
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…

>You can't charge less than the marginal cost, it doesn't make sense! The old joke is "Sure we have marginal losses, but we'll make up for it with volume!"

I mean the plan seems to be that except the marginal losses are supposed to go down as they reach higher volumes. Attract the heavy movie goers first and lose money on them till you can attract enough light movie goers that will buy this and forget about so you can afford the people seeing more than 2 movies a month. There's other ways to drop that marginal cost like getting deals from theaters on tickets for bringing people in (eg give us a better deal or we'll block our users from your theaters) and sell data.

I don't think this is going to work out but I can see how this would look workable in a model and pitch.

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

#215

Post by JumpCrisscross »

justizin wrote: post #159
MusaTheRedGuard wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'd rather they used some of this borrowed money to refund the remainder of my year

Issue a chargeback.

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

#216

Post by balls187 »

inetknght wrote: post #174
balls187 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're statement has an underlying assumption that founders are hiding things from employees.

As stated above, I think its that employees aren't asking the right questions.

It's like when purchasing a vehicle; it's up to the buyer to educate themselves. Savvy buyers get better deals. We'd like to think of our industry as a meritocracy; but it's still largely based on humans with monkey brains,and greed is a powerful incentive.

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

#217

Post by scarface74 »

mjevans wrote: post #212
learc83 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Offhand, I don't think I actually see 12+ movies a year on average. In recent years it's mostly been Marvel films + a random other thing that I also happened to be interested in seeing (E.G. Incrediables 2).

My wife and I were exactly the same way. Only the “event” films were worth seeing in the theatre. Most other movies we would see when they fell off of a truck onto my Plex Server.

We have gone to see a lot more movies this month since we had it. If you see two movies a month you break even. If we see one $17.26 IMAX movie we almost break even.

But more importantly, for us. It is a commitment device. There are a lot of times that life gets busy and my wife and I don’t go out. Now we just get out the house once or twice a week and go to a movie. We can even meet for an extended lunch sometimes since my wife had a split shift during the school year. She’s off during the summer.

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

#218

Post by httpz »

gambiting wrote: post #33

They still keep thinking that people will eventually treat it like they do gym memberships - buy them, but ultimately not use them. But there is a certain social expectation to have a gym membership and at least pretend you are doing something about your physical fitness. I have one through work and the last time I've been to that gym was over a year ago. But I can't be bothered to go to HR and actually cancel my acc…

Pretty much. I felt too guilty to cancel my gym membership so I paid for it for many months telling myself I'll go next time. I felt no guilt canceling MoviePass.

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

#220

Post by btian »

gamblor956 wrote: post #166
lev99 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want movie theaters to close. I think people that do not attend movie theaters also do not mind. If they liked movie theaters they would attend. I have a small apartment with a 70 inch screen in the living room. The three movies a year Hollywood produces I am interested in can be watched from the comfort of my own home in 4k surround sound for $4.99 a few months after they arrive in theaters. I can control the volu…

The only advantage a movie theater has is that it receives movies a few months earlier. If movie theaters close that solves that advantage. Not sure what sort of crappy theaters you have nearby, but the 70 foot screen on my local theater absolutely dwarfs the 70 inch screeen of your TV. Highest-gamut color range, laser projection. Fully tuned Dolby Atmos surround sound speaker system. Reclining, reserved seats. Wine,…

And you don't have to travel to the theater.

It would be nice if studios can release Blurays at the same time as theaters.

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