News

Online movie-ticket sales heating up

June 30, 2003

NEW YORK -- The days of walking up to the box office and casually getting seats for a hot movie on opening-weekend evenings may be on their way out, according to a story in USA Today.

For recent films such as "2 Fast, 2 Furious," "X2: X-Men United" and "The Matrix Reloaded," "80 percent of our weekend evening sales were from the Internet," said Rick King of AMC Theaters, the No. 2 chain with more than 3,500 screens. "For a blockbuster movie, a great many of our performances were sold out a day or two in advance," he added.

At Century Theaters, the No. 8 chain with 900 screens, chief executive officer Raymond Syufy said 100 percent of the first evening performances of movies such as "Matrix" and "X2" came from online sales. "Most sold out several days before."

Bruce Olson, chief executive officer of the 500-screen Marcus Theatres chain, said the average movie does 20 percent of weekend evening sales via the Internet, and just-opened blockbusters are at 80 percent. Moviegoers are "happy to pay a small fee instead of waiting in line for four hours."

Jupiter Media analyst David Card is skeptical. He said in the story that beyond the hottest movies, most people still walk up to the box office.

Overall, he predicts online sales will be only 3.3 percent of overall sales this year, worth about $300 million, and grow to 8.2 percent, or $850 million, by 2007. The total box office take in 2002 was $9.27 billion, the story said.

"Consumers generally don't buy movie tickets ahead of time," said Card. He cites fees of 75 cents to $1.50 per ticket and the fact that no one site handles all the chains.

Here are details on some of the sites that sell movie tickets:

• Fandango(www.fandango.com), which represents 10,000 of the nation's 37,000 screens, is a consortium of seven major movie exhibitors, including Regal, the top chain, and Century.
• Movietickets
(www.movietickets.com), with 6,600 screens, is controlled by four chains, including AMC and National Amusements.
• AOL Moviefone
(www.moviefone.com), the industry pioneer, has 1,000 screens and a cooperative agreement with Movietickets.com to handle tickets for each other's chains.

Moviefone remains the best-known brand: According to NielsenNetRatings, Moviefone had 4.1 million users in May; Movietickets 2.6 million; Fandango 2.5 million.

Some theaters let you print out tickets at home; most have a lobby kiosk at which you swipe your credit card to pick up tickets -- both ways to avoid lines.