MoviePass no longer lets you see the same movie more than once
engadget.com
engadget.com
That part of the model which has them bleeding money with no way to turn it around.
It isn't that people are just too lazy to cancel a product they don't use. People feel an obligation to have a gym membership and many of those people don't use it because they simply don't enjoy working out. Canceling a gym membership is admitting failure in achieving a goal to work out. There is therefore a huge emotional investment in maintaining a gym membership. That pressure doesn't exist for MoviePass. Almost no one feels pressure to go to the movies so you don't get people signing up for the service out of obligation. And everyone who signs up enjoys going to the theater at some level so low usage members are hard to come by.
Meanwhile the marginal cost of an extra customer in the gym membership model decreases at scale. Adding a single heavy user that works out 10+ hours a week isn't really going to alter a gym's bottom line. This isn't the case for MoviePass. Each ticket costs the company the same amount. If you get one heavy user that buys a ticket everyday, MoviePass might need as many as 25 paying customers who barely use the service. It just doesn't scale.
This was never their business model. MP doesn't win if customers pay $9.95 but sometimes forget to go to the movies.
MP wins when they get revshare deals with theaters.
Naturally theaters don't want to share, so MP is buying negotiating leverage with free movie tickets.
MP is trying to get 20 million movie patrons hooked on an all-you-can-eat model so MP becomes the source of a large percentage of traffic. Then MP can threaten to shut off the tap if they don't get a cut.
Theater chains are betting that MP burns through their cash before they get big enough to make that threat.
No, it's more like Groupon. Theater attendance is at an all time low thanks to Netflix.[1] This is a way to sell seats through a discount channel -- or at least, that's the model they are trying to sell to theaters. Groupon and all those deal sites were successful in response to the 2008 recession when retailers & restaurants were suddenly left with a lot of excess inventory and seats to fill.
That's happening in theaters now. Netflix is the theater recession.
I'm not sure this announcement means that MoviePass is in trouble... yet. But like all those deal sites, it's a limited opportunity. Theaters will downsize and there will be less excess inventory. More immediately, there's a lot more consolidation in the theater world than in the general retail/restaurant landscape, so less need for a 3rd party discount channel.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/3/16844662/movie-theater-att...
I think it's reasonable to say that MoviePass's expenses don't scale as well as a gym's, but I bet they scale to some extent. Customers who want to see movies frequently were probably the first to sign up, while those who only go occasionally have less to gain by signing up and might wait longer or be more hesitant to do so. So their marginal customer probably has a lower usage rate than their overall customer base.
Ostensibly they're going to profit in the long run by selling data on the usage of their service, not on the service itself. I'm skeptical that this will pan out, but it's not completely implausible. The film industry is huge, it faces high fixed costs and low marginal costs, and I suspect that effective marketing can have a substantial impact on consumers' likelihood to see particular films. Data-driven marketing is likely to be highly profitable under those conditions, whether it's implemented by MoviePass, a different third party, or the studios themselves.
I think our user growth and customer retention story will be phenomenal with lower acquisition costs than MoviePass.
I figured out #3!
It is absolutely a bad business model.
Sure, it's a nuisance, but ipso facto a bad business?
Honestly, this was my assumption when I signed up for the service. People like me will keep them in business longer than they ought to be (because new people signing up delays their financial failure). But I'm almost at break even after just 1.5 months. As long as they last through June, which I expect they will, I'll have saved money on (mostly) movies I'd have gone to see anyways.
I'm very disappointed in this decision but I kinda didn't figure they'd last very long if they didn't strong arm the theaters.
Jukely still lets you see a concert every day, but there are so many hidden restrictions now that the service is practically unusable.
You can pay by the month, but certain shows force you into a three-month contract. You can pay for a +1, but some shows don't let you claim more than a single ticket (a dealbreaker for me, since I share the service with my wife).
And the quality of the shows has gone down the toilet. I was seeing some big names when the service was new, but now I just get crappy artists that can barely fill half a venue. Of course, all of the sought-after artists have the aforementioned restrictions.
This kind of subscription service seems always doomed to fail.
kinda crappy business model... but kudos to them for being transparent about it, i guess?
also, there really hasn't been more than 1 good new movie per month on average lately. mostly it's just kids movies and superhero stuff. i'd say i'm breaking even on it.
Cinemark has a 8.99 a month plan where you get one movie credit per month, and they roll over the credit if you don't use it. That's starting to sound like a far better offer.
> We hope this will encourage you to see new movies and enjoy something different!
At least that way they could be helping to mitigate the customer acquisition cost of their portfolio companies with no reduction in the efficiency of movie pass (actually better efficiency since they wouldn't have to pay any moviepass employees!)
If it's not sold out, seems a bit like licensing already built software: (if it's going unused and doesn't cost to on-board new users or otherwise affect higher paying customers, might as well get butts in the seats)
If they give discounts and support moviepass, then moviepass could eventually wield enough power to force discounts on theaters or else the theater will get blacklisted.
The “one movie a day” thing becomes moot though after this change. Since there will really be no more than 3-5 new movies a month anyways (outside of big cities at least where you might get indie and foreign films).
And you're restricted from using one account on multiple phones.
I saw black panther for free thanks to my friend getting like 8 tickets for 6 of us. He had so many tickets he didn't even know where all of them were or how many he had so we found another couple in his car a few days later.
Movie pass just puts on the money on the card, but they're unaware of what you're actually buying with that. You can buy the same movie for a date in the future over multiple days. I'm sure many will try to do the same using up movies they don't care about.
"we saw some people turning MoviePass into a cottage industry, standing in front of a theater selling their tickets to Star Wars, or whatever,"
This actually sounds like a pretty reasonable way of cutting down on abuse to me.
(You can just copy and paste your comment for every complaint about any business ever other than true monopolies for truly essential things; you'll never have to discuss and consider any concerns ever again.)
With recent shenanigans MoviePass I wonder why people use their app. That's why I made the comment.
Why use a service that restricts you? Tracks you (now removed)? Go from unlimited movies, to restrictions?
Why use something that you have to pay for and NOT get much value for it? Just go to the movie theater like everyone else?
I was critiquing your comment because it had no substance and seemed anti-intellectual. It actually sounded like what you see people write to defend bull-crap like MoviePass, as in "Don't like Facebook's terrible actions? You don't have to use it…" used as an argument against people complaining (as opposed to an argument that people should leave Facebook because the complaints are legitimate).
Maybe it was just a misunderstanding. Seems you didn't do a good job of making your initial point, and I replied to the words I read.