AMC: "How DARE another company foot the bill for our customers! We enjoy overcharging them and taking their money for every viewing."
This is ridiculous. AMC's arguments are all completely baseless. I'm with you Shawn. I can't even see why they care where the money comes from as long as they get paid for each ticket. This isn't going to hurt anything. It might not get off the ground, but I see how it could.
Look, first of all most people aren't going to go to a movie a day. We just don't have time. Most will go on weekends. So $10 per month for $40-$80 worth of tickets. Even if you wanted to push the average up to $150 per month. Advertisers will easily pay much more for viewing profiles per person (I think). Let's say Movie pass could pull $200 per person from advertisers. Everyone's tickets are paid for by the advertisers, AMC gets its money, film producers get their money, and Moviepass makes $50 per subscriber. If they can't do this, then Moviepass will fail and go out of business. Either way, AMC is never in a losing position.
On the other hand, if AMC wants to ban Moviepass, let them. They'll be the big losers in that scenario. Like you said, it's "butts in its seats." If I'm a subscriber, I'd be like, "Oh AMC doesn't honor Moviepass? Come on kids. Let's go across town to Regal." The only bite AMC would have would be in places where it is the only show in town, but as it is I don't think that's the case in most parts.
Just saw a new comment while I was writing this:
mbrowne5061 brings up an interesting point saying that "AMC is fighting it because they have their own movie viewers club. This price undercuts their membership price."
If this is true, I would say that under cutting AMC's subscription price is not really what is in effect here, well not completely. I don't know what AMC charges for subscriptions, but lets just say it's $15. From their subs they get $15 per month, but from Moviepass subs they get $40-$150 per month (using my above example averages). What this tells me is that it's the ad revenue that they are upset at losing, which must be fairly substantial for them to consider essentially banning a whole group of people over. Again if this is true, then Moviepass really does have a chance to get off the ground. And since it's business plan does not have limitations on which theater you visit, it becomes a real threat to AMC's sub service which limits you to only their theaters. Hmmm.