MoviePass brings back its $10-per-month unlimited movie ticket plan for a limited time

[Polycount]

MoviePass' downward spiral appears to have stabilized somewhat as of late. Despite bleeding money at a rapid rate, the service still hasn't been shut down by its parent company, Helios & Matheson.

Still, there's no denying that MoviePass has lost a sizable portion of its once-significant audience. Around the time it first launched, the service lowered its prices to about $10 per month for unlimited movie tickets (no more than one per day).

This obviously resulted in massive user growth, but it proved unsustainable in the long run and MoviePass was forced to switch its business model over to a much less generous alternative. Lately, for the same $10/month price, customers have been limited to a smaller selection of movies and a mere three tickets per month.

Now, MoviePass has pivoted its business model yet again. Sticking to its word, the company has brought back its $10/month unlimited (and unrestricted) movie ticket plan for a limited time, but the devil is in the details.

The first catch is that the $10/month price ($9.95, to be specific) only applies when you opt for annual billing, meaning your actual price will be around $120/year. You do get a few benefits for subscribing to the annual plan, though, such as giveaways, "exclusive offers," red carpet events, and subscriber-only movie screenings.

If you simply can't stomach that price, MoviePass will offer you a monthly unlimited ticket plan for an extra $5, bringing your total payment to $15/month.

While you lose the previously-mentioned benefits by opting for a monthly plan, that will probably be a small price to pay given the lower upfront cost.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/79271-moviepass-brings-back-10-month-unlimited-movie-ticket.html

 

[treetops]

They offered an insanely good deal at the start and even for 15$ a month, so good people didn't believe it... If as many people had movie pass as they do netflix they could have sustained their original pricing.

 

[brucek]

Has the company ever been able to buy tickets at discount, and/or monetize their customers in some way (advertising, data, merch sales, ???).

Because if they aren't able to save/make money in those ways, the only way this works out is if enough paying customers don't go to the movies at all to subsidize the ones who do more than once. And the problem there is that customers who don't go are unlikely to opt-in in the first place. It'd be like trying to sell after-the-fact insurance policies: the math would never work because the only people who would buy them are the people who would get more in benefits than the premiums.

In short this sounds like a pyramid scheme to me.

 

[treetops]

Has the company ever been able to buy tickets at discount, and/or monetize their customers in some way (advertising, data, merch sales, ???).

Because if they aren't able to save/make money in those ways, the only way this works out is if enough paying customers don't go to the movies at all to subsidize the ones who do more than once. And the problem there is that customers who don't go are unlikely to opt-in in the first place. It'd be like trying to sell after-the-fact insurance policies: the math would never work because the only people who would buy them are the people who would get more in benefits than the premiums.

In short this sounds like a pyramid scheme to me.

Really nothing like a pyramid scheme. In those schemes you have to resell products. In any business you have to sell a certain amount of product to stay afloat. New business ventures often start at a loss, until they can get enough customers. That didn't happen with movie pass so they have been changing services to try and makeup for it. Think if Netflix bought all the rights to show content when it first started and just didn't have enough subscriptions to cover it. They can only bleed for so long.

There are a lot of empty seats in theaters and it's not a bad idea trying to fill them. The original price of 10$ a month for unlimited movies was a insanely good deal. If they would have advertised it enough I think they would have been fine. Most people I told about it thought it was to good to be true until I actually pulled up the webpage on my phone. 15$ a month is still awesome, 10$ month if you buy a year is the best deal they have now. You can watch 1 movie a day, after 2 movies you easily get your money back.

With proper advertising this would be a smash.

 

[brucek]

There are a lot of empty seats in theaters and it's not a bad idea trying to fill them. The original price of 10$ a month for unlimited movies was a insanely good deal. If they would have advertised it enough I think they would have been fine. Most people I told about it thought it was to good to be true until I actually pulled up the webpage on my phone. 15$ a month is still awesome, 10$ month if you buy a year is the best deal they have now. You can watch 1 movie a day, after 2 movies you easily get your money back. With proper advertising this would be a smash.

Of course it's a smash, it's free money. And I agree that empty seats could be sold at a discount -- at least by the theaters that own them.

The problem is that MoviePass is a separate company from those theaters, and it has to buy seats at whatever prices the theaters will sell to them at -- which, I'm worried, is just the regular rate. That means the company would be selling seats at a lower price than it buys them at, which long term can not add up to anything other than bankruptcy. (This is not a problem that is solved by increased volume -- the more customers they have, the more money they lose.) They need to find a way to change the math.

If they don't, while I agree it's not exactly a pyramid scheme, it is still ultimately a case of the early people may benefit as long as the cash holds out, while the people at the end of line will get screwed over by bankruptcy, or service outages, or changed deal terms, or whatever it takes to balance the books.

 

[treetops]

Of course it's a smash, it's free money. And I agree that empty seats could be sold at a discount -- at least by the theaters that own them.

The problem is that MoviePass is a separate company from those theaters, and it has to buy seats at whatever prices the theaters will sell to them at -- which, I'm worried, is just the regular rate. That means the company would be selling seats at a lower price than it buys them at, which long term can not add up to anything other than bankruptcy. (This is not a problem that is solved by increased volume -- the more customers they have, the more money they lose.) They need to find a way to change the math.

If they don't, while I agree it's not exactly a pyramid scheme, it is still ultimately a case of the early people may benefit as long as the cash holds out, while the people at the end of line will get screwed over by bankruptcy, or service outages, or changed deal terms, or whatever it takes to balance the books.

One thing, they are def not buying them at regular price lol. If that was the case their ultimate goal would be to sell seats for more then theaters.... That wouldn't make any sense. The CEO is a former executive of Netflix and the former president of Redbox. Since the services fluctuate I would just go month to month.