Going to the cinema with family and friends to watch movies has become the life choice of many Chinese during the Spring Festival holiday, for many film practitioners, especially in the past two years, the theaters that may be shut down at any time due to the impact of the epidemic, seize the Spring Festival slot to attract as many customers as possible to watch movies, and become the only expectation to make up for the loss of the epidemic and even survive in the crisis, but the Chinese film market during this Spring Festival period is likely to disappoint many fans and theaters.
There are two main reasons, one is that many places have taken shutdown measures for local theaters because of sporadic outbreaks of the epidemic, and some low-risk areas that do not have any epidemic at all have taken measures to facilitate management, "no accidents", and also choose to be unscrupulous and take "one-size-fits-all" shutdown measures, and some strange management regulations have been introduced for theater business, such as limiting the number of people entering the theater, prohibiting theaters from selling drinks and movie snacks, etc., making the theater system bitter;
The second is the sharp rise to tens of yuan or even hundreds of yuan of high ticket prices, will be a lot of original intention to watch the film during the Spring Festival audience blocked the cinema door, people generally complain that watching the movie is too expensive, has far exceeded the ability of most people to bear, resulting in the theater attendance rate has been seriously affected, the data show that the 2022 Spring Festival period of the first day of the film box office is not only less than last year, the number of moviegoers compared with the same period last year also significantly reduced by 9 million.
Because of the need to maintain the epidemic control effect of "dynamic clearance", most people have taken extreme control measures in some places, and the affected theaters and other related businesses often have no way to ask for help, and can only "have tears to swallow in their stomachs". However, soaring to the super high ticket price that has exceeded the consumption capacity of the vast majority of mainland people is like a brick recently dropped during this Spring Festival period, crushing the already extremely fragile market expectations, and is likely to ruin the prospects of the mainland film market that had the opportunity to recover and develop in the post-epidemic era, thus laying a fatal hidden danger for the long-term development of the industry.
During the Spring Festival period, open any mobile APP or theater ticketing system to find out how high the ticket price of this year's movie has soared. In most third- and fourth-tier city markets, ticket prices are as high as 50 to 60 yuan, and in first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, more than 100 yuan is the norm. Taking the theaters in the Beijing area as an example, some authoritative financial media in the mainland have observed that the film ticket prices in many theaters have risen in a large proportion, or even doubled, and ticket prices of more than 100 yuan abound, and the overall price level is much higher than that of the more economically developed Hong Kong market.
Many fans complained on the Internet, saying that "this ticket price is too high", "the cause of the epidemic cannot be passed on to consumers, reasonable ticket prices can be accepted by everyone, is it really reasonable to have seventy or eighty yuan or even hundreds of yuan a piece?" "The price of two movie tickets in this year's Spring Festival stall can be bought in previous years or usually, so let's do the math or forget it." ”
A direct impact of high ticket prices is to lead to a sharp decline in the number of moviegoers, the data show that the number of moviegoers on the first day of this year's Spring Festival is only 25.62 million, significantly lower than the same period last year 34.46 million, and the box office is far less than the same period last year, "the number of people is not enough, the price increase to make up" The idea not only did not achieve the purpose of improving the box office, but even the number of moviegoers fell sharply.
So, why set such a high fare? Doesn't the most basic law of the market economy already clearly tell us that the market pricing of any commodity must be maintained at a reasonable equilibrium point to achieve the best market effect, and to maximize the sales amount while attracting the most customers? Why should the ticket prices of movies in the Mainland Spring Festival period be set so high that they are obviously out of touch with the spending power of the market public, resulting in a decline in both the number of moviegoers and box office revenues?
A very important reason is that this pricing mechanism has gone wrong, which is out of touch with the basic laws of the market. In the film market, the general consumer and the cinema have the most contact, so it is believed that the theater sets the ticket price unreasonablely, so the theater bears most of the infamy of consumers. In fact, on the issue of ticket prices, the right to speak in the theater is very weak, and the real decision is in the hands of the filmmaker, and behind the film party there is a shadow of the film bureau.
Especially in recent years, because the downward pressure on the economy has increased, in order to stimulate consumption, one of the main ideas of the film bureau is to "spend money", find ways to make filmmakers spend money to make films, and also let consumers spend money to watch movies, hoping to stimulate the market in this way. The consequence of this is that the cost of filming remains high, coupled with the impact of the epidemic, so that the filmmakers want to earn back by one of the ten films, and the Spring Festival file has become a "harvesting opportunity" in the eyes of the filmmakers, and then by setting the minimum ticket price, the cinema ticket price remains high, resulting in the final situation of fan dissatisfaction, declining number of moviegoers, and declining box office.
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