The movie ticket group bought the cheese with the high ticket price of Chinese movies

As of the end of September this year, the total box office of Chinese mainland films reached 9.5 billion yuan, of which online group buying contributed a lot

Some movie ticket group purchases are not even half off the original ticket price, which is cheaper for the audience, but the interests of the filmmakers are damaged

Movie ticket group buying, is it saving Chinese films, or hurting Chinese films

The annual Chinese New Year stall is here again, which is the most popular period of the year in Chinese cinemas.

The show is continuous, and the customers are endless.

But in the bustling queue of moviegoers, there is a huge difference in the amount of money paid by each moviegoer for the same movie ticket.

Taking Cecilia Cheung's film "The Female General of the Yang Gate" as an example, it costs about 70 yuan for ordinary individual visitors to buy it at the counter of the cinema temporarily, and 30~35 yuan for group tickets or moviegoers with discount cards, while moviegoers who buy online in advance only need to spend 19.5 yuan, or even lower——— this is not advertising for movie ticket group buying websites!

For many veteran movie fans, you may have discovered this earlier than we do, at a time when movie tickets are expensive, there is a form called "group purchase of movie tickets" is rapidly emerging, bringing a "glimmer of life" to the long-standing "stubborn disease" of inflated movie ticket prices in China.

A fan's surprise discovery:

Group purchase of movie tickets is less than half of the original ticket price

Who doesn't want to be the audience who only needs to spend 19.5 yuan to buy a movie ticket and walk into a five-star movie theater to watch a blockbuster? Who wants to spend 5 times more than others to enjoy the same treatment and be a complete "wronged boss"?

Miss Deng, a senior fan in Chengdu, she and her boyfriend spend about 2,000 yuan ~ 3,000 yuan on movie consumption every year, and both of them used to buy movie tickets in advance in the form of group tickets through their respective units. But this year, Ms. Deng made a new discovery: "During the summer vacation, my friend helped me buy a 'couple's package' online, and I could buy two movie tickets for more than 40 yuan, plus a bucket of popcorn and a glass of Coke. This is much cheaper than a group ticket. "Miss Deng doesn't have to pinch her fingers to settle this account," (less than the original ticket price) less than two discounts, and the movie theater is very new, the newly renovated five-star theater is in the newly opened commercial center near my home, and even the cost of entering the city is saved. In an interview with a reporter from Chengdu Business Daily, Miss Deng introduced, "I made another group purchase in the second half of the year, and this year's Chinese New Year stalls are enough to watch, and I will definitely consider buying movie tickets more in a group purchase next year." ”

Like Miss Deng, there are certainly not a few young people who have discovered this "secret" of saving money. A statistical report on the group buying industry illustrates this "trend" more accurately. As of the end of September this year, the total box office of movies in Chinese mainland reached 9.5 billion yuan, of which online group buying contributed to it, and the box office of movie tickets sold by it was 624 million yuan, accounting for 6.5%.

Why are more and more audiences joining the camp of group buying movie tickets? The reason is self-evident——— low price! Take "Transformers 3," which was released in July, as an example. The ticket price of the 3D version of "Transformers 3" is generally 50~100 yuan/ticket, while the ticket price of the IMAX version is as high as 130~140 yuan/ticket, but some group purchase tickets are even less than two discounts. Among them, the 10 yuan to watch the 3D version of "Transformers" and the 15 yuan overseas blockbuster unlimited viewing activities launched by Ganji Network Group Buying attracted 20,000 people to participate in less than two days. Some netizens expressed their experience and said that the price of one person in the past is now enough for a family of 4 to watch.

A sample survey of a city:

Chengdu New Year movie tickets are very "hot".

A reporter from Chengdu Business Daily also browsed the local movie ticket group buying in Chengdu launched by major group buying websites, which can really be described as "varied and blooming". In the "Handle.com", the newly built Jindian Shawan Cinema is undergoing group buying, and the original price of 70 yuan movie card is only 16.5 yuan. The old Peace Cinema is also engaged in activities, the original price of 50 yuan movie ticket price is 16 yuan, 2D to see all (excluding the premiere), if you want to watch 3D, you need to add 5 yuan!

On the Chengdu search website, the most conspicuous position is the IMAX hall group buying activity in cooperation with Wanda Cinema. Ma Xiao, the person in charge of the Chengdu full search website "Octopus Group", told the Chengdu Business Daily reporter that the best cooperation between them and a theater is that they "underwrote" 30,000 group tickets in one year, and the only IMAX screen in Chengdu was "opened" in early November, and they specially launched an 80 yuan group buying activity, successfully selling more than 4,000 copies, and the current 89.9 yuan package is also a new project.

In addition, there are also Chengdu branch pages of major group buying websites such as Blockbuster.com, Ganji.com, Manza.com, and Lashou.com, where all kinds of similar group buying activities for the Chinese New Year have almost wiped out the local cinema lines, and the popularity has reached more than 1,000 people. Correspondingly, many cinemas in Chengdu have also opened a "group purchase" channel, and there are special personnel responsible for moviegoers to redeem group purchase tickets.

An interesting phenomenon:

Group buying websites "post money" to sell movie tickets

At present, the group purchase ticket floating around 20 yuan is not the lowest, and the group purchase of movie tickets in the first half of this year has even dropped to below 10 yuan, which is lower than the minimum price of a normal movie (generally speaking, the minimum price of a movie is 15~35 yuan). An interesting question arises from this, why can such a low price ensure profit? Compared with the two, how inflated and profitable should the movie ticket price of 80~100 yuan be? Who is paying for the low-cost group ticket?

After a series of investigations, a reporter from Chengdu Business Daily found that with the rise of the Internet in the past two years, the group purchase of movie tickets has become a marketing "port" that major group buying websites are actively striving for. Under the fierce competition, the group purchase price of movie tickets is getting lower and lower, and some group buying websites even "post money" to do loss-making business.

Hu Chen, an expert in group buying consumption and co-founder of Tuan800, explained the chain of interests behind this. "One reason is that it can help group buying websites develop new customers, and you will become our user after buying it here, so this part of the money is also considered a marketing cost, which is equivalent to spending 5 yuan to buy a user. ”

In addition to marketing costs, movie ticket group buying also plays the role of implicit advertising invisibly, and the publicity effect is more direct and obvious. Chen Yingkui, the person in charge of the blockbuster network, said, "At present, group buying movie tickets has become the most effective means for major group buying websites to gather popularity. ”

Another great thing is that you can improve the sales performance of your group buying site. "Even if there is zero profit or even a loss to do movie ticket group buying, but for group buying websites, the effect of "movie ticket group buying" in "window dressing" is very significant. For example, the website sold 10 million in group buying this month, which seems to be a good sales, but in fact, 6 million of them may be movie tickets. Hu Chen said.

An Invisible Unlucky One:

Is the filmmaker the biggest profiteer?

According to Mr. Wei, the manager of the theater, the main ones that like to engage in group buying activities are some newly built movie theaters, or remote movie theaters far away from commercial areas, and some old movie theaters that need popularity. "Movie theaters need popularity, and through group buying activities, the reputation and consumer attention that movie theaters earn far exceed that profit, and advertising in newspapers is more than that. At the same time, cinemas can also achieve the final balance by "tearing down the east wall and making up the west wall". "For example, the minimum ticket price of ordinary domestic blockbusters is 30 yuan, but some account-sharing movies are 15 yuan, so if the group purchase ticket of 20 yuan is balanced, the cinema will not suffer. ”

On the surface, although movie theaters and group buying websites have made certain concessions to consumers, they have also gotten sweetness from "group buying", which is a major reason for the rise of the "group buying" trend, compared with these two parties, the most unlucky may be the producer——— because the cinema and the group buying website engage in activities, regardless of whether the two parties are paying money, they will definitely give the producer a commission at the lowest price for selling movie tickets. In other words, the box office commission of the film company will be sharply reduced by at least half due to group buying activities.

But the producer basically has nothing to do about it, "The distributor has a minimum ticket price limit for the cinema, and if a group buying website breaks this minimum price, the cinema will also have a certain amount of pressure, which is equivalent to selling the goods by itself." So later, there was a group purchase method of movie tickets and then a package, adding popcorn and drinks. The cost of popcorn and drinks is controlled by the movie theater itself, so the filmmaker doesn't know whether the final part of the concession is the cost of the drink made by the movie theater or the ...... is sold at the minimum price," Hu Chen introduced.

Of course, not all filmmakers are obediently and passively beaten, Zhang Weiping, the producer of "Jinling Thirteen Hairpins", recently issued a notice to major theaters to increase the minimum ticket price of domestic films by 5 yuan. In this way, the minimum ticket price of "Jinling Thirteen Hairpins" in first-tier cities is 40 yuan. In Chengdu, it will also be raised to 35 yuan, except for special circumstances such as half-price days.

Therefore, in the group buying activities of the major Chinese New Year stalls, you will see that in the "Activity Rules", it is indicated in eye-catching colors: you need to pay an additional 5/10 yuan to watch "Jinling Thirteen Hairpins". Industry insiders pointed out that on the one hand, this approach protects the interests of the filmmaker, and on the other hand, it also has a certain nature of "quick success". Of course, the most affected are the group buying audience. "If these audiences come to the theater to watch a movie, the theater has to make up the difference, or ask the audience to make up the difference. This puts a lot of burden on both the audience and the theater. ”

An alternative workaround:

Can group buying change movie ticket prices?

The current box office "stubborn disease" of Chinese films is not that the ticket price is not high enough, but that the number of moviegoers is too small, almost everyone can realize this——— the explosive growth of the movie box office, from the breakthrough of 10 billion in 2010 to the target of 13 billion this year, while soaring, many people have also begun to realize that the real movie prosperity is unsustainable by "high ticket prices".

But a reality is: under various considerations of quick success, movie ticket prices are still rising out of reality. Compared with the per capita income of the United States, our ticket prices are already 6~10 times that of theirs! Taiwanese director Zhu Yanping is also puzzled by this, "The cheapest way to entertain the masses in the world is to watch movies, but if a ticket is sold for 50 or 60 yuan, many people will not be able to enter the cinema." ”

Even if the minimum ticket price of "The Thirteen Hairpins of Jinling" is raised to 40 yuan, group buying is still quite cost-effective for consumers. In fact, it is this emerging method that also makes us realize that ——— high ticket prices of Chinese films are not without room for price reduction!

Hu Chen introduced that in the past, many movie theaters only used group buying as a means to attract popularity, but now more and more movie theaters realize that group buying can make more people enter the movie theater ———. "When the movie theater does a group purchase, it begins to consciously do some things, for example, the person who comes from the group purchase, the movie theater will help him get a membership card, and the output of this user will be the movie theater in the future. ”

Some movie theaters have also begun to use group buying strategies to consciously increase attendance during off-season and off-season. Hu Chen introduced: "For example, some group purchase tickets are particularly cheap, but the event will indicate that it can only be watched during the day, or only in the morning on weekends, and there is no one in the cinema at these times, but through the form of group purchase ultra-low price, it has consciously increased the number of moviegoers in the cinema during leisure time." ”

Gao Jun, vice president of the New Film Association, who is also a producer and distributor, also expressed his opinion on this: "I think it's a good thing, this is a good supplement to the film consumer market, which can attract more audiences to the cinema." ”

Gao Jun said that he can also understand the "rebound" of the film producer in the form of "group buying": "From the perspective of the film company, of course, I hope that the higher the income-output ratio, the better, but from the perspective of operating the market, you have to take into account different business methods, small profits but quick turnover." After all, what Chinese films urgently need to improve at present is not the "ticket price", but the "number of moviegoers"! And group buying can bring those people who were originally discouraged into the cinema.

Some of the pitfalls that can't be left unsaid:

Although movie ticket group buying is good, you must be careful of fakes!

In this way, it seems that "movie ticket group buying" has no harm? The answer is obviously no. During the interview, some local cinema managers said that they were not optimistic about the future of movie ticket group buying. Due to the fierce "100 regiment war" in 2011, some ghosts and ghosts in the group buying process also followed.

Reminder: Beware of "fake group buying" for Chinese New Year stalls

"At present, the domestic group buying market is still very chaotic, and many group buying websites are in a state of vicious competition. Mr. Wei, the manager of the theater, said that although the movie ticket group purchase seems to be full of flowers on the surface, the entire industry is still in an immature state of disorderly competition, and the low-price effect brought by the movie ticket group purchase is only to quench thirst. At present, our cinema has received a number of complaints, users come to the theater with mobile phone text messages to ask for group purchase tickets, but in fact, our theater does not do group buying on this group buying website at all. ”

In addition, some large group buying websites have also appeared scalping "scalpers". Because some viewers have not caught up with the group buying activities with large profits, they often seek to transfer group purchase tickets online, and then they are easy to be hit by "scalpers". And if you encounter some untrustworthy "scalpers", the verification content sent out is fake, and the audience can only admit that they are unlucky in the end.

Shadow: Will the group buying network always make loss-making transactions?

Chen Yingkui, founder and CEO of Blockbuster.com, said, "It is not a rational approach to use movie ticket group buying to attract popularity and make money with other projects. So in his opinion, with the ebb of venture capital and the maturity of the group buying industry, "group buying movie tickets will not be as popular as they are now in ......the future"

Ma Xiao, the person in charge of the Chengdu Full Search Octopus Group, also told reporters that the "group buying war" in 2011 was too intense, and some small websites have closed down, "Last year, we also made a small profit with movie ticket group buying, and this year there is basically no profit." However, he said that he will not give up the content of movie ticket group buying in the future, "The port cannot be given up, although it does not make money, but netizens agree with this service, which can attract a lot of popularity." ”

The Future: How Movie Ticket Group Buying Becomes "Mainstream"

Another point that must be mentioned is that movie ticket group buying is still a "non-mainstream" ticket purchase method. Because it is often a new cinema that is geographically remote and has just been built, or an old cinema that needs to be popular. And for some branded movie theaters with good downtown locations, buying movie tickets in groups is just a way for them to "love and hate". "Often, these movie theaters are reluctant to make frequent group purchases on a large scale, which actually deprives them of the privileges of their existing members, and the profits will drop significantly. Hu Chen introduced.

However, this situation has taken a new turn in this year's Lunar New Year, and group buying is being accepted by more and more cinemas. What makes these brand movie theaters also difficult is that if there are corresponding competitors engaged in group buying, they also have to "take over", otherwise the popularity will run to the other party.

Tips:

Teach you five tricks

Avoid movie ticket "fake group buying"

1. It is recommended that readers use large group buying websites to avoid the possibility of small group buying websites running away with money.

Second, it is recommended to use the evaluation function in the online shopping navigation, for example, in these navigation websites, many senior group buying netizens will leave the user experience, if the popcorn in which theater is not fresh, Coke mixed with water, this "criminal evidence" will be reflected in the online review in time for netizens' reference.

3. When participating in group buying activities, don't just stare at the price, but also see the additional conditions, such as adding 5~10 yuan to see "Jinling Thirteen Hairpins";

Fourth, if you encounter a "scalper" sales group to buy tickets, please pay attention to the reasonable use of Alipay, and the money can only be given after delivery.

5. Pay attention to keeping consumption vouchers.