24 May, 2007

Sundance 608 Redux

J.J. Murphy has some more commentary on Sundance 608's pricing scheme. He says:

Some people have suggested that the added surcharge is a brilliant business strategy, but I now disagree, as evidenced by the negative publicity the policy is generating within the community.

My friend Buke mentioned on Tuesday something really obvious that I had overlooked. The theatre gets a relatively small percentage of the ticket price with the rest going back up the food chain to the distributor, etc. But, as he observed, a service fee is probably pure profit for Sundance.

If you go to Westgate and pay $8.75 for a ticket, Marcus keeps, let's say, 25%. (It's been so long since I've had any of Tino Balio's classes so I'm not really sure how much a theatre normally keeps.) That means they pocket about $2.19 a ticket. If the base ticket price at Sundance were the same, they'd pocket that $2.19 plus the fee. So, for one of those prime time weekend showings, they'll get $5.19 per ticket.

Will this scheme backfire by generating a groundswell of negative publicity?

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