Taylor Swift makes an end run around Hollywood - straight to exhibs

[Steve Guttag]

Mike, here is a difference between an entity like Ticketmaster and a clothing store. A store provides some added value. They order the product, put it out on display, often have a means to try things on and have to deal with "spoilage." Furthermore, one is free to not patronize a particular store to buy a particular brand of pants or whatever you are shopping for. One can even go to a slew of online stores and price shop. There is competition in the "free-marketplace" to keep prices in check.

An entity like Ticketmaster provides what service? The ability to take a credit card order? Where is one's choice? Why is it that Ticketmaster has such a monopoly on concert tickets? They, primarily, add cost to an event with little benefit beyond a common place to order tickets.

[Mike Blakesley]

They, primarily, add cost to an event with little benefit beyond a common place to order tickets.

Maybe the government will make them do away with exclusivity -- there could be two ticket outlets and then there'd be competition on the prices.

As to what they offer... it isn't cheap to maintain the website infrastructure they do, plus there are all the usual business expenses like advertising, insurance, office space, etc. Are they making good bucks? Sure, but they save artists a ton of work marketing their own tickets.

There ARE more ticket agencies out there. The arena I mentioned above uses one called AXS. (They also have high fees.) Our county fair uses one called Tix that has very low fees, but they're a much smaller company. So, nobody is making the arenas or artists deal with Ticketmaster, except the arenas themselves when they make exclusive deals with them. That's probably the place to fix things.

[Lyle Romer]

[quoteThey, primarily, add cost to an event with little benefit beyond a common place to order tickets.

Maybe the government will make them do away with exclusivity -- there could be two ticket outlets and then there'd be competition on the prices.

As to what they offer... it isn't cheap to maintain the website infrastructure they do, plus there are all the usual business expenses like advertising, insurance, office space, etc. Are they making good bucks? Sure, but they save artists a ton of work marketing their own tickets.

There ARE more ticket agencies out there. The arena I mentioned above uses one called AXS. (They also have high fees.) Our county fair uses one called Tix that has very low fees, but they're a much smaller company. So, nobody is making the arenas or artists deal with Ticketmaster, except the arenas themselves when they make exclusive deals with them. That's probably the place to fix things.[/QUOTE]

There has to be a single entity at some point that controls the inventory and the entry authorization. If you had multiple ticket outlets they would have to each have dedicated inventory so you couldn't just search for the best tickets. Otherwise there would be no way to prevent issues with people selecting a seat at the same time as somebody else and one not knowing until checkout that they were beat to the purchase.

[Leo Enticknap]

Airlines, hotels, and rental car agencies have all figured out how to enable their inventory to be sold by multiple resellers simultaneously. If I want to book a flight, I can go directly to the airline's site, or to the site of another airline in the same codeshare alliance, Expedia, Kayak, Lastminute, etc. etc. You haven't bought the seat until you've bought it, and while you're completing the formalities, someone else can beat you to it. I have had this happen: selected my flight, then gone to make a coffee, returned, clicked "pay now," and been told that the seat is no longer available, or that the price has changed. Presumably the same thing could be done with event ticket agencies if regulation forced it.

[Lyle Romer]

Airlines, hotels, and rental car agencies have all figured out how to enable their inventory to be sold by multiple resellers simultaneously. If I want to book a flight, I can go directly to the airline's site, or to the site of another airline in the same codeshare alliance, Expedia, Kayak, Lastminute, etc. etc. You haven't bought the seat until you've bought it, and while you're completing the formalities, someone else can beat you to it. I have had this happen: selected my flight, then gone to make a coffee, returned, clicked "pay now," and been told that the seat is no longer available, or that the price has changed. Presumably the same thing could be done with event ticket agencies if regulation forced it.

I mean simultaneously as in thousands of people trying to grab the same seats at the same time. As soon as an airline opens their schedule out further, there aren't 1500 people trying to buy seat 12A instantly. If two people on different platforms do try to select the same seat at the same time and the system tells them that seat 12A is no longer available they can select 14A instead and nobody cares. Buying high demand concert tickets, if that happens the next available ticket may be 30 rows farther back which is a much bigger deal.

[Mike Blakesley]

So this Taylor Swift news broke on Friday. On Saturday I started getting inquiries from people like "Are you going to get Taylor Swift's movie???" Text, email, in person, people are asking about it.

But we can't play the movie. Well we CAN, but we'd have to play it four weekends, so essentially we can't play it, because as big a deal as Taylor Swift is, she's still not a four quadrant draw.

It is frustrating, insulting and irritating all at the same time.

Back when digital cinema was first gaining steam, our booker said: "If you are serious about the business, you have to go to digital, because before long there won't be film anymore."

So I figured, yeah, I'm serious about it. So we went digital and we're still here 13 years later.

And now we have the potential hottest movie of the fall season, and.....sorry, you can't have it because .... well there really is no reason. No GOOD reason, anyway. This leaves me having to tell potential customers, "Sorry, we can't get the movie because we can't play it for four weeks." Because teens and tweens don't understand the idiocy of these terms, they are left with the impression that I really don't want to play the movie and I'm just blowing smoke about not being able to get it.

THIS MOVIE CATERS TO THE VERY AUDIENCE WE NEED TO GET BACK INTO THE HABIT OF GOING TO MOVIES.

Our booker says that if the movie does well (which I'm sure it will, they've already sold $30 million in advance tickets) we might be able to get it "after a few weeks." Well what good does it do to wait until after the excitement has died down? Have these people never heard of "FOMO?"

"Swifties" in small town USA are just as anxious to see this movie as they are in the big cities. They don't want to wait "a few weeks." They want to share the moment with their big city friends as it happens. How many small-town tickets are being left on the table, thanks to these four-week terms? Why don't they want to make this available to ALL of Taylor's adoring fans?

It would cost the distributor the exact same amount of money to give us the movie on the opening day as it would four or five weeks down the road. Meanwhile if we wait that long, we'll either not play it at all, or we will be paying a quarter of the film rent we'd be paying if we played it on the break.

So I guess the lesson to be learned is, being "serious" doesn't really mean diddly squat. I already knew it, from plenty of past experiences, but that doesn't make it any less infuriating.

[Barry Floyd]

We took it. We're about as "independent" theatre as it gets. Two screen drive-in, 35 miles from Nashville, TN. We put tickets on sale Saturday night at 6pm and it was crazy. We literally sat back in the office and watched the online ticket sales go like numbers on a gas pump. No complete sell outs for us yet on any of the dates, but we have racked up some serious sales numbers. First weekend we're putting it on BOTH screens. Weeks 2,3 & 4 its going to one screen. The way we saw it is with the ticket prices they are charging, the amount we get to keep even after deducting the sales taxes is more than double of what we typically get to keep playing regular studio fare. Even if we didn't sell anymore tickets at all to Taylor Swift, our percentage of the take would be more than we made in the month of August.

[James Wyrembelski]

I'm on the fence with this one. The first couple weekends could prove to be very worth it. Our booker went over comparable concert films like Justin Beiber's about 10 years ago. Small town grosses were phenomenal and took a *very* heavy decline in weeks 3 & 4. But, this is Taylor Swift.....

And the first two weeks of grosses more than made up for the declines.

That being said I haven't heard a peep from anyone about it but I'm also not thrilled about October's releases either.

(Anyone see that run time for Killers of the Flower Moon btw? <.< )

[Mike Blakesley]

James your thought process is exactly like mine. I combined that with the notion of playing off some of the lesser titles that we skipped over the summer.

Our booker thinks it's a bad idea because, as you surmised, the 3rd and 4th weeks will be ugly. But the late September/October product looks ugly too, so....

He also thinks playing older product in the off days would be iffy, since we don't usually do that and our weekends are prime time, plus it's school nights.

I keep holding out hope that they will decide to offer a two-week deal for smaller places once they have all the large ones locked up. (Actually, they probably will.... but the availability date will be around November 10.)

[James Wyrembelski]

I rarely ask on our Facebook page about a particular film. I did ask for this one. So far I'm astonished by the resounding "NO". I was leaning towards not taking it, and I think I'll go with that decision.

Happy to see that the Swift film is making waves in a usual dead zone for the year. But it forced films away from early October. We were looking into getting Ordinary Angels, but they all flew away because of Swift!

Looks as if I picked the perfect spot to close for a week and take a vacation!

[Mike Blakesley]

You must not have a crew of teenage girls like I have. I asked a couple of them last night, "Would you buy a ticket to the Taylor Swift movie if you didn't work here?" And they both rolled their eyes and said "Well, YEAH," like that was the stupidest question I could possibly have asked.

[Leo Enticknap]

My wife just remarked, somewhat cattily (sorry - low hanging fruit pun) that Swift has not exactly set herself a high bar for her next movie being more successful than her last one...

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[Jon Dent]

But it forced films away from early October. We were looking into getting Ordinary Angels, but they all flew away because of Swift!

Same here. We had to scramble to fill those three weeks we expected to carry that, and we can really use a hit right about now. Thanks (for nothing) Taylor.