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One of the perks of my job is a pair of free movie tickets every month. So, I've gotten back into the habit of watching movies on the big screen after a long hiatus.
In Singapore, seats are assigned. You can book them online and choose your seat. Often, my gf and I will choose to watch a movie with a less desirable start-time in order to have a better seat. It's a great system really; you can show up right before the movie starts without any worrying about preztelized neck syndrome from a front-row corner seat.
But I think there's still room for improvement: why not also offer the seats at different price tiers? E.g.:
$5 for the neck pretzelizers
$10 for the average seats
$15 for the prime seats
You already have this a bit with matinee shows, but why not within a single showing too? Concerts and sporting events already do this and I'll usually peg my investment in a ticket to how much I want to see the event/show. I'll pay more for my favorite acts.
Obviously, you can scale this with start times (e.g. $2, $5, $8 for non-optimal show times) too.
Can anyone offer a good reason why movie theaters don't, too?
 
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United States24745 Posts
I think the most important issue is the one that theaters don't charge more for more popular movies. That is an interesting question that I'd like to know the answer to.
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I think it's a great idea, but it's difficult to enforce. In North America, afaik, none of the seats are labeled, so implementing such a system would introduce too much overhead cost. As well, I don't necessarily think it will increase revenue (i.e. provides no incentive for the theatres). A well advertised movie will always be completely sold out, the higher price of the better seats are offset by the lower price of the worse seats.
In a sense, people are in fact paying for better seats. Instead of the two extra dollars, they pay with their time.
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We've got this in the UK. You've got your regular and your luxury seats. Luxury are the better placed/bigger seats/more leg room.
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Your idea is an example of an idealistic econ policy, namely perfect price discrimination. Your suggestion would work if every theater, every movie, every timeslot was fully booked. Alas, they aren't, which would lead people buying the cheap seats and then move to the expensive seats since they'd be empty anyway.
Another reason theaters don't do this policy is b/c they don't wanna turn people off. Say theaters only do the price differentiation for movies they are pretty certain will be fully booked. Customers may shun this and go for another theater instead.
edit: Where I currently live, in colombia, they do have some sort of price discrimination of this sort, but its near-impossible to enforce when the theater is not fully booked
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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
It would also require way more staff to police. Most movie theatres i go to have like 1 guy to take tickets for 4 theatre rooms and then 1 projectionist. I'm sure it's been thought of....no idea if it would actually be more profitable though.
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Austin10833 Posts
Are there going to be people constantly checking tickets during the show, or are the theaters going to be broken up into different sections with security? What's to stop me from waiting until the 2nd weekend and buying a $5 ticket and sitting wherever I like?
What I imagine is that while high-revenue movies might generate more income under a system like this, lower-budget ones will generate less.
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kennigit is right, that would require multiple ushers per movie screen, the cost of paying those ushers would just be unprofitable.
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Canada8033 Posts
One small town movie theater had a system kinda like this. It was basically $10 for a regular seat and $15 for a seat that was basically a leather recliner. There was only one theater, so enforcement wasn't really a problem.
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We have this at some theaters in California.
I wish there were more who did this.
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Calgary25990 Posts
On December 26 2009 10:28 BroOd wrote:
Are there going to be people constantly checking tickets during the show, or are the theaters going to be broken up into different sections with security? What's to stop me from waiting until the 2nd weekend and buying a $5 ticket and sitting wherever I like?
What I imagine is that while high-revenue movies might generate more income under a system like this, lower-budget ones will generate less.
In Asia a theatre generally only has around four screens and you buy a specific labelled seat. I think he's suggesting to add onto that system.
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Most movie theaters have tons of games and concessions, people who show up early to get the prime seats are likely to play games and get food since they have to wait for a long time.
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Hypothetically speaking, what if a theater had like a computer/seat management system. You would buy your ticket and on that ticket it would have a specific id that would only work on a select seat during a select time. The seat would have a slot where you would need to put your ticket in order for the seat to open in order for someone to sit down.
This is completely dumb, but I was just thinking about it. It might be cost efficient in the future.
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Definitely possible. Just too costly. Maybe Japanese theatres can afford it with their 2000 Yen tickets and advanced technology.
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We got 3 different price classes in most german cinemas. I usually buy mid class tickets and if the cinema is quite empty I just sit down on the best class seats because there is nobody who checks your tickets, you just have to move over if someone happens to come late and has your seat number.
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Half of the reason to pay more for a movie is to avoid people who pay less and are less serious about their (MY) movie going experience.
This idea would work better if talking on a cellphone during a movie was a capital offense.
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EPT
