A light-hearted look at Cinema Pricing

A couple of weeks ago, an article in the New York Times discussed the possibility of changes in cinema admission pricing, where the cinemas move to a variable, airline -type pricing model (which is, by the way, the model increasingly being adopted by railway companies such as GNER & Virgin Trains in the UK, and most recently Amtrak on its high speed, Acela services between Boston, New York and Washington).

Anyway you can find the New York Times article on variable pricing in cinemas here (may require subscription).

Cinema admission pricing is a deeply flawed model. Prices are negotiated between the distributor and the box office, and rarely, if ever, reflect differences in the movie itself, the season, the day of the week or the stage of the movie's screen life. That's why, several years ago, the average occupancy in a UK cinema was a mere 20%.

Putting these (often) predictable drivers of pricing to one side, Jeremy Dauber at, of all places, the Christian Science Monitor, has come up with 10 rules for the variable pricing of movie tickets.....and it is worth a read.