When it was announced that AMC Theatres was going to adopt a new ticketing structure, dubbed Sightline, reactions were largely negative. (I might have ranted a bit myself.) Basically, the plan feels like a new way for AMC Theatres to punish its frequent customers by raising the prices on the “best” seats while offering a discount on what are clearly terrible seats that probably shouldn’t exist in the first place. Now, thanks to a quarterly earnings call (via Deadline), AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron is attempting to justify the move and explain why it’s really the best-case scenario for everyone involved, including customers.
READ MORE: AMC Theatres’ New Idea To Make Money Is To Charge More For The Best Seats
As briefly outlined above, Sightline is the pricing structure that breaks up seating at a screening into three sections. There are the center-middle seats (which are primarily thought of as the best seats to maximize your movie-watching enjoyment) and those are going to cost more than usual unless you are a member of AMC’s premium club. Then you have the “standard” seats which are like a halo around the best seats. Basically, these are the seats far back and a little too close, as well as on the sides. Not terrible seats but definitely inferior. Those will be available at the “normal” price. And finally, you have the discounted seats which are typically going to be those first couple of rows that are almost fully reclined and force you to sit way too close to the screen, where the picture is a little distorted based on the angle and your sitting position is not the most comfortable.
According to Aron, however, Sightline is a way for AMC to offer discounted seats and avoid raising ticket prices across the board. Instead, they just raise prices for the seats most people buy. Why would AMC need to raise prices? Inflation, naturally.
“We are in inflationary times, and inflationary times cause costs to rise,” Aron said. “Under the pre-Sightline structure of the industry, if we wanted to raise the price in a theater, the only choice we had was to raise the price on all the seats.”
He added that with the new Sightline plan, “if we felt the need to raise prices, we might only do it in the most popular seats in an auditorium and actually hold the line and not raise prices on other seats. So, it is a way of increasing the price now, but preventing a price increase later on.”
“I am looking at ‘heat maps’ [meaning] what seats are booked for a particular movie, and nobody sits in row one,” the CEO continued. “It could be opening night for ‘Star Wars,’ rows three to 18 are booked solid, row one is empty. There is a possibility here that by discounting the price up-front, we may be able to expand the moviegoing market to more price-sensitive consumers.”
As I ranted originally, Sightline is hostile towards the bread-and-butter AMC customer—the people who go to films multiple times a month and largely keep the company afloat. Those aren’t the people who are purchasing front-row tickets for “Star Wars.” These people are going to pay extra for quality seats and go to the non-event films, as well. So, as said multiple times, there’s now a little bit of an extra cost for wanting the best movie-going experience you can get. And let’s just believe Aron for a second and understand that he wants to attract people to those first two rows in a packed theater for “Star Wars.” That’s ludicrous, from a customer service standpoint. The people who buy discounted seats are likely going to be those who probably can’t afford to go to the cinema often, right? So these people are going for the new “Star Wars” film, they get to their seats and realize the view is shitty and the sitting position is uncomfortable. Is that experience going to entice them to return for more films or just stay home where they can sit on their comfy couch and watch the film a few months later on their 65-inch 4K display at home? It really is silly.
There is good news, though! You see, Aron and AMC are going to see what the reaction is from customers and will “report back” with the results.
“We do understand, however, that this is a substantial change to the status quo for U.S. moviegoers,” he said. “So we will be watching [their reaction] very closely [and] report back to you in future calls what we are seeing in the test. We’re looking forward to this thing working well for our moviegoing public, and for AMC.”
Judging by the quarterly losses for Q4 (during a time when “Avatar: The Way of Water” was breaking records), I’m going to go out on a limb and say that no matter the results of the “test,” ticket prices aren’t going to be reduced. If anything, without Sightline, it’s probably going to result in ticket prices being raised across the board. Wait, wasn’t the theatrical industry saved already?
It’s hard to be optimistic about the future of the theatrical experience when this is happening, huh?