12 votes

AMC Theatres to change movie ticket prices based on seat location

7 comments

  1. [4]
    NaraVara
    Link
    This is such a specific form of dumbassery that just screams "I started working at a management consulting firm immediately after finishing my MBA at ~24." Completely divorced from any...

    This is such a specific form of dumbassery that just screams "I started working at a management consulting firm immediately after finishing my MBA at ~24."

    Completely divorced from any consideration for the experiential component of buying tickets or sitting in a theater. Just fully viewing everything as a variable to game out. If I was hiring for a junior level consultant and someone uncritically came up with this during a case interview I would grill them.

    What do you do if a large party wants to sit together? What do you do about the companion to a disabled person who is not disabled themselves? Have you considered how much more of a hassle it will be for people to trade seats? Have you considered that seats might go unfilled because people don't like sitting next to each other and you, therefore, have lots of single-seats that people leave as gaps that pairs can't fill into but since you've differentiated seat pricing an usher can't just come by and say "do y'all mind scooting in and making room?"

    It's just so fucking stupid I'm angry someone got paid to come up with it and inflict it on us. And then there's the additional step you've added to the already bloated (due to spyware scripting BS) process of ordering a ticket online. MADNESS.

    How are you even going to interoperate this with 3rd party ticket purchasing interfaces? Now they're also making some hapless API developer at, like, Fandango have to accommodate this stupidity!

    7 votes
    1. [3]
      Greg
      Link Parent
      Wouldn’t most of those drawbacks apply to any kind of assigned seating tickets? That part is pretty standard around here and it still seems to work reasonably well. Don’t get me wrong, I dislike...

      Wouldn’t most of those drawbacks apply to any kind of assigned seating tickets? That part is pretty standard around here and it still seems to work reasonably well.

      Don’t get me wrong, I dislike this idea as much as you do, but for me it’s less about those issues and more about stop fucking subdividing every fucking thing to hell and back just so you can squeeze a few extra fucking percent out of the parts people actually want.

      9 votes
      1. post_below
        Link Parent
        I think the key difference is that movie theaters are in bigger trouble, due to declining sales (currently about half of what they were in 2003), than things like music concerts or live theater....

        I think the key difference is that movie theaters are in bigger trouble, due to declining sales (currently about half of what they were in 2003), than things like music concerts or live theater.

        It might be a bad idea to add a new pain point. Or maybe not, perhaps the best move (from a purely cynical perspective) is to wring as much cash as possible from the theater-goers that haven't given up yet.

        4 votes
      2. NaraVara
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        Yeah but even with assigned seating you can kind of still move around after the fact. That gets harder when you start charging different prices by the seat. Exactly. Right now there is some amount...

        Wouldn’t most of those drawbacks apply to any kind of assigned seating tickets? That part is pretty standard around here and it still seems to work reasonably well.

        Yeah but even with assigned seating you can kind of still move around after the fact. That gets harder when you start charging different prices by the seat.

        stop fucking subdividing every fucking thing to hell and back just so you can squeeze a few extra fucking percent out of the parts people actually want.

        Exactly. Right now there is some amount of aggregate "value" inside that theater room and it gets portioned out to people sort of arbitrarily and mostly based on who gets there first or lucks into an assigned seat that's good (so lottery). They want to change this so the value gets auctioned off by who has more money, and then the theater itself gets to capture any excess. It is a form of stealth price hike.

        It also basically relegates young people to shittier seats. Which is a great way to turn off the up-and-coming generations of movie fans.

        Edit: Also, we already portion out everything in society by ability to pay. I think it's fine and good to have some things that privilege people who are cash-poor and spare-time-rich. There used to be a decent number of such things, but any time businesses can turn that time into money they will, and this always ends up favoring the people with money at the expense of everyone else. It's lame.

        And this isn't even like a class/income cohort thing. Like I mentioned about turning off the up-and-coming generations, it ends up being more of an age cohort thing. It's largely younger people who are impacted because they tend not to have as much spending money but do have a lot of time. They used to live more "richly" when it comes to enjoying cultural experiences, and that's a good trade-off because that's the age when they should be taking in a lot of culture. A lot of critical identity formation happens around then.

        3 votes
  2. [3]
    EgoEimi
    Link
    I actually really like this. The last movie I saw was a blockbuster: all the seats were filled, so I had to sit near the bottom at the sides of the theater, where I had to look up an awkward and...

    I actually really like this. The last movie I saw was a blockbuster: all the seats were filled, so I had to sit near the bottom at the sides of the theater, where I had to look up an awkward and uncomfortable angle to view the screen.

    It didn’t feel fair that I was paying the same price as the people who had the sweet spot view.

    4 votes
    1. [2]
      Greg
      Link Parent
      This raises a very interesting question: let’s say you paid $10, as did the people in the better seats. If you could have paid $8 and they still paid $10, I can see the argument, but that’s...

      This raises a very interesting question: let’s say you paid $10, as did the people in the better seats. If you could have paid $8 and they still paid $10, I can see the argument, but that’s basically never how these changes pan out. Given the likely situation where you still pay $10 but they pay $14, is that still better? It’s more fair, but fairness created at a loss to others rather than a gain to you.

      12 votes
      1. rosco
        Link Parent
        The other part is it relegates poor folks into the shitty seats. I hate all these pay to play schemes that just add another handicap to those that are broke.

        The other part is it relegates poor folks into the shitty seats. I hate all these pay to play schemes that just add another handicap to those that are broke.

        8 votes