Lines are for those who wait, so seems to be the case with multiplexes claiming 10-12% of their ticket inventory is being sold via net and mobiles. According to this ET article, the CII-AT Kearney report in 2006 pegged Bollywood ticket sales at 3.7 billion (inter/national split not mentioned), the overall volume is said to increase 20% by 2008-end.
Adlabs Films COO Tushar Dhingra, is quoted in the article as stating that he expects mobile ticketing to overtake online. The theater chain also offers a downloadable mobile app. The service called Mobile Box Office (MBO), is covered in ET as one which can be used as a cardless/cashless medium through which customers can buy tickets, food and beverages. The website however, conveys completely to the contrary. You can either pay via card or reserve a ticket. Even if your transaction is not successful, your seat is reserved, thinking of which, you could reserve a vast number of seats without ever paying, and even if there is an expiry point for reservations, a large volume would never be possible to be hived off completely by crunch time, talk about being open to a Denial of Service attack.
Bangalore and Hyderabad contribute to 20-25% revenues for PVR says CEO Gautam Dutta, however rural and semi-urban constitute only 2% of total inventory sales.
The 10-15% story might not be entirely true. Last I checked, most ticketing aggregators like Bookmyshow and Kyazoonga don’t have access to entire inventory and usually have access to only 25% of total seats. For obvious reasons, theater chains prefer selling it themselves to retain higher margins, but then again, most theaters don’t make profits based on ticket sales. Besides customer convenience, this is by miles more cost effective than the minimum order paid home-delivery dead-tree services that were being offered by multiplexes circa 2000.
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is now also aggregating local cinema listings, while doing a search I chanced upon ticket listings for Adlabs in Sangli, a district of Maharashtra. Word is that Reliance is focusing heavily on digital distribution for the rural markets and this seems to be a natural extension of comments made by Rajaa Kanwar, vice chairman of UFO Moviez (with which Reliance is rumoured to have tied-up) that the fortune of cinema lied at the bottom of India’s pyramid (not his words). Kanwar had mocked the standards of the Digital Cinema Initiative stating his company charged theaters only $4.60 per screening and that the getting cinema to the masses digitally was the only cost effective way.
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