The obvious question is: How many patrons must attend a movie in a particular auditorium to offset the cost of operations? That is, how many people must attend a movie in one particular auditorium to make ANY profit at all or just break even?

Evans

 

What does a ticket cost, what percent of that belongs to the theatre? What are you paying your staff? What does the electricity cost in your area? How many people buy concessions, and how much do they spend?

It could take just one person in theory to pay for the show, but it could also take 1000.
 

Ever since I have worked in a multiplex our policy is we run for one patron. I'm sure it's not cost effective but it is effective in costomer relations.
 

If they wont' take the pass -- then we show them the movie.

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Scott D. Neff
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www.cinema-west.com
 

There is no way that that can be determined as it varies from theatre to theatre and even auditorium to auditorium.

A theatre manager may not know the answer to this question for his particular theatre as he is not aware of all the costs involved, but an owner or proprietor certainly should be.

Is it 5 or 10?, maybe 25 or 50? It all depends on the individual house overhead, ticket prices, concession sales, and film rental.

As an example...I own and operate a single screen subrun theatre with an average ticket price of $2.00. My weekly overhead is $2,850 with a concession per cap of $1.25. My film rental averages 40%. My normal schedule concists of 11 shows per week...therefore I have a per show cost of $259.00. I need 128 tickets sold per show at $2.00 for a gross of $256.00. Deduct 40% film rental and I'm left with $153.60. Those 128 people purchase $160.00 in concessions. My share is 66% or $105.60. Add my share of both ticket revenues and concessions and I'm left with $259.20 or a profit of $.20. In other words I need 128 people to break even per show.(1,408 per week)

Naturally the weekend shows do much better then those figures and therefore the weekday shows don't need to do that much. In my case the weekdays probably need about 65 to 70 people to break even. If I schedule any extra shows the cost of those shows only include the extra payroll and utilities as all the other expenses are fixed and already budgeted to the original 11 shows. Therefore the cost of any extra show only costs me about $30.00 and only needs 15 people to break even unless it's a bargain matinee ($1.50) when I need 25.

I can't imagine that those 10 million dollar megaplexes can have a per screen overhead much lower then mine even with the shared costs over all screens. They are running at tremendous loses on weekdays. And we wonder why Carmike and soon the others are bankrupt. I have often been to those theatres on a weekday afternoon when a 16 plex had only 25 people in the whole place!
 

Most theatres if it is the last one out, will claim problems, or try to bribe them with passes. Shameful, but hey I get paid to be there whether the film runs or not. More time for maintenance if it doesn't run.
 

This keeps employees who want to go home early from discouraging customers from staying.

While I think it is a waste of effort to run empty auditoriums, I agree with the policy. If a customer goes to the trouble of coming out for a movie, the least you can do is show it to them.

Russ

 

There was one time though this didn't work out too well. Anyone had this happen to you?

We were running "Scent of a Woman" with some ludicrously late start time. Being almost 3 hours with trailers (9 reels), the practice was to not start it until a ticket was sold on that last show, for rarely did it do any business that late. Well, a guy came wandering in apparently just as I was walking downstairs to shut things down. The night was a fluke, as for some oddball reason, we had not sold a single ticket for any of the last shows. I was going to do my closing duties, run to the bank and go home early! Not quite.

So I get downstairs to lock the front doors and the cashier tells me to run "Scent". Now doesn't this just suck? Here is the longest movie, scheduled to start last, and it's going to fire up a full half hour late! Oh well, it's my job. I run upstairs and thread it and fire it up immediately. Needless to say, the man was quite pleased, for not only did he get a private screening, but we held it...just for him.

I do my duties and about the end of the first reel I'm done! I do the bank run and am back about halfway through the second reel. What to do? Well I decided to go give a little personal service and check every single person in the building to make sure they are comfortable. But wait, the guy's not there! Bathroom? Perhaps. Nope. The guy's gone! I check every auditorium and clear the entire complex and sure as can be, he must've not liked the movie and skipped out.

This why I am against non-operator side platters with conduit stretching from the front of the machine to the wall, preventing a speed wind to get through the rest of the film. By the time I was absolutely certain the guy was nowhere in the building, the splice to the head of reel 4 had just passed, and 4 reels is just to much to consider running the film down to the next reel change and dropping 8000 feet of film back in the center. It was a lovely night.
 

At the 6 plex I started at we wouldn't run a show unless there were people in it and that worked well. At the 10 plex I was at for 2 years we started everything but if there was no one in it would shut down the Xenon and that worked well there.

It all depends on the theatre size.
 

We all know that aside from summer vacation and other holiday periods, weekday matinees do not come close to supporting themselves. It is not uncommon for a sixteen plex to have only twenty five people in the entire complex on any given weekday afternoon. This doesn't even begin to cover the costs of operation.

During the depression matinees disappeared from many theatres only to return during World War II. Then in the fifties when TV just about doomed the theatres, those that didn't close gave up matinees again in order to survive. The final blow for matinees almost happened when the large downtown movie palaces closed in the late sixties and early seventies. They depended on the walkin trade that the downtown location provided, and when the theatres relocated to suburban shopping centers and freestanding locations, that walkin trade didn't exist. Most theatres during that period either ran one matinee and then closed to reopen around 6:30 for the evening shows or only ran one midweek matinee on Wednesday afternoons. In my area the majority of theatres didn't run weekday matinees at all.

In the late seventies and throughout the eighties, with the building of multiplexes, some matinees returned, and finally during the nineties with the arrival of the megaplex continuous daily matinees returned to most of the nation.

However considering the present financial situation I believe that over the next few years we will see them disappear once again, except for in the largest markets.
 

With all the competition out there we need to be sure that the patron know that whenever they feel like going out to a movie then we will be there for them. If we aren't open when they want to see the movie then they will rent a vid or take in another event. In the spring of the year when our local AHL hockey team is in the playoffs every venue in the city is empty on game nights, concerts at the local sports complex or the university can hurt us too. So, when John or Jane Patron show up at the door give them what they want. A movie the way a movie was meant to be seen.

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If ya smell, what the Zach is cooking.

Zach Zagar, the most electrifying man in theater entertainment today.