This is topic Attendance in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Henry McCalmont (Member # 1139) on 08-01-2002, 08:04 AM:
I read an article this year stating that the national average for theater fill capacity was 29 %. I can't remember where I read it. Can anyone else tell me where I can confirm this information? Thanks
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 08-01-2002, 02:24 PM:
That is pretty good penetration. That means that in the average, most shows are at least 30% full. When you consider all those shows we present with 10 people in the room, that's pretty good. Any number over 20% is good. I have heard of theatres in the Far East where they are running at 80% capacity. That means most shows look sold out!
Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 08-01-2002, 04:42 PM:
29% sounds high to me. 19% would be more reasonable, IMO. I don't know where you'd find that number if it's not on the NATO site.
Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 08-01-2002, 04:50 PM:
30% is a good number to work to and site selection is a major consideration in sustaining this average number and it has to be balanced by the number of seats, though rarely full, to keep the film companies happy. Our focus is International so 50 - 70% capacity is more common in some of our sites. It may be great in the Far East to have high capacity but in some locations the admission and operation tax burden is huge.
Richard Fowler
TVP-Theatre & Video Products Inc. www.tvpmiami.com
Posted by Frank Rapisardi (Member # 435) on 08-05-2002, 06:41 AM:
In the area around here Greater Lawrence,Methuen,and southern New Hampshire;weekday(afternoon shows) have shown poor attendance.That's including Saturday and Sunday shows. In most cases attendance for these shows is between 15-30 people. Once school opens in a couple of weeks;I expect things will get even worse.------------------
Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 08-06-2002, 01:53 AM:
Frank,From where do you get your information? I know for a fact that Methuen does more than 30 people a show during the matinees.
Posted by Richard C. Wolfe (Member # 431) on 08-06-2002, 11:38 PM:
I think that 29% seems way too high for a national average. However, it seems to me that the only reason for that high figure is because the theatres are so small. I know that at my single screen moveover run house we average 19% because we have 570 seats which is far more then most auditoriums in mega-plexes today. In my area 250 seats is a good size house at most of the plexes. Many have rooms with as little as 85 seats. It is certainly easier to hit that average in small auditoriums then in the larger ones. But we are talking about national averages here, so I think it's fairly safe to say the average seating capacity is around 200. Most first runs do 80% of there business on the weekends. A good opening for a new picture on a national basis would be $25,000,000 for the three day weekend. I'm not talking blockbusters here, just good solid pictures. We can forget those that open with 60 to 100 million as there are only a few of them. Taking that $25,000,000 figure on 3,000 screens gives us $8,333 per screen. Divide that by the three day weekend will give us $2,700 per day per screen. Divide that by an average ticket price of $6.00 gives us 462 admissions per day average. Considering 5 shows a day with 200 seats available per show would amount to 1000 seats availabe for the day.462 admissions into 1000 available seats gives an average of 46%. That appears high, but that is for the opening week of a good grossing picture. All the others will pull that down a great deal. Let's look at it thusly. On an good weekend the top ten films may gross $140,000,000 on about 25,000 screens with an average per screen gross of $5,600. Dividing that by the average ticket price of $6.00 gives us 933 admissions per screen. Divide that by 3 days gives us 311 admissions per day per the 1,000 seat average available for the day or 31%. Now when you add in all the art houses, and sumruns the average will be brought down some, to where the 29% figure looks realistic. But remember that we only used the weekend figures here when theatres do most of there business. The weekdays for the most part are dead, but still have the same number of seats and number of shows. Therefore, when the weekdays are figured in, which of course represents four out of seven days in a week, the average figure will come down quite a bit. Assumming that 80% of the weeks business is done on weekends, our full week when an average weekend is $140,000,000 would be $175,000,000. Dividing that by the 25,000 screens then gives us $7,000 per screen or 1,166 admissions per week divided by 7,000 available seats or 16.6% capacity. Once again when we figure in the art houses and subruns, many with much larger seating capacities the % will come down even more.I'd like to see where they come up with that 29% figure as a national average.
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-07-2002, 03:56 PM:
This reminds me of somethiing I've always wondered about.....how many movie theatre SEATS are there? We always have a pretty good count of the number of screens...but how many butts would it take to give us 100% coverage of the cushions? I realize this number changes daily.