The digital journey of moviegoers and how it does completely evolve in a digital world
CineEurope 2019
What’s new about the so-called “second digital revolution”? Almost a decade after the conversion to digital cinema technology, we are now seeing a number of other major changes in the way cinemagoers watch cinema.
From new types of interactions with cinemagoers and industry partners to redefining the premium experience, cinema exhibitors are constantly exploring new ways to convey and create excitement around the Big Screen experience.
At the same time, the emergence of new competing and complementary platforms on the market now presents a myriad of challenges and possibilities for the sector. An executive roundtable on this topic was held in CineEurope this year.
In addition to this digital journey of moviegoers and how it evolves completely in a digital world, the panel discussed, among other topics, the challenges of sharing data between exhibition, distribution and third parties, as well as how the subscription model is perhaps transforming marketing in many parts of the world, but not everywhere.
The moderator of the roundtable, Julien Marcel (CEO, Boxoffice / Webedia Movies Pro), provided data that there was a 20% growth in online ticket sales, while more than 70% of all cinemagoers access movie theater websites on their mobile phone and 80% watch movie trailers via this device.
Tony Chambers, Senior Vice President of The Walt Disney Company (EMEA) and County Manager (UK & Ireland) raised at the debate in Barcelona his idea that “distribution companies have to deliver quality content and get the consumer out of their homes through the marketing experience. (…) Every studio, every market is different and consumers are getting far more selective in what they want to see and what they want to do” -he said to the owners of cinemas-.
In the words of Alejandro Ramírez Magaña, Chief Executive Officer of Cinépolis, with the new technologies applied to cinema admissions, “you know the type of movies they want, if they go alone or with their family and how many tickets they buy every time, what they buy at the concession, what genres, etc.. We are in a transition phase, but I think that the possiblities are endless with these new analytical tools” -he said-.
Jane Hastings, CEO and Managing Director of Event Hospitality & Entertainment Ltd, referred to building local audiences by saying that “we’ve got over seventy per cent of total admission in our database. This is an audience size of 500,000. So we can provide local audiences.”
Duncan Clark, President of the Distribution Area at Universal Pictures International, was also speaking on the panel about these issues: “I think there’s a danger that if we, as a collective partnership, don’t join up more conclusively and satisfactory, we would lose control to players who are in the business of collecting data, such as google or youtube or whoever may be.”
In that respect, Alejandro Ramírez (Cinépolis) said it is better that distributors and exhibitors don’t have a third party in between them keeping the data or charging them a fee. “One example we all know very well is what happened in the US with the MoviePass, a third party that tries to do a subscription model that frankly exhibitors can do much more efficiently, and in a more sustainable way as well. The key question about third parties is whether they add value or whether they destroy it or just can analyze value” -Ramírez Magaña said-.
In addition, Tim Richards, Founder and CEO of Vue Entertainment, was even more precise when he said on this subject that they, the exhibitors, are in the front line, and they need to know their customers: “Going back a little bit, what has changed in the last few years is that we have massive amount of information and don’t use it, and we shouldn’t be able to undermine how to use it properly. In the relationship between exhibitors and distributors from the film studios, we all win when we share data. I’m actually very optimistic about the future of it” -he claimed in CineEurope-.
Likewise, Richards wanted to be much more realistic in reference to the most cinema-loving potential clients: “People who like movies, watch movies in every single format” -he admitted in Barcelona-.
Finally, Duncan Clark, going back to the idea of subscriptions, said that he doesn’t like discount programs in cinemas: “We like the idea of increasing cinemagoing, and I think that we are all over the years joining in to many programmes that increase the desire to go to the cinema. From our position we just need to make certain that we are protecting the value of what we are making, so we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars making very expensive movies, and we need to make certain that the marketplace showing those films are paying the appropriate price for them. We do not want to relegate it to a point where it’s losing its value and its uniqueness. And I’m sure that this is something that all studios would agree with”.
©José Luis García/Cinestel.com
