Looking forward to this app … “Demand-priced movie tickets set to debut”
Updated: 6:02 pm, Tuesday, 14 February 2017 http://www.skynews.com.au/business/wealth/2017/02/14/demand-priced-movie-tickets-set-to-debut.html Movie fans will soon be offered cut-price tickets to help put more bums on seats for films that might be flagging at the box office. A new app called Choovie, created by a couple from Victoria, will allow people to buy cheaper cinema tickets for films screened at less popular times, as well as films that might not have the same box office-draw as a blockbuster such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The couple and co-founders of the app, Sonya Stephen and Shane Thatcher, from Windsor, got the idea from their own cinema outings. 'We go to the cinema a lot and more and more we noticed it was empty,' Thatcher told AAP. The pair did their research and discovered that only 16 per cent of cinema tickets are sold each year. 'I'm an economist by trade and I would get a little frustrated because, from an economic perspective, cinema is a really high, fixed-cost business and it's got low marginal costs, so each additional person who comes in is all profit,' he said. 'I thought 'why would you have empty seats when I'm sure you have people who want to come into these movies, but they're not willing to pay full ticket price'?' The pair set about creating an algorithm which allows Choovie to attach a price to cinema sessions across the week, depending on which ones are going to sell the most or least. Then, anyone who has the app, can search for the film they want to see and find the cheapest time and place in which to see it. 'When we talk to cinemas we say 'Choovie finds bums for your empty seats',' Thatcher said. Computershare founder Chris Morris became the angel investor who funded the start-up and, after two years of work, Stephen and Thatcher are now preparing to launch it on the app store. Choovie will be rolling out across 100 cinema screens along the east coast of the country next month. 'We're going to start releasing the names of the cinemas over the next six weeks up to the launch. There's some in each capital city up the eastern seaboards and most of the regional centres have one as well.' The Choovie app will launch on March 27. AAP Cheers, Stephen _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
