AMC Theater Chain to Stop Charging for Better Seats

AMC is abandoning plans to cost extra for film seats relying on their location. But larger costs for center-middle seats at theaters the place AMC has been testing the idea will stay in impact this weekend, when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” are anticipated to attract vital crowds.

AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest theater chain, mentioned on Thursday that it might “pivot away” from a contentious initiative known as Sightline, during which seats at night screenings had three tiers of pricing, ending the long-held cinema customized of charging the identical quantity for any seat in a theater. (Discounts of $1 to $2 have been supplied for the neck-craning entrance row, will increase of $1 to $2 for the center-middle and the established order for the remaining.)

The idea was rolled out in March at theaters in New York, Illinois and Kansas to howls of protest from some moviegoers. AMC all the time labeled it as a check.

The experiment will finish someday in August, an AMC spokesman mentioned. But the corporate plans to start out a brand new trial involving front-row seats, which frequently go unsold. Later this yr, AMC mentioned it might pull out conventional front-row seats and change them with “large, comfortable, lounge-style seating areas that will allow guests to lay all the way back.”

AMC and different theater chains, after steadily elevating costs at their concession stands, have began to focus extra intently on seats for income progress. Increasingly, as an example, multiplexes have been pushing prospects towards premium-priced tickets for screenings that characteristic extra-extra-large screens or enhanced sound methods.

Adding to the strain, attendance has nonetheless not recovered from the early pandemic, when many theaters have been closed for months. So far this yr, ticket gross sales are working roughly 20 p.c behind the identical interval in 2019.

AMC mentioned Sightline didn’t pan out because it had hoped. In specific, the corporate noticed “little or no incremental lift in front-row attendance, even with a price reduction applied to those seats.” About three out of each 4 prospects who beforehand sat in center-middle seats paid the surcharge to proceed doing so, AMC mentioned. Some of these individuals moved to different seats. A small proportion stopped shopping for tickets at AMC.

Notably, rivals didn’t comply with AMC in re-pricing seats, making the corporate much less aggressive within the check markets.

AMC’s plans to cease the initiative have been reported earlier by Bloomberg News.