So, when was the last time you stood in a queue outside a cinema hall to book a ticket?
Chances are that it would have been ages ago — for, with the increase in smartphone users, moviegoers are largely preferring to book through mobiles or online mode. Online movie ticket booking companies like market leader BookMyShow and TicketNew/Paytm are bullish about their growth prospects. In fact, this 2020 festival season (Pongal, Sankranti, Lohri), BookMyShow created history when it sold a record 2.1 million tickets in India for a single day (January 12)!
The Pongal week has been among the busiest times for such online platforms. Ashish Saksena COO-Cinemas, BookMyShow, said, “Rajinikanth’s Darbar , Allu Arjun’s Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo and Mahesh Babu’s Sarileru Neekevvaru have been widely accepted by audiences in the South. The success of these films has been instrumental in creating history with the platform selling 2.1 million movie tickets for a single day, while also clocking seven consecutive days of 1 million ticket sales on the platform. The blockbuster films from the South have contributed to 51% of the overall ticket sales on BookMyShow, leading to a record-breaking milestone.”
Walk-in versus online
Rakesh Gowthaman of Vettri cinemas in Chrompet, a suburb of Chennai, was one of the first standalone twin theatres to introduce online ticketing facility. Gowthaman explains, “In the early 2000s, there was no advance booking for any films in Tamil Nadu outside of Chennai city. Those days, walk-in crowds dominated, as tickets were sold one hour before a show starts. We went online with Rajini’s Enthiran in 2010 and sold around 23% of our total tickets for the film online. It was a huge success. Today, a decade later, we sold 82% of the total tickets via online for Darbar .”
As per market sources, out of approximately 10 crore movie tickets sold in Tamil Nadu in 2019, 3.5 crores were sold via online platforms. The total size of cinema tickets sold in Tamil Nadu during 2019 was valued at around ₹1350 crores, out of which almost 35% were sold online, which is huge by any yardstick. Chennai and its suburbs in Chengalpet and Kanchipuram districts account for almost 60% of online tickets sold. The rest of the State is not far behind, particularly towns like Vellore, Tirupur, Kumbakonam and Tirunelveli. A place called Punjai Puliampatti, near Tirupur, has Sridevi Cinemas multiplex, which features among the top 20 in Tamil Nadu in online sale of movie tickets. The forecast is that online ticket sales will be more than walk-in audiences by the end of 2021. Of course, there are some theatre owners who prefer to retain 10 to 15% for walk-in audiences, who are not used to online booking. Films like Kanchana 3 and Namma Veetu Pillai turn out to be superhits due to “walk-in audiences”, according to sources.
Future scope
Ramkumar Nammalvar, founder of TicketNew, a major player in Tamil Nadu, said, “With increasing internet and smartphone penetration, people are realising the convenience of online booking. Now, 65% of the screens in Tamil Nadu have online booking and more multiplexes are coming up in smaller towns. The scope for movie-goers to book on mobiles is huge in the future.”
Meanwhile, there is a battle brewing between national multiplex players (PVR & INOX), who are making inroads into Tier 2 and 3 towns, and established local players in the state. Tamil Nadu has the largest number of single screens in the country and online ticketing has come as a blessing for them. While the national multiplexes have their own state-of-the-art booking apps, the local players depend solely on major online ticket apps, with which they have exclusive deals. Gowthaman adds, “We cannot afford to run our own booking app, as the cost of running and maintenance is high. So we have an exclusive deal with TicketNew that has helped in our sale of tickets and concessions.” The lure for audiences while booking online seems to be that they are able to choose their favourite seats in advance and not stand in queues at the ticket counter. The future seems bright too, because like everything online worldwide, cinema ticketing is also set to grow. And as far as Tamil Nadu is concerned, those screens that are strong in online platforms are bound to survive and flourish in the long run.
