Sunchase Cinema 8 discusses ticket price increase
All tickets see an increase by at least $2
Sunchase Cinema 8 increases ticket prices and adds new concession products to be on par with their competitors. The management of Sunchase Cinema increases all prices for the first time in five years. The price change for all standard evening tickets went up on an average of $2.50 per ticket, with matinee prices seeing an increase of $2.50.
“We were seeing a price increase on everything from products we sell at the concession stand, real estate taxes, and property management,” said Diane Caton, executive vice president of the Caton Company based out of Charlottesville who manages the retail stores at Sunchase, “We were able to deal with those increases without having to increase the prices for our customers until the very beginning of 2018.”
According to Caton, the change of ticket prices was a result of competitors raises their prices, along with the price of running the business gradually increased. Another contributing factor comes from the movie studios.
General Manager of Sunchase Debbie Hunt said, “I know a lot of people look at it and think all of the money goes straight to the theater, but the movie companies get the 70 percent (of ticket sales) right off the top whenever a new movie comes out.” According to an article published on Nov. 1, 2017 in The Wall Street Journal, movie studios can take up to 65–70 percent of first-week ticket sales.
To stay aligned with their competitors, Sunchase conducted a market survey in late 2017. This was to look at the price of tickets and concessions of nearby theaters.
“We were looking at where people would go if they didn’t come to our theater, this includes theaters in Lynchburg, Short Pump and other nearby areas,” said Caton, “We wanted to keep our prices competitive and to the greatest extent possible, lower than our competitors.”
Back in Farmville, the cinema has to abide by the studio rules for the number of showings for a specific film.
Hunt said, “If we get a new movie, we are guaranteed to show it for four weeks. … Sometimes it will hurt business because, let’s say you have a movie that is not selling good, we are guaranteed to show it.”
The studios also require that all films must be shown equally according to Caton. If Disney and Warner Brothers both have a movie out, each film must be equal to their counterpart. To do this each company must have an equal number of showings at Sunchase Cinema. Sunchase Cinema cannot show favoritism to any company or film.
Sunchase thrives on its student consumer base as well as the family demographic according to management.
“I really like it when we have movies that will appeal to all age demographics,” said Hunt, “We can show eight movies at one time when we have eight movies that appeal to all the age groups, that is wonderful.”
Sunchase markets to their collegiate audience by giving out passes at Lancer athletic events and rely on word of mouth to draw in crowds. This contradicts the industry standard of using social media to market to a wider audience. The cinema’s social media push is nearly non-existent. The cinema has no presence on Instagram, the Twitter page has not tweeted since Feb. 2, 2016, and their Facebook has posted eight times since the start of July.
Because Sunchase is a smaller theater according to Hunt, the cinema will not receive every movie that gets released compared to bigger locations in Richmond and Lynchburg. This can cause problems, as the studios can be late to give the cinema the films they will be showing for the upcoming week. This will delay the time when the cinema can post the upcoming showtimes.
Caton said, “There is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes at the film company level, usually if the showtimes are getting released on Fridays there was some sort of delay on the film company’s side.”
Sunchase Cinema received feedback after implementing the new changes, both positive and negative.
“We want to earn everyone’s business and we want to be of good value,” said Caton, “we are doing everything we can to keep our prices affordable.”
