Following MoviePass, Sinemia has ended their United States operations
posted Saturday Apr 27, 2019 by Scott Ertz
It has only been 7 months since Sinemia brought its MoviePass competitor from Europe to the United States. The company first launched its unlimited movie subscription service in 2014 but decided to try its hand in the US market following the constant MoviePass disaster. While MoviePass was unable to be financially stable at $10 per month, Sinemia believed that $30 per month would be the big difference for them.
Unfortunately for Sinemia, they seem to have underestimated the market's desire to see movies with a deal and fell victim to the same problem that took out MoviePass. Effective immediately, the company has shut down its US operations entirely. According to a note from the company on their website,
We are all witnessing that the future of moviegoing is evolving through movie ticket subscriptions. However, we didn't see a path to sustainability as an independent movie ticket subscription service in the face of competition from movie theaters as they build their own subscriptions. Thanks to the cost advantage and cross-sell opportunities, movie theaters will be prominent in the movie ticket subscription economy.
For many of us, the expectation for success is in the same hands that Sinemia sees: the theater groups themselves. Both MoviePass and Sinemia were forced to purchase tickets from the theaters for full or near retail price, meaning that it didn't take long for the subscription price to no longer cover the cost of tickets. For MoviePass, in most markets, the first ticket sold was a loser for them. For Sinemia, with its higher price, it took until the third ticket for most markets.
For the theater groups, however, the costs are obviously very different. They wouldn't be paying retail price, but the wholesale price, for the tickets. If someone can make the business model work, it's going to be them.
