Movie studios get a percentage of ticket sales. How do they know that cinemas, especially small independent ones, are reporting their ticket sales correctly? Couldn’t a cinema just claim that a screening had 20 paying viewers when in reality they sold 300 and keep the entire extra revenue for themselves? Or do cinemas have to pay per screening regardless of how many people are in the cinema?
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While I was at school, I had a weekend job working in a UK cinema chain. Best job for a young kid to have.
We had 3 ticket booths where staff would use a computer to issue tickets. So all of the ticket sales would be recorded and sent to the head office automatically. Presumably the head office would then pass over the numbers and percentage of the profit to the distribution studios.
However, one of the ticket booths always seemed to be broken. A couple of the managers would always work on that booth if it was busy, record sales by hand, write down customer names and issue paper tickets. They wrote down customer names for safety reasons. If there was a fire, they needed to know how many people were in the cinema at any point in time. So it is actually in the best interest of the cinema to have an accurate count of movie goers.
“What is to stop them from throwing away that piece of paper at the end of the day?”.
Good question. Such a good question that 3 of the 6 managers decided to do just that. Throw away the paper and keep the profits for themselves. Now, I’m no lawyer, but that seems slightly criminal. It turns out, the police also thought it was criminal. One quiet day when the 3 managers in question were working, the other 3 arrived with police to arrest them.
So the reason they usually have the correct numbers are…
1- It’s mostly digital nowadays.
2- For safety reasons, the cinema also wants to have accurate numbers
3- If they don’t, they will probably be arrested for what I presume is embezzlement.
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