BookMyShow’s on-going battle for India’s online ticketing market share with competitor Paytm has slowed its growth in 2017.
Big Tree Entertainment, which owns BookMyShow, notched a 27 per cent boost in its operational revenues, but saw the growth of its online ticketing vertical slow down compared to 2016. Last year saw its revenue double for the online ticketing business, but costs and investment hiked.
Meanwhile, as the race for market share heats up, Paytm claimed to have sold more than 52 million movie tickets in 2017, registering a more than 500-per-cent growth since its launch in May 2016. 
Big Tree Entertainment’s slowdown in 2017 comes off the back of a mediocre year for the movie industry, which only saw a handful of films surpass the Rs100 crore (£10,940,00/€12,500,00/$15,
Movie ticketing forms about 60-65 per cent of BookMyShow’s ticketing revenues.
“In FY18, with the objective to further grow this category, expand the market size and increase penetration for online entertainment ticketing, BookMyShow made numerous strategic and long-term investments in new and existing businesses and territories,” a spokesperson for BookMyShow told the Economic Times, declining to comment on the FY17 financials.
“These investments, which have already started to yield results, are in line with our sound business strategy and vital for the overall development of the ecosystem we operate in.”
In an effort to maintain prime position in the online entertainment ticketing market, BookMyShow’s total expenses almost doubled to Rs473 crore from Rs248 crore driven by an almost four times increase in advertising expenses.
This has pushed up losses by a whopping 138 times to come in at Rs 139 crore as compared to a net loss of Rs 1 crore in FY16.
However, while Paytm has made significant inroads into the ticketing business, it hasn’t been able to unseat BookMyShow’s leadership position in the bigger cities where average ticket sizes are much larger.
Image: Informedmag
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