Chinese online movie ticket vendor Weying believes digital box office growth is far from reaching its full potential despite a huge 720 million tickets being sold via websites and apps last year.
More than 80% of all movie tickets in China are already bought online, which is a much greater proportion than the 30% in the US.
In an interview with the China-facing CCTV America news website, Weying Technology vice-president Luke Xiang said the numbers suggest there is room for even greater expansion.
“If we divide by population, the average person goes to the cinema once a year [in China]. For perspective, in the US, it’s 3.8 times a year, so we still see huge room to grow,” Xiang said.
CCTV America said China’s online ticketing success has much to do with the digital platforms that encompass the entire movie-going experience. Operators such as Weying-designed WePiao – which is entering the movie distribution sector, as reported by TickTechNews.com last week – offer customers discount tickets, social interaction, merchandise and even concessions.
Internet giants such as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent – a backer of Weying and WePiao – are playing a major role in the development of online sales. It is also likely that online sales are so high because a Chinese population that has attended the movies more regularly since the dawn of the internet age is less loyal to traditional methods of ticket purchasing.
“The Chinese market has effectively combined what is Facebook, WhatsApp and E-wallet into a singular place and created an incredibly convenient and social way to buying ticketing that’s integrated to payments so that kind of convenience doesn’t exist in any other country that we work in and certainly doesn’t exist in the U.S.,” Movio chief executive and movie data researcher, William Palmer told CCTV America.
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