Fandango (ticket service)
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| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2000[1] |
| Headquarters | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, United States |
| Services | Online media |
| Owner(s) | NBCUniversal [2] |
| Employees | 500 |
| Website | Fandango.com |
Fandango is a corporation in the United States that sells movie tickets to more than 16,000 screens by telephone (1-800-FANDANGO) and Internet (www.fandango.com), enabling customers to buy tickets in advance and avoid lines at the movie theater.
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[edit] Services
Fandango charges a premium to use its services, ranging from 75¢ to $2.00 (the additional surcharge for phone orders), which reserves a ticket to be printed out upon arrival at a movie theater, thereby avoiding lines. Initially, seating was promised for sold-out shows, but this feature was discontinued for most theaters, as not all were equipped to handle reserved seating and will call lines. With ticket prices in many areas exceeding US$10.00, purchasing tickets through Fandango and other ticketing websites can make movie-going an expensive proposition; however, procuring tickets to movies on their opening days by conventional means may be inconvenient, difficult, and at times impossible (especially in large metropolitan areas) without utilizing services like Fandango.
Fandango's advertisements play before previews at participating movie-theater chains and feature lunch bag puppets spewing various one- or two-line jokes and riddles centering around the company's name. They have also done a segment that is based on "We are the World".
Fandango's website also offers exclusive film clips, trailers, celebrity interviews, reviews by users, movie descriptions, and some web-based games.
[edit] History
Industry revenue increased rapidly for several years after the company's formation. However, as the Internet grew in popularity, small- and medium-sized movie-theater chains began to offer independent ticket sale capabilities through their own websites. In addition, a new paradigm of moviegoers printing their own tickets at home (with barcodes to be scanned at the theater) emerged, in services offered by PrintTixUSA and by point-of-sale software vendor operated web sites like "ticketmakers.com" (and eventually Fandango itself). Finally, an overall slump in moviegoing continued into the 2000s, as home theaters, DVDs, and high definition televisions proliferated in average households, turning the home into the preferred place to screen films.
On April 11, 2007, Comcast acquired Fandango, with plans to integrate it into a new entertainment website called "Fancast.com," set to launch the summer of 2007.[3] In June 2008, the domain Movies.com was acquired from Disney.[4] With the company's purchase of a stake in NBCUniversal in January 2011, Fandango and all other Comcast media assets were merged into the company.
[edit] Competition with MovieTickets.com
Fandango is one of two major online advance movie ticket sale sites, along with MovieTickets.com. Before being acquired by Comcast in April 2007, Fandango was privately owned, with the major stakeholder being the largest movie-theater chain in the U.S., Regal Entertainment Group, including the United Artists and Hoyts theater chains. Along with other partners, Regal founded Fandango partly to prevent the older MovieTickets.com from establishing a monopoly on phone and online ticketing services. (MovieTickets.com is publicly owned and trades under the stock symbol HOLL.)
Mergers of movie chains have complicated matters regarding which company provides online ticketing for a particular chain. Upon Regal's acquisition of Consolidated Theatres, that chain was under contract to MovieTickets.com; as such Fandango does not ticket those Regal theaters. On the other hand, Regal's acquisition of the Hoyts chain resulted in Fandango taking over their online ticketing.
Prior to 2012, Fandango did not provide online ticketing for many AMC Theaters. However, it provided online ticketing for those AMC Theaters originally part of the Loews Cineplex Entertainment chain, due to contractual obligations in place prior to the 2005 merger of the two movie chains.[5] Loews had previously attempted to break the contract in 2002 under pressure of bankruptcy and from (then) AOL Moviefone and its partner, Loews' Cineplex subsidiary; Fandango successfully sued both Loews and Moviefone and retained Loews' business.[6] As of February 8th, 2012, Fandango began providing ticketing for all AMC Theaters in the US,[7] after which MovieTickets.com's fellow shareholders sued AMC for breach of contract.[8]
On March 19th, 2012 Fandango announced a partnership with Yahoo! Movies, becoming the official online and mobile ticketer serving over 30 million registered users of the Yahoo! service. This was an important move for Fandango in keeping ahead of their biggest competitor, MovieTickets.com [9]
[edit] Controversy
In July 2009 it was revealed that Fandango along with other web sites including buy.com and Orbitz were linked with controversial Web loyalty programs, also known as post-transaction marketers. Fandango reportedly gave access to their customers' credit cards to the third party.[10]
[edit] References
- ^ "Fandango, Inc.". Business Week. http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=183308. Retrieved February 1, 2012.
- ^ "NBCUniversal Companies - Fandango". NBCUniversal. http://www.nbcuni.com/companies/fandango. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
- ^ Wallenstein, Andrew (April 12, 2007). "Comcast Adds Fandango". AdWeek. http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising/comcast-adds-fandango-88613. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
- ^ Chmielewski, Dawn C. (June 24, 2008). "Fandango acquires Movies.com". Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/24/business/fi-movies24. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
- ^ Jackson, David (June 23, 2005). "AMC-Loews merger could shake up online movie ticketers Fandango and MovieTickets.com". Seeking Alpha. http://seekingalpha.com/article/334-amc-loews-merger-could-shake-up-online-movie-ticketers-fandango-and-movietickets-com-holl-goog-msft-twx-yhoo. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
- ^ Cox, Beth (August 2, 2002). "Fandango Heads Off An End Run". InternetNews.com. http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/1438501. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
- ^ . http://www.fandango.com/movieblog/fandangoamctheatresannouncenewlyexpandedpartnership-698047.html?pn=2.
- ^ Katey Rich, MovieTickets.com suing AMC setting up Fandango deal on CinemaBlend.com, 8 February 2012.
- ^ Perez, Sarah. March 19th, 2012. "Fandango Wins Yahoo Movies Deal Over Rival MovieTickets.com" http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/19/fandango-wins-yahoo-movies-deal-over-rival-movietickets-com/
- ^ Sandoval, Greg (July 24, 2009). "Buy.com, Orbitz linked to controversial marketers". Cnet. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10293633-93.html. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
[edit] External links
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