AMC abandons plan to charge more for best cinema seats

AMC Entertainment is dropping a plan to charge more for the best theater seats after moviegoers showed little interest during a test.

The world’s largest cinema chain, which said in February it would expand its tiered-pricing structure to theaters in the U.S. and Canada, announced in a statement Thursday that it’s moving away from the initiative called Sightline.

The test didn’t deliver the hoped-for results. Some people shied away from the more expensive seats, and the company saw little or no increase in purchases of lower-priced tickets for the front row. The trial suggested that, unlike concert tickets or sporting events, movie fans aren’t willing to pay up for the best view or take less desirable seats for less.

In its place, AMC will try out a new type of spacious front row seat that reclines in select locations around the U.S. this year. Bloomberg News first reported on the changes earlier Thursday.

With Sightline, AMC chief executive Adam Aron was trying to break with industry convention as the industry struggled to return to pre-pandemic sales levels. Most theaters charge the same price for every seat at a screening, and none of AMC’s competitors matched its efforts, the company said.

Under the plan, the company charged more for mid-aisle seats in the center of the theater and less for undesirable spots, like in the front row. The initiative applied only to movie screenings after 4 p.m.

Aron has taken a variety of steps to prop up AMC after the pandemic brought the company to the brink of financial ruin. He has raised additional funds, engaged retail investors on social media and even offered non-fungible tokens.

The industry’s recovery from the pandemic has been complicated by sluggish box-office results from a number of big-budget releases including “The Flash” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts downgraded their predictions for the North American theater industry’s revenue to about $9 billion this year as a result. Before the pandemic, the box office regularly topped $11 billion annually.