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Fandango would like to be the one-stop shop for all things movies.
Will McIntosh, the CEO of the company, argues that Fandango has moved far beyond selling movie tickets. Thanks to a series of acquisitions, it now owns Rotten Tomatoes, an aggregator of film reviews, and Vudu (rechristened Fandango at Home), which sells and rents digital copies of movies. It also has launched a program that allows customers to pre-order concessions, so they won’t have to wait in line for popcorn and soda, and has begun offering merchandise tied to new releases, such as the “Deadpool & Wolverine” friendship necklaces it sold last summer.
But McIntosh hopes the theaters that Fandango sells tickets for become more innovative and experimental.
“Theaters haven’t really benefited from investment in technology like other industries have,” says McIntosh, who came to Fandango in 2022 after overseeing NBC Sports Next, a portfolio of digital platforms in golf and youth sports. “There are all these amazing tech companies out there that support restaurants, that support real estate companies, that support golf courses. But theaters are one of the least invested in from a technology standpoint. That’s prevented them from providing a better customer experience.”
Take Fandango’s concessions program. McIntosh says that so far only AMC has embraced the technology, something that clearly frustrates him; he claims that the chain has found customers spend more when they buy snacks on the app. So far, Fandango has sold over $5 million in food and beverages on behalf of AMC.
“AMC is actually seeing better performance out of our ecosystem than their own direct channels,” McIntosh claims. “Thanksgiving weekend, which was by far the biggest moviegoing weekend last year, where you had ‘Gladiator 2,’ ‘Moana 2’ and ‘Wicked,’ we sold over a half million dollars in concessions just for AMC. If you extrapolate that out to the 3,000 partners we have, that would have been $2 to $3 million in food and beverage revenue that we sold for the industry.”
Fandango is celebrating its 25th anniversary at CinemaCon, the annual exhibition industry trade show taking place in Las Vegas this week; but it’s clear that the past five years of that quarter-century mark have been the most challenging in its history. First COVID shuttered theaters for months, with moviegoing only resuming in fits and starts as the pandemic began to ease. Then, the actors and writers strikes of 2023 brought production to a standstill, leaving cinemas with fewer movies to show. This year, which was supposed to usher in a period of recovery, is off to a dreadful start as high-profile movies like “Snow White” and “Mickey 17” have failed to resonate.
McIntosh doesn’t mince words. “As we sit here, it’s historically one of the worst March’s of all time for the box office,” he says. “It will be interesting to see what the temperature is in Las Vegas when we meet with our partners.”
He does believe that a turnaround is within sight, citing summer blockbusters like “Jurassic World Rebirth” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” as well as “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” which arrives at Christmas. “From May through the rest of the year, it looks phenomenal,” McIntosh says.
Still, he thinks that the strikes and the pandemic have demonstrated that cinemas can’t just rely on studios to send them compelling movies every week, especially when they are making fewer films than ever. He wants to see theaters fill in the gaps with alternative content, similar to the special screenings of last summer’s Olympics opening ceremonies that many offered in Imax.
“The history of this business has been very supply driven,” McIntosh says. “If we have a great movie this weekend, it’s wonderful. And if we don’t, we’re like, woe is me. We’ve got to create the demand. Maybe that means showing a big college football game on screens or a concert. There’s got to be more creativity to find more potential content partners. If nobody’s in the theater, you’re not making any revenue.”
Looking ahead, McIntosh thinks Fandango can help customers better navigate the array of entertainment options available to them in cinemas, streaming services and other platforms. In October, the company launched Fandango FanClub, a new monthly membership program that offers savings on ticket purchases and other promos. It quickly attracted tens of thousands of customers.
“That’s going to be the program that kind of ties it all together,” McIntosh says. “Right now it’s very focused on our theatrical business, but we’re going to be more dialed into the home entertainment part as well. Ultimately, we want to become an entertainment operating system. Whether you want to go to a theater or whether you want to rent something in your home, or you’re trying to figure out what you’re going to watch next on one of your seven streaming services, we’ve got the answer for you.”
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