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What does everyone think of the letter that just came from Fox about on line ticket sales? Maybe I am totally reading it wrong and maybe this is standard practice, but it seems to me that they are totally trying to squash on line ticketing by expecting theaters to report any fees collected as film rental. What outside company is going to offer ticket sales if they can't make some money on it?

I have not yet read the letter and will give you my take on it once I have.

The misconception is that outside companies will make their money on per ticket charges, this is not true. The profits will be generated through advertising revenues via the ticketing website. I would not be surprised if Iticketing companies drop the per ticket fee if Fox and/or others adopt the policy.

Greg Borr
Ready Theatre Systems
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Linda, I read the letter from Fox and interpreted it in the same manner that you have, it will be interesting to see how this plays out, movietickets.com has waived their per ticket fees for the first six months, Moviefone has recently waived theirs as well, I beilieve everyone will eventually.

I personally think that Fox and others would benefit from placing a limit an the per ticket fee instead of requiring it entirely reported. Requiring the entire fee as rental, even though the theatre only receives a portion, or none at all discourages theatres from entering Iticketing. I would think that distributors would want to encourage technology, but stranger things have happened. Hope this helps.

Greg Borr
Ready Theatre Systems
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Thanks Greg. Glad to know that someone else read it the same way I did. I agree with you that it seems like the distributors would want to encourage this. I know that it would discourage me from doing, although if I did it would be strictly to keep up with the technology offer people whatever is available, not to make money. At this point though, we can't afford the cost of upgrading our pos to handle it, so it will have to wait until we have another Titanic or something close to it. Linda

Linda,

One thing we are offering our customers is a percentage of the advertising profits generated from their theatres pages on our Iticketing site, this should allow participating theatres to post their show schedules to the web, offer Iticketing, and also make a little money. We will not be charging a per ticket fee.

What POS system are you using? Is it a hardware or software upgrade that is needed?

Greg Borr
Ready Theatre Systems
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Today I received a second letter from Fox further explaining their policy requiring the reporting of advanve ticket sale commissions as part of the box office gross. It went as far as quoting the paragraph from the contract that covers this practice.

GREGBORR....I suspect that if they read this forum, there will be a third letter coming soon announcing that they are entitled to collect their percentage on advertising commissions collected from advance ticket sites!

Roxy: Is that sarcasm? Although you are probably right. They seem to think that they can collect on anything.

Greg: We have the Omniterm system and I think it is probably an upgrade of software that we need, although sometimes I think that the hardware is wearing out also. Have to hope that it continues to work through the slump and beyond, though. Thanks. Linda