What is the reason for the crazy price increase of movie tickets in the new year?

With the opening of the pre-sale of the Spring Festival stalls, many long-awaited fans suddenly found that the ticket prices of this year's Spring Festival stalls are ridiculously expensive. Since the second-tier cities 100 yuan, many small and medium-sized cinemas in third-and fourth-tier cities and small counties have been sold to 70 yuan/Zhang.

It's not just blockbusters like Detective Chinatown 3 whose prices are rising. On the first day of the Lunar New Year, the average box office of all Spring Festival movies surpassed that of 46 yuan, so that complaints about ticket prices can be seen everywhere in Weibo.

In addition to its own supply and demand relationship, behind the crazy price increase of cinemas during the Spring Festival is the increasing survival pressure of cinemas. For many small cinemas in the third and fourth lines, the Spring Festival stalls are one of the few opportunities to make money, especially in the context of the bad downstream environment and the closure of a large number of cinemas. Such an "attractive" Spring Festival stall can be said to be a "life-saving straw" for many small cinemas with limited profitability.

Take the cinema of a county in the northern coastal city as an example. On most ordinary working days, the total box office of cinemas ranges from 1-3 thousand yuan, and the total box office for the whole year is only nearly 4 million. Last year, cinemas earned 850,000 yuan in the Spring Festival alone, accounting for 20% of the whole year. On the first day of this year, this figure soared to 225,000, nearly 100 times higher than that of ordinary working days, and the single-day box office was close to 6% of the total box office in the whole year.

The most fundamental reason for the price increase is naturally that cinemas have realized that watching movies during the Spring Festival has become a rigid demand. With the Spring Festival movie-watching becoming a "new folk custom", the average attendance rate of many cinemas during the Spring Festival has risen to three or four times as usual, and the hot scenes on the first day of the New Year are almost sold out, which also makes many cinemas think that no matter how high the ticket price rises, consumers will definitely pay the bill during the Spring Festival.

Influenced by the large passenger flow in Spring Festival travel rush, the frequent attendance of Jintian, and the rising labor cost of overtime in cinemas during the Spring Festival, the ticket prices in Spring Festival travel rush have basically increased in previous years. Especially on New Year's Day, because it is the peak of people flow, in recent years, the ticket price will hit a record high on the first day of each year, and it will drop in the next few days. Consumers who think the fare is expensive can choose to buy tickets in the next few days, and the fare will drop a lot.