Why Was a Movie Sold Out, but Only Five of Us Were There?
June 24, 2015 11:07 AM   Subscribe

Last week, I went to a movie theater with reserved seating. When I went to the ticket counter to buy a ticket, there were only two tickets left. Once the movie started, there were only five of us in the theater watching the movie (with about 180 seats, total). This happened two nights in a row, same theater, different movies. What was going on?

It was in a Chicago suburb, Wed. and Thurs. nights.

Is it a cultural thing there, like people buy tickets online ahead of time but just don't go? Or was it marketing, like the computer says there are only two tickets left, then once those are sold, magically there are only two more tickets left, and so on?

I checked other movies online later, and all the movies were like this, only two or four tickets left for any movie, any night, any time of day.
posted by TinWhistle to Society & Culture (17 answers total)
 
It's possible the "best" 6-10 seats are sold as reserved but the rest are all sold as General Admission.
posted by saradarlin at 11:13 AM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


This precisely describes the experience at DC's Angelika Pop-up. I think it's an inventory management thing. They don't want to let people pick seats willy-nilly and leave only a bunch of single seats, forcing latecomers to sit apart from their friends. Instead, they show you a couple choices that accommodate your party size and reserve the rest of the contiguous blocks for the next people to come along. If the show doesn't sell out, it doesn't really matter. If it gets close to selling out, they still have an optimal number of pairs (or at least a more optimized number of pairs) and can still accommodate late arrivals.
posted by fedward at 11:18 AM on June 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


Ticket system programmed to only show a few seats as available so you think its urgent to buy now before its sold out?

Maybe it releases other seats as you buy yours. You could experiment the next time you buy tickets, screenshot the available seats chart beforehand, buy your tickets. Then after you buy, use incognito mode/another device and check the chart again, you might see they released some tickets that were previously unavailable.
posted by TheAdamist at 11:19 AM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


The theatre in my town got me thinking like that multiple times. But when it said "2 Left" or "4 Left", what it really meant was screen 2 or screen 4, and you have to turn to the left to go towards it. (Theaters 8+ are on the right.)

Could it be as simple as that?
posted by jillithd at 11:25 AM on June 24, 2015 [13 favorites]


I've seen movie ticket scalpers in NY.
posted by brujita at 12:22 PM on June 24, 2015


If a movie theater has an inventory of 100 seats - and tells you only 10 are left at the point when all are unsold - then they they are operating a clear deception. The experience of going to a film which is sold out/nearly sold out is qualitatively different from attending one where the place is practically empty. You are also much more likely to buy tickets in advance for an "almost sold out" show. At some stage I'd expect that they'd hear from somebody's lawyers.

On the other hand, that are probably quite free to "release their inventory for sale in batches" - this has the same effect as above but would be above board. It would help manage space allocation, as fedward says. Somewhere - in the small print - I'd expect the website to explain this however.
posted by rongorongo at 12:33 PM on June 24, 2015


It's possible that lots of people bought all those seats in advance, and then something better came up, so they opted not to go out to a movie after all.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 12:56 PM on June 24, 2015


Were your seats to the left in the theater?
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:12 PM on June 24, 2015


Perhaps it was block reservations by groups that then changed their minds after you'd passed through the ticket booth? God knows my own theater has had groups do that, even for special, in-addition-to-the-normal-schedule, just-for-them showings. It's a pain, but the theater realistically can't do anything about it, other than insist any future block reservations by that group be prepaid. Although if it is every show/every day, I'd say that theater's management is a bunch of jerks and you should go somewhere else.

When it comes to rongorongo's example of a theater telling you the 100-seat autotorium is sold out when there are actually 10 seats unsold, that's a totally different situation: almost no movie theater will in reality sell every single seat. There are always the patrons who leave an empty seat between them and the next group, meaning the later arrivals can't sit together because the early birds are blocking access and refuse to move over (like OOOO_OO_OOO_OO, where the 'o' is a person and the line is an empty seat), plus of course there are seats that have bad sightlines (most commonly the front left and right corners). And while thankfully it isn't true of all of them, sometimes patrons who don't get what they think they deserve --- even if they arrive well after a show has already started and everybody who got there before them is seated --- have been known to pitch loud arguments that management would really, really rather avoid.
posted by easily confused at 1:56 PM on June 24, 2015


I worked in a movie theater in high school and college. easily confused is exactly correct.

Theaters almost never sell out every seat, primarily because groups with more than one person don't typically split into individual seats in different sections. Also, most people do not like to sit in the very front row where they will need to crane their necks to see the screen. Understandably, they would rather buy tickets for another showing than be uncomfortable, separated from their companions, or have a suboptimal experience.

A modern cinema's computer system alerts the cashiers when a theater is sold to around 90% capacity. Cineplex Odeon, AMC and Loews theaters in the US and Canada have had those in place since the late 80's. If someone bought a block of tickets, you could ask a cashier and they would be able to tell you. However, they might choose not to, depending on theater policy.
posted by zarq at 2:56 PM on June 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


TinWhistle: "When I went to the ticket counter to buy a ticket, there were only two tickets left."

A machine told you this, or a human being told you this?
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 5:16 PM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: It was a machine at the counter, with a real-person ticket attendant operating the machines for people who didn't know how to use them.

I sat in the very middle of the theater (left/right and front/back).

It wasn't a left-side/right-side of the theater building thing. The visual seat selection showed only two tickets available. Same when I went online later and randomly checked other movies.
posted by TinWhistle at 7:39 AM on June 25, 2015


If you go into the online and request 6 tickets (maybe in incognito mode so that it can't tell you just requested two), will it show you six available seats or say "You're out of luck, no seats available?" If it lets you buy six when you request six, that would seem to suggest some sort of weird inventory management thing.
posted by rainbowbrite at 7:43 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Oddball thought: were the few open seats more-or-less clumped into one area? If yes, maybe the employees blocked out the majority of the room to ensure all patrons (and their popcorn and candy and soda) weren't scattered all over the theater: if everybody is sitting in one smallish area, then the ushers save themselves time when cleaning up after the show.... it'd still be wrong, of course, but I've known a LOT of theater ushers who'd think like that.
posted by easily confused at 6:46 PM on June 25, 2015


It sounds like there were about 175 open seats, not a few, correct? That would seem to eliminate almost all theories that start with the premise that the movie was almost sold out.
posted by jaguar at 6:46 AM on June 26, 2015


I worked in a theater for years (before the newer computer systems, though) and honestly, that sounds like a glitch in whatever point-of-sale system they're using. In my experience, most people do show up and claim their online tickets; maybe a few wouldn't make it, but you wouldn't get a whole empty theater that way. Five people on a Wednesday or Thursday night is not unheard of (especially if the movie is obscure, or has been out for a while)--20-30 would be a pretty good crowd, and only SUPER popular movies would sell out on a weeknight.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 7:16 AM on June 27, 2015


Perhaps you confused the "2 Left" for "2 Sold"?
posted by sideshow at 7:39 PM on June 27, 2015


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