Fandango makes a big move scooping up its competition.
If you can’t beat them, buy them. According to Variety, Fandango plans to acquire its long-time rival MovieTickets.com that would make them the biggest online ticket retailer.
Perhaps Fandango felt pressure to make the move due to new competition in the form of Atom Tickets. Atom Tickets launched in 2016 with backing from Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, and Lionsgate. The application includes the ability to purchase movies, but also social features such as inviting friends and purchasing concessions all from the app itself.
With Fandango purchasing MovieTickets.com they will get all of MovieTickets.com screens they don’t have under their deal. That means Fandango is likely to receive 20% more screens. It will also increase Fandango’s reach to many theater chains they haven’t been available before such as National Amusements, Cineplex, Landmark Theatres, Marquee Cinemas and independent theater chains.
Fandango president Paul Yanover said of the potential acquisition, “MovieTickets.com has done a terrific job, building a popular and trusted brand with millions of loyal customers and hundreds of exhibitors, and has been a champion of serving theater circuits large and small for nearly two decades. We look forward to sharing an array of mobile and social-media innovations with their customer base to enhance the movie discovery, planning, and ticket-buying experience.”
This is but one of many deals the NBCUniversal-owned Fandango has made in the last year. They acquired Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster from Warner Bros. and bought transactional VOD service M-Go (rebranded as FandangoNow) from Technicolor and DreamWorks Animation. With this new deal set up, they will continue to be the leader in online ticket sales and might have done enough to completely seize the market. Thankfully, for consumers, this deal didn’t happen before Star Wars tickets went on sale because Fandango would’ve certainly crashed for everyone going to one place. Outside of that, this is another consolidation that will hopefully make ticket buying easier for everyone.
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