Comcast's Fandango to Buy Ticketing Firm Cinepapaya
December 01 2016 - 9:40AM
Dow Jones News
LOS ANGELES—Comcast Corp.'s Fandango said Thursday it is buying
a leading Latin American ticketing service, the latest in a string
of acquisitions that continue to stretch the company beyond just
selling movie tickets in the U.S.
Fandango's international footprint will expand considerably with
the purchase of Cinepapaya, which sells movie tickets in Mexico,
Argentina, Peru and four other Latin American countries.
Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
With Cinepapaya, Fandango will gain another foothold in the
growing Latin American market, which has attracted interest in the
exhibition industry because it has few screens relative to its
population growth and appetite for moviegoing. The market growth in
Latin America has outpaced the U.S., where box-office receipts have
stayed relatively flat in recent years. Last year, Fandango bought
Ingresso.com, the largest online movie-ticketing service in
Brazil.
Since Fandango President Paul Yanover joined the company in
2012, the company has undergone significant expansion. The
Cinepapaya deal is Fandango's sixth acquisition in four years and
its third in 2016. Fandango is part of Comcast's Universal Filmed
Entertainment Group, and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. is a
minority owner.
Some of its recent acquisitions, like the purchase of digital
movie businesses Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes, have turned Fandango
into an all-purpose movie destination. No longer just a site for
buying tickets, Fandango wants to cover the "lifecycle of
moviegoing," said Mr. Yanover, including reviews, audience response
and video content.
Fandango sells tickets for roughly 28,000 screens in North
America—a healthy majority of the company's total possible
footprint. There are about 40,000 screens in the U.S. and Canada,
according to the National Association of Theatre Owners, but not
all of them are equipped to sell tickets online.
Fandango has long battled for screens with chief rival
MovieTickets.com. But as consumers turn to online ticketing more
regularly, both companies have seen new competition emerge through
smaller firms such as Atom Tickets or movie-theater companies that
manage their own online sales.
Fandango's growth will primarily come from getting more
consumers to think to buy their tickets online, said Mr.
Yanover.
One way to track that consumer adoption: monitoring which
showings are being purchased through Fandango. Several years ago,
the service was primarily used when consumers wanted ensure a seat
for a highly anticipated title on opening night.
Now, more than half of the tickets sold on Fandango are for
screenings outside the debut weekend, said Mr. Yanover, which
indicates more general consumer adoption of the service. The
company has seen 40% growth in its year-over-year box-office sales
so far this year.
Big-event movies still blast off, though. On Monday, sales began
for the Dec. 16 opening of Walt Disney Co.'s "Rogue One: A Star
Wars Story" and hundreds of thousands of tickets were sold on
Fandango in the first few minutes of availability.
It was the second-highest day of presales in Fandango's
history—second only to "Rogue One's" franchise cousin, last year's
"Star Wars: The Force Awakens."
Write to Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 01, 2016 09:25 ET (14:25 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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