Fandango (ticket service)
Encyclopedia
Fandango is a corporation
in the United States
that sells movie tickets over the telephone
and Internet
, enabling customers to ensure ticket availability and avoid lines at the movie theater
.
to use its services, ranging from 75¢ to $2.00 (the additional surcharge for phone orders), which reserves a ticket to be printed out upon arrival at a movie theater, thereby avoiding line
s. Initially, seating was promised for sold-out shows, but this feature was discontinued for most theaters, as not all were equipped to handle reserved seating and will call
lines. With ticket prices in many areas exceeding US$10.00, purchasing tickets through Fandango
and other ticketing websites can make movie-going an expensive proposition; however, procuring tickets to movies on their opening day
s by conventional
means may be inconvenient, difficult, and at times impossible (especially in large metropolitan
areas) without utilizing services like Fandango.
Fandango's advertisements play before previews at participating movie-theater chains and feature lunch bag
puppet
s spewing various one- or two-line joke
s and riddle
s centering around the company's name. They have also done a segment that is based on "We are the World
".
Fandango's website also offers movie descriptions, movie reviews by members, and some web-based games.
revenue
increased rapidly for several years after the company's formation
. However, as the Internet grew in popularity, small- and medium-sized movie-theater chains
began to offer independent
ticket sale capabilities through their own websites. In addition, a new paradigm
of moviegoers print
ing their own tickets at home
(with barcode
s to be scan
ned at the theater) emerged, in services offered by PrintTixUSA and by point-of-sale software vendor operated web sites like "ticketmakers.com" (and eventually Fandango itself). Finally, an overall slump
in moviegoing continued into the 2000s, as home theater
s, DVD
s, and high definition televisions proliferated in average
household
s, turning the home into the preferred place to screen film
s.
On April 11, 2007, Comcast
acquired Fandango, with plans to integrate it into a new entertainment
website called "Fancast.com," set to launch the summer of 2007. In June 2008, the domain Movies.com
was acquired from Disney.
advance movie ticket sale sites, along with MovieTickets.com
. Before being acquired by Comcast in April 2007, Fandango was privately owned, with the major shareholder
being the largest movie-theater chain in the U.S., Regal Entertainment Group
, including the United Artists and Hoyts
theater chains. Along with other partners, Regal founded Fandango partly to prevent the older MovieTickets.com from establishing a monopoly
on phone and online ticketing services. (MovieTickets.com is publicly owned and trade
s under the stock symbol HOLL.) At Regal's acquisition of Consolidated Theatres
, that chain was under contract to MovieTickets.com. As such Fandango does not ticket those Regal theaters.
Although Fandango does not provide online ticketing for many AMC Theaters, it does provide online ticketing for those AMC Theaters originally part of the Loews Cineplex Entertainment
chain, due to contract
ual obligations in place prior to the 2005 merger of the two movie chains. Loews had previously attempted to break the contract in 2002 under pressure of bankruptcy
and from (then) AOL
Moviefone; Fandango successfully sued
both Loews and Moviefone and retains Loews business.
On September 5, 2011 AMC Theatres announced internally that it is discontinuing use of Fandango and is switching to MovieTickets.com for all of its theatres.
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
that sells movie tickets over the telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
and Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, enabling customers to ensure ticket availability and avoid lines at the movie theater
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
.
Services
Fandango charges a premiumPremium
Premium may refer to:* Premium , a promotional item that can be received for a small fee when redeeming proofs of purchase that come with or on retail products....
to use its services, ranging from 75¢ to $2.00 (the additional surcharge for phone orders), which reserves a ticket to be printed out upon arrival at a movie theater, thereby avoiding line
Queue area
Queue areas are places in which people queue for goods or services. Examples include checking out groceries or other goods that have been collected in a self service shop, in a shop without self service, at an ATM, at a ticket desk, a city bus, or in a taxi stand.Queueing is a phenomenon in a...
s. Initially, seating was promised for sold-out shows, but this feature was discontinued for most theaters, as not all were equipped to handle reserved seating and will call
Will call
Will call is a North American term for a box office where patrons of entertainment venues go to pick up pre-purchased tickets for an event, such as a play or concert, either just before the event, or in advance. With the onset of the Internet and e-commerce sites, which allow customers to buy...
lines. With ticket prices in many areas exceeding US$10.00, purchasing tickets through Fandango
Fandango
Fandango is a lively couple's dance, usually in triple metre, traditionally accompanied by guitars and castanets or hand-clapping . Fandango can both be sung and danced. Sung fandango is usually bipartite: it has an instrumental introduction followed by "variaciones"...
and other ticketing websites can make movie-going an expensive proposition; however, procuring tickets to movies on their opening day
Opening Day
Opening Day is the day on which professional baseball leagues begin their regular season. For Major League Baseball and most of the minor leagues, this day falls during the first week of April. For baseball fans, Opening Day serves as a symbol of rebirth; writer Thomas Boswell once penned a book...
s by conventional
Convention (norm)
A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted standards, norms, social norms or criteria, often taking the form of a custom....
means may be inconvenient, difficult, and at times impossible (especially in large metropolitan
Metropolis
A metropolis is a very large city or urban area which is a significant economic, political and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections and communications...
areas) without utilizing services like Fandango.
Fandango's advertisements play before previews at participating movie-theater chains and feature lunch bag
Paper bag
A paper bag or paper sack is a preformed container made of paper, usually with an opening on one side. It can be one layer of paper or multiple layers of paper and other flexible materials. A bag is used for packaging and/or carrying items....
puppet
Puppet
A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....
s spewing various one- or two-line joke
Joke
A joke is a phrase or a paragraph with a humorous twist. It can be in many different forms, such as a question or short story. To achieve this end, jokes may employ irony, sarcasm, word play and other devices...
s and riddle
Riddle
A riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and...
s centering around the company's name. They have also done a segment that is based on "We are the World
We Are the World
"We Are the World" is a song and charity single originally recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa in 1985. It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, and produced by Quincy Jones and Michael Omartian for the album We Are the World...
".
Fandango's website also offers movie descriptions, movie reviews by members, and some web-based games.
History
IndustryIndustry
Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...
revenue
Revenue
In business, revenue is income that a company receives from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers. In many countries, such as the United Kingdom, revenue is referred to as turnover....
increased rapidly for several years after the company's formation
Incorporation (business)
Incorporation is the forming of a new corporation . The corporation may be a business, a non-profit organisation, sports club, or a government of a new city or town...
. However, as the Internet grew in popularity, small- and medium-sized movie-theater chains
Chain store
Chain stores are retail outlets that share a brand and central management, and usually have standardized business methods and practices. These characteristics also apply to chain restaurants and some service-oriented chain businesses. In retail, dining and many service categories, chain businesses...
began to offer independent
Independent business
In business, an independent business as a term of distinction generally refers to privately owned companies . Independent businesses most commonly take the form of sole-proprietorships...
ticket sale capabilities through their own websites. In addition, a new paradigm
Paradigm
The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
of moviegoers print
Computer printer
In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a text or graphics of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most new printers, a...
ing their own tickets at home
Home
A home is a place of residence or refuge. When it refers to a building, it is usually a place in which an individual or a family can rest and store personal property. Most modern-day households contain sanitary facilities and a means of preparing food. Animals have their own homes as well, either...
(with barcode
Barcode
A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data, which shows data about the object to which it attaches. Originally barcodes represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or 1 dimensional . Later they evolved into rectangles,...
s to be scan
Barcode reader
A barcode reader is an electronic device for reading printed barcodes. Like a flatbed scanner, it consists of a light source, a lens and a light sensor translating optical impulses into electrical ones...
ned at the theater) emerged, in services offered by PrintTixUSA and by point-of-sale software vendor operated web sites like "ticketmakers.com" (and eventually Fandango itself). Finally, an overall slump
Recession
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction, a general slowdown in economic activity. During recessions, many macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way...
in moviegoing continued into the 2000s, as home theater
Home cinema
Home cinema, also commonly called home theater, are home entertainment set-ups that seek to reproduce a movie theater experience and mood with the help of video and audio equipment in a private home....
s, DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s, and high definition televisions proliferated in average
Average
In mathematics, an average, or central tendency of a data set is a measure of the "middle" value of the data set. Average is one form of central tendency. Not all central tendencies should be considered definitions of average....
household
Household
The household is "the basic residential unit in which economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are organized and carried out"; [the household] "may or may not be synonymous with family"....
s, turning the home into the preferred place to screen film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s.
On April 11, 2007, Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
acquired Fandango, with plans to integrate it into a new entertainment
Entertainment
Entertainment consists of any activity which provides a diversion or permits people to amuse themselves in their leisure time. Entertainment is generally passive, such as watching opera or a movie. Active forms of amusement, such as sports, are more often considered to be recreation...
website called "Fancast.com," set to launch the summer of 2007. In June 2008, the domain Movies.com
Movies.com
Movies.com is a website in the Fandango family, operated by Comcast. It was acquired from Disney in June 2008. It is the second-most visited movie-related website, second only to IMDb. The website has information about movies, upcoming movies, and theater information...
was acquired from Disney.
Competition with MovieTickets.com
Fandango is one of two major onlineONLINE
ONLINE is a magazine for information systems first published in 1977. The publisher Online, Inc. was founded the year before. In May 2002, Information Today, Inc. acquired the assets of Online Inc....
advance movie ticket sale sites, along with MovieTickets.com
MovieTickets.com
MovieTickets.com is an online movie ticketing website originally founded by AMC Theaters and Hollywood.com and formed in the year 2000. It is currently a joint venture between AMC Entertainment, Hollywood Media Corp, National Amusements, Cineplex Entertainment, Marcus Theatres, Viacom and Time Warner...
. Before being acquired by Comcast in April 2007, Fandango was privately owned, with the major shareholder
Shareholder
A shareholder or stockholder is an individual or institution that legally owns one or more shares of stock in a public or private corporation. Shareholders own the stock, but not the corporation itself ....
being the largest movie-theater chain in the U.S., Regal Entertainment Group
Regal Entertainment Group
Regal Entertainment Group also known as REG is a movie theater chain headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee. Regal operates the largest and most geographically diverse theater circuit in the United States, consisting of 6,775 screens in 548 locations in 39 states and the District of Columbia as of...
, including the United Artists and Hoyts
Hoyts
The Hoyts Group is an Australian company consisting of Hoyts Exhibition, Hoyts Distribution and Val Morgan.Hoyts Exhibition manages 450 screens across 40 Australian and 10 New Zealand cinema complexes; making it Australia's second largest cinema chain. Val Morgan, the cinema advertising arm of the...
theater chains. Along with other partners, Regal founded Fandango partly to prevent the older MovieTickets.com from establishing a monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
on phone and online ticketing services. (MovieTickets.com is publicly owned and trade
Trade (financial instrument)
In finance, a trade is an exchange of a security for "cash", typically a short-dated promise to pay in the currency of the country where the 'exchange' is located...
s under the stock symbol HOLL.) At Regal's acquisition of Consolidated Theatres
Consolidated Theatres
Consolidated Theatres was a movie theater chain based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The company operated over 400 movie screens and 28 theaters in 6 states along the East Coast.It was part of "The Stone Group" and was founded by Herman Stone....
, that chain was under contract to MovieTickets.com. As such Fandango does not ticket those Regal theaters.
Although Fandango does not provide online ticketing for many AMC Theaters, it does provide online ticketing for those AMC Theaters originally part of the Loews Cineplex Entertainment
Loews Cineplex Entertainment
Loews Theatres, aka Loews Incorporated , founded in 1904 by Marcus Loew and Brantford Schwartz, was the oldest theater chain operating in North America until it merged with AMC Theatres on January 26, 2006. From 1924 until 1959, it was also the parent company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. The...
chain, due to contract
Contract
A contract is an agreement entered into by two parties or more with the intention of creating a legal obligation, which may have elements in writing. Contracts can be made orally. The remedy for breach of contract can be "damages" or compensation of money. In equity, the remedy can be specific...
ual obligations in place prior to the 2005 merger of the two movie chains. Loews had previously attempted to break the contract in 2002 under pressure of bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
and from (then) AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
Moviefone; Fandango successfully sued
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
both Loews and Moviefone and retains Loews business.
On September 5, 2011 AMC Theatres announced internally that it is discontinuing use of Fandango and is switching to MovieTickets.com for all of its theatres.