2 min readThree years ago, AMC theaters announced one of the company’s worst ideas of all time. The proposed system, called “Sightline pricing,” raised ticket prices only for the best seats in the auditorium—the ones right in the center of the movie theater. Naturally, the idea was met with the sheer derision that it deserved. Everyone hated it, and AMC cancelled the idea within a few months.
“What if movie theaters worked like airplanes?” was certainly a pitch that would eventually find a way to seat the lower-income theatergoers by the bathroom, or worse. But I only called Sightline pricing one of AMC’s worst ideas of all time because the theater chain just came up with a new plan so terrible that Nicole Kidman couldn’t even tell us where the magic of the AMC theater experience went now.
According to AMC CEO Adam Aron, the best seats in the house won’t even be available for purchase anymore unless you’re an A-List or Stubs Premiere member. Forget higher fees—that child’s play. Now, if you don’t cough up $19.99-27.99 (per month!) to become an AMC member, you won’t even have access to those seats at all.
… What?!
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what AMC is suggesting here. Surely, the company wouldn’t seek to punish the average movie-goer by making non-members feel like second-class citizens, right? There’s no way the theater chain that allows members to skip the popcorn line like TSA PreCheck would make everyone else who can’t afford the monthly fees feel even worse for simply wanting to grab their kids some snacks before Bluey: The Movie starts, would they? Let’s hear exactly how Aron described it.
“AMC will introduce preferred premier seating, where we will block and reserve the best seats in the house in our theaters to be accessed first by our A-List and our Stubs Premiere members—that’s the two VIP tiers within our Stubs program—at no added charge,” the AMC CEO said during an earning’s call on Tuesday. “At AMC, we will assure that the best seats in our auditoriums are [held]—at first, anyway—for our best customers. We think it will be a considerable consumer benefit that our most frequent guests will notice and greatly appreciate, further cementing their brand loyalty to AMC.”
No, sadly I heard him right. It’s just as terrible as it sounds.