Maybe it was just because they didn't have much else to keep them busy, but when security guards noticed a couple of punters dashing from cinema to cinema at the Jam Factory one Wednesday afternoon they quickly sprang into action.
"What do you think you're doing?" they asked Shane Thatcher and Sonya Stephen. Research, they answered.
![Shane Thatcher and Sonya Stephen, creators of the Choovie app, at the Lido Cinema in Hawthorn.](/web/20170512150552im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/a/9/t/6/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gua9q5.png/1486953504731.jpg)
The pair had gone to a 5.30pm session. Noticing there were only two other people in the audience, they decided to check out the 13 other cinemas in the complex. All up, they counted 33 paying customers.
"We saw a bit of a lot of films that day," says Mr Thatcher. "And what we saw convinced us we were on the right track."
![Screen shot: When there are a lot of empty seats, tickets on Choovie cost less; when demand is high, they will cost more.](/web/20170512150552im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/a/h/m/d/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gua9q5.png/1486953504731.jpg)
The couple have created an app called Choovie, which will for the first time bring dynamic pricing to the realm of cinema tickets. When there are a lot of empty seats, tickets cost less. When demand is high, they will cost more, though probably not more than the regular full adult ticket price.
Two and a half years in the making, the app – which they believe is the first of its kind in the world (though the web-based Ticket Bounty does offer members discounted tickets at participating cinemas, and promises an app of its own soon) – aims to solve what Mr Thatcher, an economist by training with a background in energy-related industries, sees as a major problem with the cinema business: its inefficiency.
"It's a fixed-cost business with an inflexible pricing strategy that means there just aren't that many people in there most of the time," he says. "I know it's dorky, but I'm efficiency mad."
The pair's research reveals that just 16 per cent of available cinema seats are sold each year in Australia. In other words, five out of every six seats are typically empty.
Pricing isn't the only factor, but it is, Mr Thatcher believes, "a significant one".
He and Stephen think their app can lift occupancy rates to 17 or 18 per cent. It doesn't sound much, but that would translate to an increase of up to 12 per cent on the 90 million or so tickets sold annually. And at a clip of $1.25 on each ticket sold through the app, "there's certainly enough to make a pretty significant business there".
With backgrounds in social enterprises – Stephen spent five years as CEO of the Cathy Freeman Foundation, which aims to improve educational outcomes for Indigenous children, while Mr Thatcher launched Illumination, which has distributed 500,000 solar-powered lights in third-world countries since 2011 – the pair aim to give something back if Choovie performs as well as they hope.
"We looked to France, where it's mandated that a lot of money the cinema business makes goes back into the film industry, and we came up with the idea of the Choovie Foundation, where 5 per cent of Choovie's profits will go back into Australian cinema," Mr Thatcher says. "Once we go global it will be 5 per cent in each country it operates in."
First, though, there's the small matter of winning over the cinema owners in Australia. The big three – Village, Hoyts and Event – account for about 50 per cent of the 2000 or so screens here, but there are about 300 cinema owners in all. Not all of them need to be on board, but the more the better if the app is to succeed in providing its users with the best-priced tickets for the film of their choice at a cinema nearby.
To date, Mr Thatcher says they have about 180 screens covered. After a trial program at the Lido in Hawthorn last December, they will launch for real on March 27, by which time they hope to have signed up more cinemas (you can register your interest now at choovie.com.au).
But not all of them have been immediate converts.
"At my very first meeting with an exhibitor I was called a parasite," Mr Thatcher says. "Clearly I didn't convey the message strongly enough that this was about growing the pie, not stealing it."
![The Choovie app has been two and a half years in the making.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170512150552im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/a/h/o/2/image.imgtype.articleLeadwide.620x349.png/1486871370340.png)
The Choovie app has been two and a half years in the making. Photo: Supplied
It's likely that some of Choovie's potential users will have a different concern – namely that Uber-style surge pricing could soon hit the movie ticket space.
Under the Choovie model, it will be up to exhibitors to set floor (low) and ceiling (high) prices, or not, as they see fit. And while it's not inconceivable that tickets for the midnight Wednesday screening of a new Star Wars film, say, might sell to the die-hard fans at three times the normal price (or more), Mr Thatcher doesn't see that becoming the new norm.
"It is certainly feasible, but I wouldn't see it happening very often," he says. "And when it does happen, I would view it as a way for someone to secure a ticket without waiting in a queue for hours." Efficiency in action, in other words.
"But because cinemas are only 16 per cent full, there's not going to be a lot of surge pricing," he adds. "Mostly, prices are going to fall."
Australia, you've got tickets on yourself
Number of cinemas 498
Number of screens 2121
Number of seats 440,000
Number of admissions 90.3 million
Average cinema visits per capita 3.8 per annum
Cheapest adult ticket $7.50 (at Dumaresq Street Cinema, Campbeltown, NSW)
Most expensive adult ticket $43.25 at Jam Factory Gold Class, Melbourne
Average ticket price (2015) $13.60
Average cinema seat occupancy rate 16 per cent
All figures 2016 unless otherwise indicated. Source: Screen Australia
Karl Quinn is on facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin
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