Do you have a frequent moviegoer card from your local multiplex? Does it give you any news of films with your favourite stars or directors?The answer is, most probably, no. It has been more than a decade since the first multiplex opened in India.
Of about 11,000 individually owned screens, more than 1,050 or 10 per cent of the total now belong to six retail chains.
They brought 30 to 40 per cent of the Rs. 9,000-odd crore (Rs. 90 billion) box-office revenues that the Indian film industry earned in 2010.
Yet there is little on the ground to suggest that organised retail is being used to improve footfalls, revenues and profits.
The six major chains are still struggling with the basics of the business: scaling up and improving revenue share.
Though most have managed to derisk by getting more from food and beverages and advertising, the fact is that the last two years have been "not so great" for the film industry.
This is not because of bad films; it is because of bad marketing. It leads to poor monetisation from theatres - the single largest source of revenue for a film.
A theatre chain sits on huge amounts of information: area-wise data on what works and what doesn't, the demographic that watches a film more often in an area and so on.
If PVR Cinemas or Inox has trend data on markets, then one look at, say, Dabangg or Peepli Live will tell them how to squeeze the most out of them.
This will improve their ability to target the right audience, schedule the film well, price it right at different places and so on.
While there are no estimates of how much this could improve top lines, here is a thought.
In a market where it happens, like the US, a film could get three to five times more revenues. Since multiplexes and studios work on a revenue-sharing basis, it is a win-win situation. Why then is none of this happening?
One reason, says Siddharth Roy Kapur, CEO, UTV Motion Pictures, is that [generally]
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