Type Joint venture Website www.movietickets.com | Products Online movie tickets Founded 2000 | |
 | ||
Industry Entertainment (movie theaters) Headquarters Boca Raton, Florida, United States Founders AMC Theatres, Hollywood.com Parent organizations Regal Entertainment Group, AMC Theatres Profiles | ||
MovieTickets.com is an online movie ticketing website founded by AMC Theaters and Hollywood.com in 2000 with National Amusements, CBS Corporation and Famous Players all coming on board prior to launch. It is now a joint venture between the Hollywood Media Corp, National Amusements, Cineplex Entertainment, Marcus Theatres, Regal Entertainment Group, Viacom, and Time Warner. MovieTickets.com provides movie times for all theaters, and online ticket purchasing for all National Amusements theaters and all Clearview Cinemas, among other smaller chains; such as Mann Theatres in Los Angeles. In 2010, MovieTickets.com sold over 16 million tickets for over 200 exhibitors with 14,000 screens.
Providing advance ticketing services to 250 theaters chains, MovieTickets.com represents over 50 percent of the top 100 grossing theaters in North America on any given weekend.
In 2004, MovieTickets.com became the exclusive online ticket vendor for Moviefone.com, after having entered in a partnership in 2001 that crosslinked their ticketing offerings. Then, in mid-2005, MovieTickets.com established a ticket distribution relationship with consignment ticket reseller PrintTixUSA, adding 20 movie exhibition companies to its ranks and boosting the total number of screens serviced nationwide to more than 10,000. Since then, however, MovieTickets.com has lost ground, losing sole rights to the AMC chain and Moviefone's telephone arm to rival Fandango.
Competition with Fandango
Acquisitions & mergers of movie chains have complicated matters regarding which ticketing companies provide online ticketing for a particular theatre chain. MovieTickets.com lost the Hoyts theater chain when it was acquired by the Regal Entertainment Group theater chain, a founder of rival online ticketing agency Fandango; however, when Regal acquired Consolidated Theatres, the latter retained its contractual relationship with MovieTickets.
Prior to 2012, MovieTickets.com provided online ticketing for AMC Theaters except those originally part of the Loews Cineplex Entertainment chain, whose online ticketing is provided by Fandango due to contractual obligations in place prior to the 2005 merger of the two movie chains. In 2002, Loews had attempted to break the contract under pressure of bankruptcy and from (then) AOL Moviefone and its partner, Loews' Cineplex subsidiary; Fandango successfully sued both Loews and Moviefone and retained the Loews business. Furthermore, as of February 8, 2012, Fandango began providing ticketing for non-Loews AMC Theaters in the US as well, after which MovieTickets.com's fellow shareholders sued AMC for breach of contract. AMC and MovieTickets.com settled in 2013, with an agreement that the theater chain's online ticketing would be available on both Fandango and MovieTickets.com.
In May 2012, former partner Moviefone announced a new partnership with Fandango when its relationship with MovieTickets.com lapsed.
In 2015, Regal Entertainment Group announced that they would begin to offer tickets on MovieTickets.com on a non-exclusive basis, as Regal tickets retained their availability on Fandango.