Fandango (company)

Last updated

Fandango Media, LLC
Formerly
ticketmakers.com
Joint venture
FoundedApril 27, 2000;20 years ago (2000-04-27)
Headquarters
Beverly Hills, California
,
U.S.
ServicesOnline media
Owners Comcast (70%)
AT&T (30%)
Divisions Fandango Movieclips
FandangoNOW
Movies.com
MovieTickets.com
Rotten Tomatoes
Fandango Latam
Vudu
Website fandango.com
Footnotes /references
[1] [2] [3] [4]

Fandango Media, LLC is an American ticketing company that sells movie tickets via their website as well as through their mobile app, as well as a provider of television and streaming media information, e.g., through its subsidiaries Flixster, Movies.com, and Rotten Tomatoes.

Contents

History

Fandango was founded April 27, 2000,[ citation needed ] after which revenue increased rapidly for several years.[ citation needed ] 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' printing their own tickets at home (with barcodes to be scanned at the theater) emerged, in services offered by PrintTixUSA and by point-of-sale software vendor operated websites like ticketmakers.com (and eventually Fandango itself). Finally, an overall slump in moviegoing continued into the 2000s, as home theaters, DVD s, and high definition televisions proliferated in average households, turning their homes into a preferred place to screen films.[ citation needed ]

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. [5] In June 2008, the domain Movies.com was acquired from Disney. [6] With Comcast's purchase of a majority stake in NBCUniversal in January 2011 (full ownership in 2013), Fandango and all other Comcast media assets were merged into the company.

In March 2012, Fandango announced a partnership with Yahoo! Movies, making Fandango the official online and mobile ticketer for registered users of the Yahoo! service. [7] That October, Paul Yanover was named President of Fandango. [8]

Fandango made its first international acquisition in September 2015 when it bought the Brazilian ticketing company Ingresso, which provides ticketing to a variety of Brazilian entertainment events, including the biannual Rock in Rio festival. [9]

On January 29, 2016, Fandango announced its acquisition of M-GO, [10] a joint venture between Technicolor SA and DreamWorks Animation (NBCUniversal acquired the latter company three months later), [11] which it would later rebrand as "FandangoNOW". [12]

Ticket to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Fandango ticket to Star Wars The Force Awakens 2015.jpg
Ticket to Star Wars: The Force Awakens

In February 2016, Fandango announced its acquisition of Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes from Time Warner's Warner Bros. Entertainment. As part of the deal, Warner Bros. would become a 30% shareholder of the combined Fandango company. [13] [14]

In December 2016, Fandango Media purchased Cinepapaya, a Peru-based website for purchasing movie tickets, for an undisclosed amount. [15] Later that same month, Fandango moved to Fox Interactive Media's former headquarters in Beverly Hills. [16]

On April 20, 2020, Vudu announced it has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Fandango Media. [17]

Services

Fandango charges a premium, ranging from 75¢ (for online orders) to $2.50 (which includes an additional surcharge for phone orders), to reserve a ticket to be printed out upon arrival at a movie theater, thereby avoiding lines. 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 days by conventional means may be inconvenient and difficult (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 puppets telling various one- or two-line jokes and riddles centering on the company's name. The company also produced an advertising segment that is based on the song, "We are the World".[ citation needed ]

Fandango's website also offers exclusive film clips, trailers, celebrity interviews, reviews by users, movie descriptions, and some web-based games to Fandango members. [18]

As of March 5, 2015, Fandango provides members the ability to refund or exchange their orders up to 2 hours before the showtime of their film. [19] [20]

Fandango's Android app was listed among Techland's 50 Best Android Applications for 2013. [21]

Competition

Until its acquisition of its rival MovieTickets.com in 2017, Fandango was one of three major online advance movie ticket sale sites, along with MovieTickets.com and Atom Tickets. Before being acquired by Comcast in April 2007, Fandango was privately owned; its major stakeholder, Regal Entertainment Group, which owned the United Artists and Hoyts theater chains, was the second largest movie-theater chain in the U.S. Regal and its partners founded Fandango partly to prevent the older MovieTickets.com from establishing a monopoly on phone and online ticketing services. (MovieTickets.com was publicly owned and traded under the stock symbol HOLL. [22] ) The company's advertising agency reportedly chose the name "Fandango" because it sounded "fun, kinetic and smart", and "easily pronounce[d] and remember[ed]--even though it really has nothing to do with movies." [23]

Mergers of movie chains have complicated matters regarding which company provides online ticketing for a particular chain. Upon Regal's acquisition of Consolidated Theatres, that chain was under contract to MovieTickets.com; as such Fandango does not ticket those Regal theaters. On the other hand, Regal's acquisition of the Hoyts chain resulted in Fandango's taking over the latter's online ticketing.

Prior to 2012, Fandango did not provide online ticketing for many AMC Theatres. However, it provided online ticketing for AMC Theatres that were originally part of the Loews Cineplex Entertainment chain, due to contractual obligations in place prior to the 2005 merger of the two movie chains. [24] Loews had previously attempted to break the contract in 2002 under pressure of bankruptcy and from (then) AOL Moviefone and its partner, Loews' Cineplex subsidiary; Fandango successfully sued both Loews and Moviefone and retained Loews' business. [25] As of February 8, 2012, Fandango began providing ticketing for all AMC Theatres in the US, [26] after which MovieTickets.com's fellow shareholders sued AMC for breach of contract. [27] 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. [28]

In May 2012, Fandango announced a partnership with Moviefone, MovieTickets.com's former partner. [29] [30]

Atom Tickets, a movie ticketing app and website launched in 2014, has been called a "serious competitor" of Fandango's. [31] [32]

Controversies

In July 2009, it was revealed that Fandango and other websites, including buy.com and Orbitz, were linked with controversial Web loyalty programs, also known as post-transaction marketers. Fandango reportedly gave the third party access to Fandango customers' credit cards. [33]

In December 2013, Fandango launched a trademark dispute when WWE tried to trademark the name for use by the professional wrestler Fandango (ne Johnny Curtis). [34]

In August 2014, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") approved final orders settling charges against Fandango for misrepresenting to the public the security of their mobile app and for failing to protect the transmission of Fandango customers' sensitive personal information. [35] The Fandango mobile app assured consumers, during checkout, that their credit card information was stored and transmitted securely. [36] However, the FTC claims against Fandango focused on failures relating to both the implementation and testing of the Secure Sockets Layer "SSL" certificates for 4 years following the mobile app's launch in March 2009. According to the FTC, Fandango commissioned security audits in 2011, but the audits were limited in scope and did not review the security of the app's transmission of information. The FTC also alleged that Fandango did not implement effective channels for security complaints and instead relied on its general customer service system to handle security vulnerability reporting. [37]

In October 2015, FiveThirtyEight published a story and podcast calling Fandango's metrics on user ratings into question. [38] [39] The investigation noted that the site's method for calculating ratings made it rare for a movie to ever receive an overall rating below three stars. [40] The problem seemingly extended from Fandango's habit of rounding ratings up to the nearest half. [41] Fandango, in response, noted that this was a glitch it was working to repair. [41] Nevertheless, Gizmodo cited the study after Fandango announced the purchase of Rotten Tomatoes amid fears that the purchase would "ruin" the site. [42]

In December 2017, Fandango received hundreds of complaints regarding its delivery of Star Wars: The Last Jedi tickets. Forbes reported that issues began within hours of advanced sales' becoming available for the new Star Wars film, with customers complaining of long wait times and website glitches. [43] Troubles for the company continued as many complained that they had paid for tickets which they never received, and the YouTube channel Red Letter Media referenced the complaint in their The Last Jedi review multiple times.[ citation needed ] Customers found little to no support from Fandango's customer relations team, which ignored complaints whilst continuing to take payments.[ citation needed ]

FandangoNow

FandangoNow
FandangoNow Logo.png
OwnerFandango Media
IntroducedFebruary 19, 2016;4 years ago (2016-02-19) [44]
Website http://www.fandangonow.com/

In early 2016, Fandango acquired the Video On Demand (VOD) movie streaming service M-GO. [10] Fandango re-branded M-GO to FandangoNow (stylized as FandangoNOW). [12] FandangoNOW is compatible with the Movies Anywhere digital rights locker that serves many large film studios, [45] and is the primary digital film service for Roku; the service can be accessed via a shortcut on Roku's remote controls, and enjoys prime placement on Roku's home menus and search services. [46]

See also

Related Research Articles

Movie theater Venue, usually a building or integrated into a shopping mall, for viewing films

A movie theater, cinema, or cinema hall, also known as a picture house, the pictures, or the movies, is a building that contains auditoria for viewing films for entertainment. Most, but not all, theaters are commercial operations catering to the general public, who attend by purchasing a ticket. Some movie theaters, however, are operated by non-profit organizations or societies that charge members a membership fee to view films.

Loews Cineplex Entertainment Theater chain

Loews Cineplex Entertainment, also known as Loews Incorporated, founded on June 23, 1904 by Marcus Loew, was the oldest theater chain operating in North America. From 1924 until 1959, it was also the parent company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM).

AMC Theatres US-based movie theater chain in the US and Europe

AMC Theatres is an American movie theater chain headquartered in Leawood, Kansas, and is the largest movie theater chain in the world. Founded in 1920, AMC has the largest share of the U.S. theater market ahead of Cineworld and Cinemark Theatres.

Rotten Tomatoes American review aggregator for film and television, owned by Fandango

Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang. Although the name "Rotten Tomatoes" connects to the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes when disapproving of a poor stage performance, the original inspiration comes from a scene featuring tomatoes in the Canadian film Léolo (1992).

Regal Cinemas Movie theater chain in the United States

Regal Cinemas, formerly known as Regal Entertainment Group, is an American movie theater chain headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee. Regal operates the second-largest theater circuit in the United States, with over 7,307 screens in 564 theaters as of June 2016. The three main theatre brands operated by Regal Entertainment Group are Regal Cinemas, Edwards Theatres, and United Artists Theatres. The company became a subsidiary of Cineworld Group in 2018.

Muvico Theaters former American movie theater chain

Muvico Theaters was a movie theater chain headquartered in Oakland Park, Florida. Muvico had seven complexes in Florida, one in the Chicago metropolitan area (Rosemont), and one in Thousand Oaks, California. Muvico's theaters were known for the use of decorative themes at several theaters, such as the Egyptian, 1950s drive-in, French opera house, Mediterranean palace, and 1920s grand movie palace themes.

Cineplex Entertainment Canadian entertainment company and movie theater chain

Cineplex Inc., formerly known as Cineplex Galaxy Income Fund and Galaxy Entertainment Inc. is a Canadian entertainment company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. Through its operating subsidiary Cineplex Entertainment LP, Cineplex operates 165 theatres across Canada. The company operates theatres under numerous brands, including Cineplex Cinemas, Cineplex Odeon, SilverCity, Galaxy Cinemas, Cinema City, Famous Players, Scotiabank Theatres and Cineplex VIP Cinemas.

Carmike Cinemas

Carmike Cinemas was a motion picture exhibitor headquartered in Columbus, Georgia. As of March 2016, the company had 276 theaters with 2,954 screens in 41 states, and was the fourth largest movie theater in the United States. The company billed itself as "America's Hometown Theatre" and Carmike theaters were largely positioned in rural or suburban areas with populations under 200,000. The company's theaters operated under various names and generally had a name followed by the number of auditoriums at that location; for example, "Carmike 15".

Moviefone Movie listing service

Moviefone is an American-based moving pictures listing and information service. Moviegoers can obtain local showtimes, cinema information, film reviews, and advance tickets, as well as TV content and a comprehensive search tool that allows users to find theaters, channels, and streaming services offering movies and television shows. The service is owned by Born in Cleveland LLC, Cleveland O’Neal III's holding company. O’Neal is creator and producer of Made in Hollywood syndicated daytime entertainment show.

Flixster was an American social-networking movie website for discovering new movies, learning about movies, and meeting others with similar tastes in movies. The site allowed users to view movie trailers as well as learn about new and upcoming movies at the box office. It was based in San Francisco, California and was founded by Joe Greenstein and Saran Chari in January 20, 2006. Flixster was the parent of website Rotten Tomatoes from January 2010. On February 17, 2016, Flixster, including Rotten Tomatoes, was acquired by Fandango.

Vudu is an American digital video store and streaming service owned by Walmart. The company offers transactional video on demand rentals and digital purchases of films, as well as integration with digital locker services for streaming digital copies of films purchased as home video at retail.

MovieTickets.com

MovieTickets.com is an online movie ticketing website founded by AMC Theatres and Hollywood.com in 2000; CBS Corporation, Famous Players, and National Amusements all came on board prior to launch; and it is now a subsidiary of Fandango Media. MovieTickets.com provides movie times for all theaters, and online ticket purchasing for all Clearview Cinemas and National Amusements theaters, 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.

UltraViolet was a cloud-based digital rights locker for films and television programs that allowed consumers to store proofs-of-purchase of licensed content in an account to enable playback on different devices using multiple applications from several different streaming services. UltraViolet also allowed users to share access to their library with up to five additional people. UltraViolet was deployed by the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, an alliance of 85 companies that includes film studios, retailers, consumer electronics manufacturers, cable television companies, internet service providers (ISPs), internet hosting vendors, and other internet systems and security vendors, with the notable exceptions of Walt Disney Studios, Google, Amazon and Apple.

MoviePass, Inc. was an American subscription-based movie ticketing service majority-owned by Helios and Matheson Analytics.

Act III Theatres was an American company that owned movie theater multiplexes and screens principally located in the U.S. states of Texas, Oregon and Washington. The company was in business from 1986 to 1997, when it was sold to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR). Television producer Norman Lear owned a controlling stake in Act III Theatres through his company Act III Communications. At the time of sale in 1997, Act III Theaters consisted of 124 multiplex theaters operating 793 screens located primarily in San Antonio and Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon, and was the tenth-largest chain of cinemas in the United States.

Sinemia was a subscription-based service that provides discounted movie-ticket plans. Sinemia advertises a variety of subscription types, including those allowing users to watch movies in every format available at any movie theater with no limitation on the dates or movie showtimes, however the service has been plagued with problems. Sinemia is the only international movie-ticket subscription service that operated in the UK, Canada, Turkey and Australia alongside the US. Sinemia ceased operations in the US on April 26, 2019.

Dealflicks was an online movie ticketing company founded in 2012 and based in Los Angeles, CA. The company sold discounted movie tickets online and through mobile devices. The company was partnered with more than 750 theaters in the United States. As of July 2014, Dealflicks had raised $1.7 million in seed funding.

Paul Yanover is a Canadian business executive. Yanover has been the president of Fandango LLC, an American ticketing company, since 2012. Before Fandango, Yanover spent 16 years working for the Walt Disney Company.

References

  1. ↑ "TicketMakers.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools". WHOIS . Retrieved July 13, 2016.
  2. ↑ D'Alessandro, Anthony. "Fandango Acquires Rotten Tomatoes & Flixster – Deadline". Deadline. Retrieved February 19, 2016.
  3. ↑ "NBCUniversal's Fandango Acquires Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes". NBC Universal. February 17, 2016.
  4. ↑ "Privacy Policy". Fandango.
  5. ↑ Wallenstein, Andrew (April 12, 2007). "Comcast Adds Fandango". AdWeek. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  6. ↑ Chmielewski, Dawn C. (June 24, 2008). "Fandango acquires Movies.com". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  7. ↑ Perez, Sarah (March 19, 2012). "Fandango Wins Yahoo Movies Deal Over Rival MovieTickets.com". TechCrunch .
  8. ↑ Faughnder, Ryan. "He's led Fandango's ambitious expansion beyond movie ticket sales". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 9, 2019.
  9. ↑ Spangler, Todd (September 25, 2015). "NBCU's Fandango Acquires Brazilian Ticketing Site Ingresso". Variety. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
  10. 1 2 Faughnder, Ryan (January 29, 2016). "Fandango buys online video retailer M-Go to boost 'super ticket' sales". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 29, 2016.
  11. ↑ "Comcast is buying Dreamworks in a $3.8 billion acquisition". Washington Post. Retrieved May 1, 2016.
  12. 1 2 Longwell, Todd. "Fandango Re-Branding M-GO On-Demand Service as FandangoNOW". Videolink. Retrieved March 17, 2016.
  13. ↑ Ha, Anthony (February 17, 2016). "Fandango Buys Flixster And Rotten Tomatoes". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 17, 2016.
  14. ↑ "Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster Acquired By Fandango". Slashfilm. Retrieved February 19, 2016.
  15. ↑ "Comcast's Fandango Buys Online Ticket-Seller Cinepapaya". Fortune. December 1, 2016. Retrieved December 3, 2016.
  16. ↑ Solomon, Daina Beth (December 21, 2016). "Fandango Moving to Larger Headquarters in Beverly Hills". Los Angeles Business Journal. Retrieved November 15, 2019.
  17. ↑ Rizzo, Lillian (April 20, 2020). "NBCUniversal's Fandango to Buy Walmart's Vudu Streaming Service". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
  18. ↑ "Site INdex". Fandango.com. Retrieved October 12, 2019.
  19. ↑ "Cancel My Reservation Times". Fandango.com. October 2019.
  20. ↑ "Ticket Policy". Fandango.com. October 2019.
  21. ↑ Newman, Jared (July 1, 2013). "50 Best Android Apps for 2013". Techland. Archived from the original on July 4, 2013. Retrieved March 29, 2016.
  22. ↑ "FANDANGO TO ACQUIRE POPULAR ONLINE TICKETER MOVIETICKETS.COM, CREATING GLOBAL SUITE OF MOVIE TICKETING PROPERTIES WITH MISSION OF GETTING MORE MOVIEGOERS INTO THEATERS WORLDWIDE". PRNewswire (Press release). Fandango. October 13, 2017.
  23. ↑ Lang, Adam (October 29, 2014). "Why is it called Fandango?". RewindandCapture.com.
  24. ↑ Jackson, David (June 23, 2005). "AMC-Loews merger could shake up online movie ticketers Fandango and MovieTickets.com". Seeking Alpha. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  25. ↑ Cox, Beth (August 2, 2002). "Fandango Heads Off An End Run". InternetNews.com. Archived from the original on May 25, 2008. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  26. ↑ "Fandango, AMC Theatres announce newly expanded partnership". Fandango.
  27. ↑ Rich, Katey (February 8, 2012). "MovieTickets.com suing AMC setting up Fandango deal". CinemaBlend.com.
  28. ↑ McNary, Dave (January 21, 2014). "AMC Comes on Board MovieTickets.com Following Suit Settlement". Variety. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  29. ↑ Verrier, Richard (May 23, 2012). "Fandango and Moviefone dial up new partnership". Los Angeles Times.
  30. ↑ Shaw, Lucas (May 23, 2012). "Fandango and Moviefone partner for ticket sales". Reuters. Retrieved July 16, 2012.
  31. ↑ Barnes, Brooks (December 4, 2016). "A Movie Ticketing Start-Up Hopes to Fill Empty Seats". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved March 16, 2017.
  32. ↑ "Atom Tickets Lobs Bomb at Fandango, MovieTickets.com". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved March 16, 2017.
  33. ↑ Sandoval, Greg (July 24, 2009). "Buy.com, Orbitz linked to controversial marketers". CNET. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  34. ↑ "Another Tribute to the Tropps: Fandango WWE Issues". eWrestlingNews.
  35. ↑ Harris, Meena (August 21, 2014). "FTC Settlement Requires Fandango and Credit Karma to Establish Comprehensive Security Programs to Protect Consumers' Sensitive Personal Information". The National Law Review. Covington & Burling LLP. Retrieved August 24, 2014.
  36. ↑ "Fandango, Credit Karma Settle FTC Charges that They Deceived Consumers By Failing to Securely Transmit Sensitive Personal Information". ftc.gov/. Federal Trade Commission . Retrieved August 24, 2014.
  37. ↑ LaRose, Cynthia J.; Romero, Jake (March 4, 2014). "Stop Phoning It in on Mobile Security: What Your Business Needs to Know About the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Settlements with Fandango and Credit Karma". The National Law Review. ISSN   2161-3362 . Retrieved August 24, 2014.
  38. ↑ Hickey, Walt (October 15, 2015). "Be Suspicious Of Online Movie Ratings, Especially Fandango's". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  39. ↑ Avirgan, Jody (October 22, 2015). "Rating Subjective Experiences Is Hard, But Fandango Is Really Bad At It". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  40. ↑ Machkovech, Sam. "FiveThirtyEight analysis finds inflated, rounded-up reviews at Fandango". Arstechnica. Retrieved March 17, 2016.
  41. 1 2 Plaugic, Lizzie. "You probably should ignore Fandango movie ratings". The Verge. Retrieved March 17, 2016.
  42. ↑ Novak, Matt. "Fandango Buys Rotten Tomatoes But Will Probably Ruin It". Gizmondo. Retrieved March 17, 2016.
  43. ↑ "Stars Wars the Last Jedi Tickets Fandango". Forbes.
  44. ↑ "FandangoNow.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools". WHOIS . Retrieved July 13, 2016.
  45. ↑ "4K Ultraviolet Headaches: How & Where To Redeem Digital Copies in 4K UHD | High-Def Digest". highdefdigest.com. Retrieved December 10, 2017.
  46. ↑ "Roku". FandangoNOW.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.