Cinema chain makes £5 Tuesdays permanent after admissions rise 41%
Britain’s third-largest operator says the flat-price trial at 64 sites brought back audiences who had not visited in two years, while independents warn they cannot match it
A six-month experiment in charging £5 for every seat on a Tuesday is to become permanent across one of Britain’s biggest cinema chains after the company reported that admissions on that day rose 41% and that a third of the extra customers had not been to a cinema in more than two years.
Regent Cinemas, which operates 64 sites from Inverness to Plymouth, began the trial in April after a winter in which its average Tuesday screen was less than a fifth full. Its chief executive, Dominic Alderton, told investors on Monday that the trial had added £3.2m in food and drink sales on top of ticket revenue and that Tuesday was now the chain’s second-busiest day after Saturday.
“We had priced ourselves into a position where a family of four was looking at £60 before popcorn and deciding to wait for the stream,” Alderton said. “What we have learned is that people did not stop liking cinemas. They stopped liking the bill.” The chain’s standard adult ticket averages £13.40, rising to £17.90 in central London.
The company’s figures show the effect was strongest outside the south-east. Tuesday admissions rose 58% in Leeds and 61% in Dundee, against 22% in its London sites. Alderton said the chain would also extend a £7 Monday price to 20 sites in towns where it has no direct competition, a decision that has irritated independent operators.
Meredith Caine, who runs the 180-seat Picturedrome in Kendal and chairs a network of 40 independent cinemas in the north of England, said the policy was “good for audiences and very bad for anyone whose landlord is not a pension fund”. Her cinema, she said, needs an average of £8.20 a ticket to cover costs. “We cannot do £5 and we should not be expected to. What we can do is show films they will not, and we will keep doing that.”
Distributors have been more cautious. One senior executive at a British distributor, speaking on condition of anonymity because their company has not agreed a formal position, said flat pricing meant studios received a smaller share per ticket on the busiest day of the week for mid-range releases. “The question is whether 41% more people at £5 is better for us than the old number at £13. The maths says just about, as long as the chain is honest about the split.”
The UK Cinema Association said total admissions across the country in the year to September were 134m, up 6% on the previous year but still 23% below 2019. A spokesperson said pricing experiments were “a sign of an industry that is thinking hard about its audience rather than waiting for one film to save it”.
Regent said it would review the Monday scheme in March. Its share price rose 4% on Monday.
Sign up to First Edition
Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters.
Privacy notice: newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads and content funded by outside parties.
