Advanced Television

AMC to enter US home entertainment market

November 8, 2017

By Colin Mann

US-based cinema chain AMC is to enter the US home entertainment market, suggesting it has “strong studio support” to be participants in the business.

Speaking on the company’s Q3 2017 Results Earnings Call, Adam Aron, Chief Executive Officer and President, described AMC as the largest player amongst exhibitors in the US movie industry ecosystem. “Twenty million guests flowing through our theatres in the United States each month, 15 million-plus sessions on our US website each month, 10 million households plus in our US AMC Stubs loyalty database. We think that AMC, therefore, can participate in a bigger slice of movie-related revenues in this country,” he revealed.

“Accordingly, we now have strong studio support to sell movie-themed merchandise at our theatres when impulse buying may be at its peak. In 2018, we will test merchandise sales at 35 of our theatres. If successful, we will roll it out throughout our system nationally later in the year,” he advised.

“Similarly, we also have strong studio support to be participants in the significant home entertainment business where various websites sell movie streaming, movie downloads, and physical copies of movie DVDs. We are announcing today that in 2018 we will add this capability to the AMC Theatres’ website, giving AMC an opportunity to further grow our other revenues,” he added.

“We will do this through partnering on a white-label basis with existing entrants in home entertainment so development costs will be minimal. We’re not suggesting that premium video-on-demand will actually happen, but, if it does, having this capability already on our amctheatres.com site means that AMC will be perfectly situated to sell high-margin premium video content as a result of this initiative as well,” he concluded.

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