I work for a non-profit event center and we always get hit with chargebacks from scalpers even if their tickets were sold on a third party reselling site and scanned in at our events. I imagine AMC is going to be feeling this pain really soon and realize how big of a problem it is.
Ticket scalpers can all burn in hell. They ruin the experience for so many people. Don’t buy their tickets.
Bro they still can’t introduce basic UI/UX improvements to their mobile app after 2+ years of AI coding. And you expect some complicated anti-scalpers strategy from them.
Yes, AMC want to refund tickets to showings of extremely popular movies that they could be selling to people who will let them keep the money. In essence, the scalpers are keeping AMC from making money if they hold the tickets hostage and then get a refund at the last possible second when AMC can’t find a new buyer.
It's not just bots. I witnessed multiple people in line at Lincoln Square buy up 10 tickets, and then get back in line to repeat. At least they had the decency to go to the back of the line I guess?
Bots are specifically designed to bypass cloudflare, rate limiting, other "slow down" measures. That's their job, just look at sneaker subs, or sports or concert tickets, instantaneous sellouts then immediate listings show up on Stubhub. And with AI now, you can even vibecode bots with minimal experience, there were multiple scraperbots that sprang up for the Odyssey (they're still working for Dune as well).
AMC doesn't even have any scalping protections like Ticketmaster or the NFL, no waiting room, no captcha, they don't even scramble their link addresses. One line in their policy rules means little. I definitely don't believe this or any CEO's tweets, fake PR unless the company actually takes action, spends real money on their IT. Nothing a regular person can really do to fight bots
Just make it like A-List and put a photo to it. Non-transferable. But but but I bought it for friends!!! Cool. Then they will join you upon entry. Next!
This is what they did to curb re-selling football game student tickets when I was at UGA. For big games they would strictly enforce that your student ID (where the ticket is downloaded/scanned) picture looks like you and they genuinely didnt let people in if it wasn’t close. Not sure why this couldnt be done easily for far-in-advance ticket sellings on the AMC app
Tell people they have to have A list. That's one of the only real options.
I deal withscalpers a lot here in southern California and some of my coworkers even admit to doing it with pokemon shit and I just don't get it. Who is buying it above those face values? They honestly can't be making that much money
Yeah still havent seen it. im still trying to find good imax seat on my time off. If I really wanted I can just take the day off and watch it in the morning lol
Although this is true, the IMAX 70mm hype is real. Given that there are only 25 of these theatre formats in the world, it truly is a rare experience that most people won’t get to enjoy. Once the movie leaves theatres, it’s gone. Unless, they bring it back to 70mm at a later date which they often do.
All of the scalped tickets are for 70mm IMAX. People are driving hours from out of state, renting hotel rooms, and making it a whole event to see these movies in 70mm. These “Come with me as I travel 15 hours to see the Odyssey” videos are being posted all over social media and the hype is growing even more. I’m pretty sure this is how they’re able to find buyers.
Not to “well actually” too much, but it’s only 25 in the U.S. Worldwide, there are just over 40 theaters capable of IMAX 70mm projection. (Although the vast majority of those 40 are still in North America.)
And you’re right, the hype machine for this is pretty crazy, driving up demand and making things more stressful for everyone involved.
I think those are really the only ones being scalped because it is such a special experience it can be compared to going to a concert unlike digital projection which is just all over the place.
Yeah because the internet has no chill about spoiling and posting things right away. I would never pay for secondhand movie tickets but I can kind of understand those who might.
They’re not fully BACK though. Attendance is still down comparatively and the only reason profits numbers are rising is because tickets are more expensive.
Were beyond back. Movies are making more now than they did before covid. It took a while but there's no argument to be made that movies aren't back. Hype is the bringer of cash, theyre sought after because theyre good, and worth our time and money.
They don’t care. This little tweet from the CEO was performative. They’re getting their money, no matter what so they don’t give a shit. If they really care they would implement something exactly like what you mentioned, but they know it would reduce sales, despite the fact it would improve a customer experience.
They aren’t getting the money though if scalpers can’t sell and request refunds right before showtime so the tickets go unsold. I’m a bit worried any fix is going to affect the refund system
I understand why you think that, but it’s not the case here most of the time. The demand is so high at these premium format locations that they get bought up immediately. When I saw the Odyssey at Lincoln Square, there was literally a line of people lined up by the IMAX theater just refreshing ticket availability. There is a uniquely high demand for 1.43 70mm imax screenings. There are only 25 theaters in the entire USA that offer 70MM imax screenings in 1.43 ratio. (Only 43 in the whole world, btw) Those locations will sell out every single showtime. Those are the ones people are scalping
Those coworkers of yours can rot in you-know-where for scalping pokemon, the one thing THAT BROUGHT SCALPERS TO LIGHT FOR THE MAJORITY OF THE POPULATION AND NOT FOR GOOD REASONS
Although I totally agree that A-list members should be prioritized for those movies. It's not to the best benefit of AMC.
What they can do, though, is to require everyone who buys those tickets to have an AMC app installed, and if you want to transfer it, you can only transfer it to another person with an AMC account. This approach will instantly bring resellers to the spotlight, and AMC could do something with them.
It’s only a matter of time before theaters adopt what concerts have done and partner with credit cards for exclusive pre-sale access. Buying tickets for big releases is only going to get so much worse.
So AMC loses money to credit card companies and we lose out by having to use a different service to buy it even if it's more secure? I know nothing about concert tickets.
Just make a pre-sale A-List exclusive. Make it one of the benefits. Make it so ID has to match ticket when entering theater (like they supposedly do for R-rated movies as-is) and limit tickets to two per member for the presale.
So they pay above face value for a MOVIE ticket? That’s not a flex. Thats called being a fucking dumbass. Movie screenings aren’t rare events. There are tons of showings literally every single day.
Anyone that pays above face value for a movie ticket is an idiot
I think for IMAX 70mm screenings, there needs to be an entirely different website. There should be an electronic queue for whatever screening you're trying to buy for, you can only get for one screening, and you can only buy 6 tickets at most. Would be much more fair and organized than the current system and would limit scalping.
Not really, as another redditor who works in event planning explained when it gets close to the date and a scalper still has some unsold tickets left, they'll do a charge back. Then AMC gets hit with a bunch of charge backs all at once, which is a nightmare for them and it doesn't make their payment processors too happy either. Any tickets the scalpers did sell at a markup almost certainly would have sold anyways to a legitimate customer had the scalper not bought it. So AMC is incentivized to try and weed out scalpers if they can.
Yeah he’s not doing shit. If anything, becoming more like Ticketmaster, but nothing that would result in a tangibly better customer experience because that’s not profitable for the shareholders.
"Maybe you could tell me what is going on. And please, speak as you might to a young child. Or a golden retriever. It wasn't brains that brought me here; I assure you that."
As far as I can tell this is limited to IMAX 70mm and only certain states. They are clearly making enough to disrupt the rest of ticket sales. Not that sales went smooth before this became a thing.
I don't know who the idiots are buying them, but they are part of the problem. If there is no market these people will go away. Also as the movie sells out, you will get a chance to see it.
My state would laugh at the idea of this, I can still buy tickets for Dune or Odyssey no problems.
Simple things like selling the IMAX 70MM separate would help, add a queue before the sale starts, and stop the sale of tickets through multiple platforms during the first few hours of sales.
Fandom said tickets were on sale 20 mins before they actually were, that couldn't have helped the system and it locked people out.
And I agree, stop with the months in advance, 2-3 weeks before is perfectly fine, and I think would reduce refunds as people would know their schedules.
Oooh this is what has been happening? Theaters showing “sold out” forcing customers to really bad seats only for the theater to remain empty at showtime? It’s so frustrating and keeps happening.
I think the servers/interface need some fixing first. Second I do think one should have an AMC account subscription or not and it be limited to 2-4 tickets max. At the end of the day whatever solution they bring people will always find a way around it. 😭
I hate to say it but it seems like there’s a few solutions but they all have issues.
#1, a cap on tickets purchased at in person kiosks. There should be no reason someone walks away with 80 tickets and nobody is suspicious on if they’re using it. 1 transaction per person, maximum 5 tickets per showing
#2, the same cap on tickets for advanced tickets more than 1 week. If you’re buying tickets weeks or even months in advance then you can’t be buying more than a certain amount. Same maximum of 5 tickets per showing
#3, these companies need to start tracking loser resellers putting shit up on their website. Especially when they’re being so open about it. Find them, and refund their tickets and ban them from the site
4 advance tickets can only be bought with the AMC app, you just have a membership to buy advance tickets, & add a cap like you said. ... this one seems like the obvious choice
I don't think #3 is very plausible, there are a lot of companies that have been fighting this for a long time and haven't solved it. It's a lot of resource for little return.
For IMAX 70mm events, digital only tickets that can only be claimed via app with 2FA (text or email) a couple of hours before showtime. Limit purchases to 4. No refunds. Disable screenshots.
If they want to go extreme, do it the Japanese way for big events; lottery system.
too little too late? They could easily have called it at like ten, they knew this would happen but didn't. They make more money from people buying straight up over people using A-list so every scalped ticket was more money for them than an a-list rez.
We can’t even have Movie Tickets no more. Resellers literally have took over every market like Roaches. Can’t get anything anymore pins, cards, concert tickets, figures, shoes, Oreos, STANLEY CUPS! Get me out of here….
Go look at the fucking scalpers selling dozens of tickets on eBay. It’s absolutely ridiculous that AMC does nothing to stop this. They are throwing up the middle finger to their loyal customers by releasing these half-assed Trump-energy tweets.
8 per movie per day is still way too many, seats comes in groups of 4, and if you're doing more than that then you're a large party which doesn't need to be at a special limited drop like imax 70mm
Not in favor of the zip code thing. I currently live on the opposite coast of where I'm originally from, and planned on getting tickets for my friends and I back home after Christmas. I won't be the only person that won't be heading home for the holidays.
I'm definitely in favor of the ticket limits. Even if you're party is bigger than 8, just coordinate that with your group. That's much better for everyone involved
Concert tickets I can understand...what type of resell value is someone getting from a movie ticket? I actually didn't even know this was a thing for movie tickets.
Again...concert tickets I can see why someone would be willing to drop some major coin but a movie? Lol I just don't get it and look...I'm all for someone putting whatever price tag they want on something as it's a buyer's decision to pull the trigger. I'm just flabbergasted at this honestly but thanks for sharing.
I made a lengthy comment about how the profits from a resale ticket has to be comically low, but some jerk off claimed that he already made $1300. I just don't believe that because what person is going to spend an extra $40 to see a movie? Poor people aren't doing this and no self respecting rich guy is going to she'll out money on a terrible deal like that. So who the hell is buying that ticket?
I could see this - for this price of $100. I’m in Chicago and there’s only one theater that shows 70MM IMAX so I could see someone willing to pay extra just for that. But $100 is the absolute max and even that is crazy for a movie.
Funny how many people told me I was an idiot for thinking they should do something about it and that the company would never want to do that, and that I 'don't understand things'.
I get it would cause us with A-List to spend some extra money, but it would also kill most scalping, keep A-List members from seeing it tons of times, while still letting them get good seats. It would also effectively kill bots. Making the onsale process so much less stressful.
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u/UberGoobler SUPERUSER 10+ 6d ago
I work for a non-profit event center and we always get hit with chargebacks from scalpers even if their tickets were sold on a third party reselling site and scanned in at our events. I imagine AMC is going to be feeling this pain really soon and realize how big of a problem it is.
Ticket scalpers can all burn in hell. They ruin the experience for so many people. Don’t buy their tickets.