Cinema chains cut costs by employing staff on zero-hour contracts without guaranteed work. Younger, non-unionized staff may earn lower wages. Major cinema chains in the UK include Odeon, Cineworld, and Vue. Films are supplied to cinemas via encrypted hard drives or digital download and must be processed before screening. Ticketing agencies emerged to handle ticket sales and distribution for venues and have brought technology and expertise. Pop-up cinemas show films in temporary outdoor locations using mobile screens in the summer months.

1. 2. Business research theme
Business that operate to supply services in the entertainment market,
e.g. cinemas, theatres, OTT media businesses, TV companies, ticketing
agencies.

2. Cinema chains boost their profits is by cutting their costs, and they are well known for being one of the main types
of employer employing staff on zero hours contracts. These casual contracts allow cinema chains to employ staff
with no guarantee of work, and employees only work as and when they are needed. Typically busy times for
cinemas are school-holidays and weekend evenings, so this is when most staff are employed. Younger staff tend not
to be unionised, and so wages may be lower.
Market Shares of the Leading UK
Cinema Chains
Percentage market share
Odeon 22.4
Cineworld 21.0
Vue 17.3
Showcase 7.2
Empire 4.2

3. How films are supplied to cinemas:
Films are supplied to cinemas via the production house e.g. Warner Bros, Universal,
Paramount Pictures etc. They come in one of two different forms.
They either come as an encrypted hard drive or are digitally downloaded via a high
speed internet connection or satellite communication.
The cinema must then run the data on the hard drive through multiple programs in
order to play them on their screens and schedule them for each day.

4. Ticketing agencies
Ticketing agencies were opened in response to the difficult job of artist managers, venues and promoters. The
tale of event ticket sale and distribution is a tale as old as time. Think back to the Colosseum in Rome; this stuff
has been happening for thousands of years. The only big difference between then and now is that venues
themselves no longer handle the operational side of selling tickets
TicketMaster was able to convince venues to let them sell their tickets for two main reasons:
• TicketMaster told venues that they would pay them to sell their tickets on their behalf
• TicketMaster brought technology and operational expertise to the venue.
Back in the 1970s each venue sold tickets on their own through their own box office, and as you can imagine,
this was no easy task. Distribution, operations, inventory management – these were all extremely challenging
tasks without any technology or software.

5. Pop up cinemas
• A pop-up cinema is a mobile or temporary cinema, usually set-up in a
location such as a park, beach, the grounds of a visitor attraction, on a city
centre roof-top or other distinctive venue (indoor or outdoor).
• A pop-up cinema can be differentiated from a traditional permanent
cinema (such as a multiplex like Vue, Cineworld, Odeon etc.) or
independent cinema house in terms of:
Technology: a mobile cinema screen and supporting projection and sound
system is installed for a specific film screening or series of screenings.
Films shown: pop-up cinemas tend to screen timeless classics or other
popular modern films that customers are very familiar with (and may have
watched many times) - rather than just the latest film releases.

6. • Physical environment: the mobile and temporary nature of a pop-up cinema provides
great flexibility in terms of the locations that can be used. The variety and choice of
physical environment selected also adds value to the customer experience - e.g.
showing "Jaws" by the side of a large swimming pool (with mechanised "sharks"
swimming around the customers lying on their pool loungers).
• Seasonality: whilst some pop-up cinemas operate indoors (e.g. inside museums,
churches or other indoor venues), most screenings in the UK market appear to be
concentrated in the summer months from early May to early September which
are better suited for outdoor screening venues.
• Capacity: whilst permanent cinema screens usually have a capacity of between 100-500
seats, the choice of venue by a pop-up can enable an even larger capacity to be offered
(e.g. 1,000+) depending on the physical layout of the venue, location restrictions
on lighting and noise and the size of the screen and sound reach.
• Additional "added value" to the screening: an operator like Secret Cinema adds value to
the pop-up cinema experience with "immersive experiences" directly linked to the movie
being screened - and raise their selling prices accordingly!

7. Netflix works with content providers, distributors, producers, and
creators to acquire licenses for TV shows and movies to stream on
their service. When content is not available to stream, it can be for a
few different reasons, including: The content rights are currently
exclusive to another company.
Securing licensing agreements with TV networks, filmmakers and other
content owners is the greatest expense for Netflix. For example, the
company spent nearly $13 billion in 2018 on content licensing and
production. It spent $2.37 billion on marketing - the most in the history
of the business.

8. The number of Netflix subscribers has followed an upward trend,
growing from less than 22 million in 2011 to nearly 150 million in 2019.
The service is becoming so popular that an estimated 37 percent of the
world's internet users use Netflix.
The company was one of the first to see the potential of streaming
technology and began to transition to a subscription video-on-demand
model in 2007. Since this transition, annual revenue has grown from
$1.36 billion to around $15.8 billion in just ten years.

9. Musical theatre:
A typical production budget for a Broadway musical will fall anywhere
from $8-12 million, while a play might cost $3-6 million and a fairly
lavish off-Broadway musical might cost $2 million. FX-heavy shows will
fall higher on the spectrum (Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark reported a
figure of $75 million), as will musicals with a large cast and many
musicians; conversely, a two-person play with a very sparse unit set will
cost much less