MovieTickets.com is an online movie ticketing website originally founded by AMC Theaters and Hollywood.com and formed in the year 2000.[1] It is currently a joint venture between AMC Entertainment, Hollywood Media Corp, National Amusements, Cineplex Entertainment, Marcus Theatres, Viacom and Time Warner.[2] MovieTickets.com provides movietimes for all theaters, and online ticket purchasing for many AMC Theaters, all National Amusements theaters and all Clearview Cinemas, among other smaller chains (such as the famous Mann Theatres in Los Angeles). In 2010, MovieTickets.com sold over 16 million tickets for over 200 exhibitors with 14,000 screens.[3]
Providing advance ticketing services to 150 theaters chains, MovieTickets.com represents over 50 percent of the top 100 grossing theaters in North America on any given weekend.
In 2004, MovieTickets.com became the exclusive online ticket vendor for Moviefone.com, after having entered in a partnership in 2001 that crosslinked their ticketing offerings.[4] Then, in mid-2005, MovieTickets.com established a ticket distribution relationship with consignment ticket reseller PrintTixUSA, adding 20 movie exhibition companies to its ranks and boosting the total number of screens serviced nationwide to more than 10,000.[5]
MovieTickets.com does not provide online ticketing for those AMC Theaters originally part of the Loews Cineplex Entertainment chain, whose online ticketing is provided by Comcast's Fandango due to contractual obligations in place prior to the 2005 merger of the two movie chains.[6] In 2002, Loews attempted to break the contract under pressure of bankruptcy and from (then) AOL Moviefone. Fandango successfully sued both Loews and Moviefone and retained the Loews business.[7]
Furthermore, MovieTickets.com lost the Hoyts theater chain when it was acquired by the Regal Entertainment Group theater chain, a founder of Fandango. However, when Regal acquired Consolidated Theatres, the latter retained its contractual relationship with MovieTickets.