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Fandango To Acquire MovieTickets.com: What Will Change And What Will Remain The Same

By Glenn Hadley
Published on: 15:59 PST, Oct 15, 2017

Fandango has reportedly made a monumental move within the world of online movie ticket sales by taking the steps to acquire a major rival: MovieTickets.com.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fandango announced Friday that an agreement has been made to pay an “undisclosed price” for the company to acquire MovieTickets.com.

This is a major announcement within the world of online movie ticket sales since MovieTickets.com has been a longtime competitor of Fandango. Taking a brief glance at their respective company histories will show that both companies have more similarities in their overall journeys than most consumers may realize.

For instance, Fandango was first established in April of 2000. Initially established as TicketMakers.com, Fandango was acquired nearly seven years later in April of 2007 by Comcast. At the time, Regal Entertainment Group was a major stakeholder. In the years to follow, it eventually struck a deal to sell tickets for AMC Theatres as well – increasing the popularity and overall presence of Fandango even further.

MovieTickets.com was established in the same year (2000) by Hollywood.com and AMC Theatres as part of a joint venture with other major companies and corporations.

In May of 2012, Fandango announced the formation of a partnership with Moviefone – a company that was actually a former partner of MovieTickets.com. Ironically, nearly 13 years ago, MovieTickets.com became Moviefone.com’s exclusive online ticket vendor after crosslinking their ticket offerings through an amicable partnership. However, MovieTickets.com eventually lost a substantial amount of ground – losing its sole rights to Moviefone and the AMC chain to Fandango – which was becoming increasingly more dominant within the industry at that time.

MovieTickets.com will essentially be added to the list of other acquisitions that Fandango has made headlines within recent years – including M-GO, Flixster, and Rotten Tomatoes.

In a May 2016 interview with Fandango President Paul Yanover, he explained how the acquisitions of Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster affected the overall consumer reach.

“They represent a great opportunity to expose our brand and offerings to a broader number of people… Flixster has a largely mobile audience of moviegoers looking up show times and theatergoing information, and we’re confident they’ll have a lot of interest in buying tickets online… The idea of connecting Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes from a commerce perspective is pretty exciting, as is having movie discovery become a bigger part of the Fandango experience.”

MovieTickets.com is currently owned through a joint venture of National Amusements, Hollywood Media Corp., Cineplex Entertainment, Time Warner, Marcus Theatres, Regal Entertainment Group and Viacom.

Will MovieTickets.com be completely absorbed by Fandango once the acquisition is finalized? Apparently not. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the company will remain a standalone asset and will continue to operate at its Boca Raton, Florida headquarters.

MovieTickets.com CEO Joel Cohen states that “teaming with Fandango will enable MovieTickets.com to further its mission and increase advance ticket sales.”

[Featured Image by Laboko/Shutterstock]

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