Ticketing apps create 'Houseful' hype, reveal insiders

To his surprise, the techie could easily purchase six tickets for the FDFS at a city multiplex on the day of the movie release. But what shocked him was most seats in the theatre were empty even as online booking apps showed that the movie was booked for the entire weekend.

Insiders in the movie business claim that online booking app owners are under severe pressure from theatre owners or movie producers to portray that all shows are running full over the first weekend for any major release.

“People are made to believe that the film is worth watching, thus creating a hype. This helps make the public queue up at theatre counters and eventually collections pick up,” says the CEO of an online booking app based in New Delhi. 

“In fact, I was paid around Rs 7.5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh to make bookings for movies of major south Indian stars. Even a small-time film producer offered us around Rs 2 lakh to block tickets and build artificial hype,” the CEO said. There is a separate fee for increasing movie ratings too.

This was introduced by producers in Bollywood. Over the last two years, Tamil and Telugu cinema makers have also cashed in on this trend.

“The hype begins with pre-booking. Some producers pay a hefty sum to online portals to manipulate things pertaining to ticket booking. There is a system called DCR (Daily Collection Report), which is supposed to be given to the producers and media. If that system is transparent, Tamil cinema will be devoid of stars,” says a top celebrity manager.

SR Prabhu, treasurer of Producers’ Council, claims that there is no transparency in the entire ticketing process. “We have no clue on what is happening on the theatre front. We only know that our content is used by them for money-making purposes. Our customers are also being charged an Internet Handling fee of Rs 30 per ticket,” he says.

Rakesh, managing director of Vettri theatres, says, “Sometimes we do hold our tickets for a private company or for stars. For a film that is not doing well or for shows that will be less-crowded, we block our balcony tickets to save on electricity bills and other maintenance purposes.”

President of TN Theatre Owners’ Association Tiruppur Subramaniam denied that producers indulge in such an activity. “Some theatre owners do it on their own. If we block unsold tickets to create a hype for stars, the loss ratio would only increase.”-