Analysis: US movie ticket prices rose 4% in Q1, 2023

July 27, 2023

Movie theater

Back in March we published an analysis of average ticket prices during and since the pandemic, estimating that ticket prices averaged $10.45 in 2022. Since we published that report there’s been quite a lot of activity from trade organizations, with the Cinema Foundation publishing an average for 2022, NATO announcing figures for 2020 and 2021, and, today, our analysis of ticket prices in Q1, 2023.

First up, The Cinema Foundation published its State of the Cinema Industry report, and estimated a ticket price of $10.53 for 2022, just 8 cents different from our estimate—an error of less than 1%. As I mentioned in our article in March, we’ll use that number in our reporting going forwards, to remain in harmony with the rest of the industry.

Subsequent to that, the National Association of Theater Owners have posted average ticket prices for 2020 and 2021. There 2020 average ticket price was $9.18, compared to our model’s estimate of $9.41; for 2021 they report an average of $10.17 compared to our $10.40. Our “error” in each case was in the 2% to 3% range.

This new data (and thank you to both organizations for doing their analysis, by the way) allows us to update our model to produce a new estimate for the ticket price in the first quarter of this year. As you may recall, we use average ticket price data from the quarterly and annual reports from Cinemark Holdings, Inc; AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc, and Cineplex Inc. (with the Cineplex report coverted into US dollars at the current exchange rate), and then build a linear model to estimate the average ticket price based on the figured reported by either NATO or the Cinema Foundation.

In the interests of transparency, here are the precise parameters for the model:

The “R-Squared” value is a measure of how accurate the model is based on the historical data. The additional data has increased R-Squared from .9127 to .9487, or “95% accurate” in non-mathematical terms (with apologies to any passing mathematicians who find that description philospohically troubling).

Here’s a chart showing how our model’s results compare to the announced figures from NATO and/or the Cinema Foundation:

Clearly there’s not much daylight between our model and the industry benchmark. That’s not surprising given that NATO and the Cinema Foundation use data from the major theater chains in their estimates (specifically, “responses from 60% of total screens in the U.S., … includ[ing] all of the 10 largest circuits”).

That gives me some confidence in our estimate for Q1, 2023, which is that the average ticket price in the US was $10.81, a rise of 4% from the first quarter of 2022. As the chart below shows, ticket price inflation has fluctuated substantially over the past few years. That was mostly driven by theater closures during the pandemic of course, and now is more a reflection of the mix of tickets being sold, whether for IMAX and other PLF shows, or for special promotions like National Cinema Day. An underlying ticket price inflation rate of 4% sounds about right to me (your personal experience may vary of course!).

We’ll have another update with Q2 ticket price estimates in a couple of months. In the meantime, we’d welcome additional data from any theater chain that is open to sharing it with us. We’re happy to receive numbers under an NDA, so long as we can use them to improve our publicly-available estimates.

We’re making our quarterly average ticket price estimates freely available, so please go ahead and use them in your own projects. We just ask that you credit The Numbers as your source.

Sebastian Gomez and Bruce Nash,