Movie Ticket Prices Fall 4% In Q3; Admissions Clock 316M, 18-44 Demo Shows Up The Most At Cinemas

The National Association of Theatre Owners reported Thursday that the average ticket price for the third quarter of 2019, from July-September, was $8.93. That’s off 4% from the second-quarter average of $9.26, but up 1.1% from Q3 2018’s $8.83.

Year to date, the average ticket price is $9.08, roughly even percent-wise with the $9.11 final average from last year. NATO calculates the average ticket price from tickets sold in big cities, small towns, for children, senior citizens, matinees, full adult admissions, 3D and large format. The average varies with the mix of films in the marketplace.

Films such as The Lion King, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, Hobbs & Shaw, Spider-Man: Far From Home, It Chapter Two, Downton Abbey and Hustlers together drove Q3 domestic box office to $2.8 billion, up 3.5% from the same period a year ago which totaled $2.7B. Admissions in the most recent third quarter totaled 316 million, +2% from Q3 2018 but off 9% from 348M in Q2 2019 (April-June). That stands to reason as Disney/Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame brought a record amount of business in Q2, the pic finaling stateside at $858.3M to become the second highest-grossing movie ever at the domestic box office behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($936.6M).

Per Comscore, a majority of those heading to the movies in Q3 were the 18-34 demo, which repped 52% of all crowds, while the 18-44 set turned up at 67%. The 18-24 age bracket was the biggest age demo for Lion King (24%), Once Upon a Time (29.5%), Far From Home (28.7%), It Chapter Two (35.9%) and Hobbs & Shaw (30.3%).

Overall, summer box office as previously reported for the last weekend of April through Labor Day was $4.8 billion, +1% over a year ago. Admissions for an Endgame-driven summer clicked to 534.8M, +1% from summer 2018’s 530M, when Avengers: Infinity War was booked at theaters.