AMC Theatres Partners With Facebook For In-App Ticket Sales

Facebook wants users to spend less time staring at their phone or computer screens, but the huge social network keeps adding features to keep them hooked. On Thursday, Facebook announced a partnership with AMC Theatres that will allow the site’s users to buy movie tickets directly from the platform, according to Deadline.

AMC will look to cement its dominance as the biggest movie theater chain in the United States with the move. It is the first chain to partner directly with Facebook, per Deadline, though the site also working with online ticket sellers Atom Tickets and Fandango. Facebook users will be able to buy AMC tickets through a “movies” tab on the site’s home screen, which will also provide a list of theaters and showtimes

The service will be available to all AMC locations in the next few days.

It is the second move by AMC in a matter of weeks to modernize itself in an era when the traditional movie theater market has become slightly less viable. The theater chain introduced AMC Stubs A-List at the end of June. The $20 per month subscription service allows customers to see three movies per week at any AMC location.

A-List is primarily a response to MoviePass, a similar service that costs $10 per month. Unlike MoviePass, A-List lets users see multiple movies per day. MoviePass recently introduced surge pricing for popular movies, the latest in a series of fast and furious rule changes for the service. As of Monday, the stock for MoviePass' parent company hit a record low.

AMC stock has not fared much better, with shares down 35 percent from year-to-year as of May. Still, AMC leads the United States in movie theater market share, with decent leads over rivals Regal and Cinemark in number of screens as of July 2017. Thursday’s announcement amounted to a partnership between the country’s biggest theater chain with the world’s biggest social network.