Cinema attendance has suffered greatly from the Covid crisis. In an attempt to revitalize the sector, four arthouse cinemas in Brussels (Galeries, Palace, Vendôme and Kinograph) joined forces to launch the Cineville Pass at the end of June. An unlimited pass at €21 per month (€18 for those under 26), with a minimum subscription of four months. As of 8 September, some 800 Brussels residents had already been seduced by the offer.
This week, Cineville is back with a promotional campaign and an expansion of the offer at Nova, Aventure, Flagey and Cinematek cinemas (from 1/12 for the latter) with the ambition of crossing the 3000 mark. subscribers by the end of the year. Before an extension to the rest of the country in 2023. Discussions are indeed underway with operators, both in the south and in the north of the country.
This Cineville Pass is managed by a cooperative society, the Belgian Arthouse Cinema Pass, which allows theaters to cooperate, in particular by organizing marketing actions to compete with multiplexes. This is the case from this Thursday 23/9, where any new subscriber will be able to invite three friends for free during a series of special sessions. The opportunity, for example, to see again at the Vendôme Tourist (23/9) and The Square (24/9) by Ruben Östlund, whose new film and the second Palme d’or The Triangle of Sadness comes out on Wednesday. Or to rediscover, in the company of Hollywood editor Paul Hirsch, the brilliant Ferris Bueller’s Mad Day (1986) by John Hughes, on 9/29 at the Palace.
The Dutch example
The Pass Cineville benefits from feedback from the same pass, launched in 2009 in the Netherlands. At the time, the situation was already more or less the same: a loss of spectators in arthouse cinemas, whose public was aging (mostly over 50 years old) and direct competition from the Pathé unlimited card – equivalent of the unlimited UGC card with us (at €18.90 per month). This Cineville Pass was intended to make art house cinemas more attractive and to rejuvenate their image. And it worked. Thirteen years later, the Dutch Cineville network is made up of 55 cinemas across the country and can count on 55,000 subscribers, who go to the cinema 1.5 million times. More assiduous moviegoers – they go to the cinema on average thirty times more – but also more curious, going to see films to which they would not have turned.
Figures all the more encouraging that subscribers have remained faithful to the room. If Cineville Netherlands experienced a drop in its members during the Covid crisis – down to 40,000 -, it has now risen to the same level as before the crisis. The other great success of the operation is, by its attractive price for those under 26, to have succeeded in attracting the youngest. Among our neighbours, 24-25 year olds represent almost a fifth of Cineville members…
- Info. : www.cinevillepass.be.
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Cineville Pass: Unlimited arthouse cinema