[adamc]

> The problem is, it's super easy to do the math on whether or not you would have spent more on tickets than moviepass.

This is the crux of the problem, I think. People who see one movie a month are not going to buy it. So they need to be profitable for high-usage customers. Unless they are getting incredible discounts... just not going to work.

For it to make sense, there need to be some restrictions -- e.g., only Sunday through Thursday nights (times when fewer people go to the movies... whatever they might be). But then a lot of people like me, who are too busy to go at that time, will skip it.

If you want me to over-pay for an option, it needs to have some intangible value. For example, if buying a moviepass gave me X times a month that someone else could come "free"... I might value that above market cost, because I could tell others "don't sweat it, it's free" and get friends to come along without feeling I'm pressuring them to spend a lot of money.

[ghaff]

It’s a good point. Also, with many subscriptions, the choice is between buying a subscription or doing without. You may or may not get value from the subscription but there’s no a la cartel alternative to compare against.

This seems much closer to simply comparing dollar costs of two different purchase alternatives.