BookMyShow Loses FY17 To Payt In Online Ticketing

Big Tree Entertainment, which owns and operates online entertainment ticketing platform BookMyShow, has clocked a 27% increase in operational revenues at Rs 300.6 crore in FY17 compared to Rs 236 crore in FY16.

As per the research platform Tofler, The standalone operational revenues, which cover its India business, alone account for about Rs 299.5 crore.

Revenues from its online ticket booking services grew faster than the platform at 30% to come in at Rs 230 crore in FY17 from Rs 176.7 crore, in the year-ago period. However, at 30%, the pace of growth for the online ticketing vertical has been slower than FY16 which saw the growth double for the business.

As the competition for market share in the online ticketing space increases, BookMyShow has been facing the heat from competitor Paytm which launched this vertical two years ago. Paytm claimed to have sold over 52 million movie tickets in 2017, clocking over 500% growth in the volume of tickets sold since its launch in May 2016.

Experts boast about the monthly sales on the platform at over 10 million. The slowdown in Big Tree Entertainment’s FY17 growth also comes on the back of an extremely lukewarm year for the movie industry which could create a few 100-crore revenue mark films.

To be sure, movie ticketing forms about 60-65% of Book-MyShow’s ticketing revenues.

A spokesperson for BookMyShow said, “In FY18, with the objective to further grow this category, expand the market size and increase penetration for online entertainment ticketing, BookMyShow made numerous strategic and long-term investments in new and existing businesses and territories.These investments, which have already started to yield results, are in line with our sound business strategy and vital for the overall development of the ecosystem we operate in.”

The tussle to maintain its lead in the online entertainment ticketing market has cost BookMyShow in FY17 with total expenses almost doubling to Rs 473 crore from Rs 248 crore driven by an almost 4 times increase in advertising and promotional expenses to Rs 146.5 crore as compared to Rs 30 crore in FY16.