Atom Tickets Targets Near-Death MoviePass With ‘Break Up’ Sweepstakes

Atom Tickets, smelling blood in the water, launched a contest encouraging customers of the flailing MoviePass service to cancel their memberships for a chance to win one year of free movie tickets.


The movie-ticketing company, whose backers include Disney, 20th Century Fox and Lionsgate, on Tuesday kicked off a “Break Up Sweepstakes” — offering one ex-MoviePasser the chance to win the grand prize of a free daily movie ticket for 365 days (valued at $4,380). To enter, MoviePass customers must tweet a picture of their cut-up MoviePass card to @atomTickets with the hashtags #MOVIEPAST and #ATOMSWEEPS.


Atom’s kick-’em-when-they’re-down campaign comes after cash-strapped MoviePass suffered a major outage July 26 and its parent company was forced to borrow $5 million to resolve the issue. MoviePass reportedly had technical problems again Monday.


In addition, after warning users last week that “certain movies may not always be available in every theater on our platform,” CEO Mitch Lowe told MoviePass employees that at least two major summer releases — “Christopher Robin” and “The Meg” — would not be available to subscribers, according to a BI report. MoviePass claims it has more than 3 million subscribers.


On Tuesday, MoviePass raised the price of its one-movie-per-day plan, from $9.99 to $14.99 per month, and said subscribers would not have access to nearly all Hollywood blockbusters within their first two weeks of release. First-run movies opening on more than 1,000 screens will “be limited in their availability during the first two weeks, unless made available on a promotional basis,” MoviePass announced.


More info on Atom’s promo targeting MoviePass is available at atomtickets.com/promotions/moviepass-breakup-sweepsteaks. The contest runs through Aug. 31, 2018, at 11:59 p.m. PT (although MoviePass may have gone belly-up by then).


Atom also is running a buy-one-get-one-free promotion this week, available in the U.S. on the Atom Tickets mobile app using the code “WEGOTYOU.” The offer is valid through Sunday, Aug. 5, at 11:59 p.m. PT.


Atom Tickets’ primary rival is NBCUniversal’s Fandango, and both have launched new customer-rewards programs this summer. To date, Atom has raised $125 million from Lionsgate, Disney, 20th Century Fox Film, and Fidelity. Its advisory board includes Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Tyler Perry, Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia (and Johnson and Garcia are also investors).