Fandango CEO Will McIntosh on How Loyalty Programs, Pre-Ordering Concessions and Alternate Content Can Revive Moviegoing

variety.com:

Brent Lang Executive Editor Fandango would like to be the one-stop shop for all things movies. Will McIntosh, the CEO of the company, argues that Fandango has moved far beyond selling movie tickets.

Thanks to a series of acquisitions, it now owns Rotten Tomatoes, an aggregator of film reviews, and Vudu (rechristened Fandango at Home), which sells and rents digital copies of movies.

It also has launched a program that allows customers to pre-order concessions, so they won’t have to wait in line for popcorn and soda, and has begun offering merchandise tied to new releases, such as the “Deadpool & Wolverine” friendship necklaces it sold last summer.

But McIntosh hopes the theaters that Fandango sells tickets for become more innovative and experimental. “Theaters haven’t really benefited from investment in technology like other industries have,” says McIntosh, who came to Fandango in 2022 after overseeing NBC Sports Next, a portfolio of digital platforms in golf and youth sports. “There are all these amazing tech companies out there that support restaurants, that support real estate companies, that support golf courses.