In some of his first pubic comments since the acquisition of Alamo Drafthouse, Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Tony Vinciquerra said the theater chain may be small, but its customer loyalty is mighty.
“It’s not going to be a massive business, but it’s going to grow a little bit,” the exec said Thursday at the FT Business of Entertainment Summit.
The acquisition closed in June. While no financials were released, sources told Deadline the deal cost Sony in the range of $200 million.
With 41 theaters around the U.S., the specialty circuit is a “bespoke” and “unique” player in the theater sector, Vinciquerra said. It recently put together a streak of 28 straight months of increases in market share, attesting to its positive momentum.
“They have 4.5 million people in their loyalty program,” Vinciquerra said. “In our business of producing TV and film, we don’t have direct contact with our customers,” the CEO added, making Alamo’s strong grip on its patrons especially valuable. It has a “net promoter score” (a metric used by marketers to rate how many customers would recommend a brand to others) of about 70. “Not many companies in the world have a score that high.”
The company is keeping the operations of Alamo separate from those of Sony Pictures, he noted. But the audience of Alamo also overlaps with that of Crunchyroll, a popular anime hub with millions of streaming subscribers and a vibrant suite of merchandise and other revenue-producing activities. Vinciquerra said the company would promote Crunchyroll via Alamo locations.
Speaking of the chain’s sites, the exec noted that most are outside of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, which together have historically accounted for about 25% of total box office. Alamo’s location in Downtown LA “does great, but try to find it, it’s hard,” Vinciquerra said. “We have to build in the markets where people are.”