Competing movie subscription services look to come in for the kill as MoviePass continues to run into trouble. Sinemia, a global movie ticket subscription service, has introduced a referral program to convince current users to recommend the service to new members.
Current go-to service Moviepass has been making headlines over the last few weeks as it hemorrhages money and alters its perks. Investors have spoken to sites like Business Insider to tell stories about losing as much as $100,000 as the Helios-owned plan stumbles into muddy waters. With the future not looking too great for the service or its users, competitors are starting to roll out incentives to coax defecting subscribers over.
Sinemia is one such service. A more worldwide competitor to Moviepass, Sinemia currently serves the UK, Turkey, and Australia on top of the US and Canada. Unlike Moviepass, it allows its subscribers to reserve seats and buy movie tickets directly through its own app.
Under the new refer-a-friend program, Sinemia is offering a $10 bonus credit to current subscribers for each new customer they bring in. The newly joining user also gets a $10 credit as a welcome bonus under the program. The offer is available across the aforementioned locations, and it shouldn’t matter whether someone from Canada recommends the service to someone from Turkey.
To claim the benefits, a current Sinemia user will need to give their unique referral code to the person looking to join, who will then input the code during the registration step to verify the referral. New users will only be able to claim the $10 bonus credit if switching from a competing service, however, and must prove so either by uploading a shot of their old service’s debit card or providing their card number.
Ways to use the credit differs per region. Users in the UK, Turkey, and Australia can redeem the credit to extend their subscriptions and buy popcorn through the Sinemia app, whereas the current lack of a popcorn service in the US and Canada limits customers in those regions to the single use-case of using the credit against their subscription costs. Still, it’s a bold move and one that should make the movie app business that much more interesting in the wake of recent shifts.
