Cinema tickets are actually better value now than they were 40 years ago, when they cost just 61p.
The changing price of paying to watching a film at the cinema is highlighted in a series of data cards looking at each of the last five decades.
The stats show that a cinema ticket in 1975 – when Jaws topped the box office takings – was 61p. Even though the average price in the UK rose to £7.21 in 2015, that works out as a lower portion of the average pay packet. The 2015 price was 1.35% of an average weekly wage, 61p was 1.6%.
In 1975, the average salary was £1,809 and in 2015 it was £25,608. That means, in 40 years pay packets have grown 14 times larger while a cinema ticket is 11.8 times more expensive.
The price of a cinema ticket has risen slower than that of a pint of beer (now 19 times more expensive) or an NHS prescription for medicines (41 times higher) over the same period.
This compares favourably with other forms of entertainment too. The website Red 11 shows how a ticket to see Manchester United at Old Trafford was about the same price as a cinema ticket in 1975 yet, as the Manchester Evening News notes, the cheapest matchday ticket now costs more than £30.
The UK Cinema Association also makes this point, adding: “Comparable prices for activities such as sports matches, theatres or bowling are generally significantly higher.”
It says the cost of seeing films has to take into account the running costs involved in getting them on to the silver screen, adding: “This price reflects not just the staffing and energy costs of running a cinema, but also the high investment requirement now needed to ensure that customers have the best possible experience and are able to benefit from the most up to date technology in sound and vision.”
A couple of years ago, accountants Deloitte found that even a small two-screen cinema costs £3 million to build.
Not only that, but the industry has had to cope with the cost of digitisation and the challenge of increasingly sophisticated home entertainment products and the rise of superfast broadband.
That competition, it seems, has helped to keep the cost down and ensure that, while cinemagoers are paying more, they are getting a better deal than they might have otherwise realised.
In fact, the average customer can save £69 by switching their broadband contract – enough money to fund nine trips to the cinema and more than three times the amount spent per head at the box office in the UK.
You can see how cinema prices compare to the cost of milk, beer and medicines in the data cards below…
Originally published November 30, 2016. Updated November 12, 2018.
