Action missing at multiplexes

Why didn’t they also encash the opportunity to make some extra bucks? The multiplex owners say the ambience of these theatres are ideal for IPL matches. But every multiplex needs a special licence to screen anything other than cinema. The multiplexes in the North have taken this licence, but those in the South haven’t.

Every multiplex in the City has been given a licence by the District Commissioner only to screen 35 mm movies. If multiplexes want to screen anything other than a movie, then a special licence has to be obtained.

“The multiplexes here haven’t taken the initiative to get a licence to screen the IPL matches. First, we need the licence and secondly, we don’t know who the content provider is. But we’re missing out on all the action and stand to lose in crores,” says Saravana Prasad, MD of Innovative Multiplex.

He reasons that each screen in each multiplex stands to lose a crore. “IPL matches bring with them special bookings and good crowd as well. We would have got bulk bookings from corporates but we’ve missed out on all that,” he observes.

The spokesperson of another popular multiplex in the City too agrees that multiplexes stand to lose out a lot, “We’re losing out a lot of business this way. There are specific centralised guidelines that every multiplex has to follow in situations like this. Besides, the producers are not in favour of screening IPL matches because they will lose profits. For instance, if one screen has to be given away to show an IPL match, the producer loses nothing less than Rs 80,000 for three or four hours,” says this spokesperson.

The youngsters, who frequent the multiplexes, are a disappointed lot. They wish at least one screen in every multiplex was devoted to the screening of IPL.

Mohamed Shahid, who works for the BPO at Infosys, thinks it would have been better if the multiplexes had screened the match at a reasonable rate, so that a lot of people could watch it. “I was hoping that at least the matches played by the home team would be shown at the muliplexes. It would arouse curiosity among the young,” he says.

S Vijayalakshmi too is disappointed that the matches are not being screened at the multiplexes. “It would have popularised IPL and grabbed a lot of eyeballs because the young are hooked on to multiplexes,” she says.

Gitanjali Ramarajan, an arts student at CMR College, thinks that at least one screen should have been kept aside for screening the IPL matches, “if you can sit and watch a movie for more than three hours, then why can’t one watch a match? We missed out entertainment at its best,” she wraps up.