Secret Cinema’s new owners want to be the Netflix of live events
TodayTix eyes global expansion for UK firm known for immersive film screenings, which took a Covid hammering.
The new owners of Secret Cinema have got their Hollywood ending. Nearly three years after setting sights on the immersive filmgoing experience, they are reigniting its global expansion plans as part of a strategy to become the Netflix of live events.
When they first came to London in early 2020 to discuss a possible takeover, the company was celebrating a hit adaptation of a show from that streaming platform – more than 100,000 fans would ultimately attend its real-world imagining of Stranger Things.
But two months later the UK entered lockdown and Secret Cinema, used to charging as much as £139 a ticket for its £9m immersive screenings with actors and elaborate sets recreating worlds from Star Wars to Dirty Dancing, found itself embroiled in a row over almost £1m in emergency aid it received from the government’s culture recovery fund.
“We first met with the management of Secret [Group] in January 2020, right before the pandemic,” says Brian Fenty, a co-founder of the US-based digital ticketing firm TodayTix Group, which acquired the parent company in an $100m (£88m) deal late last month.
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Image Credit: Netflix.
