The Box Office Buzz and Tracking Thread: Electric Boogaloo

[Premium George]

It was sets when we used to count tickets on old pulse by them popping up.

[fabiopazzo2]

16days to go

2019-04-09 17:00:30.514008 UTC
1	28.5%	Avengers: Endgame
2	20.1%	Shazam!
3	10.2%	Pet Sematary
4	7.7%	Dumbo
5	6.7%	Captain Marvel

[Matthew]

Wow, millions pf tickets. 

 

@Porthos I think your area is underperforming 🧐🧐

[Porthos]

Just now, Matthew said:

Wow, millions pf tickets. 

 

@Porthos I think your area is underperforming 🧐🧐

Since I'm not tracking the rest of the OW or beyond, I think the jury is still out.

[Porthos]

2 minutes ago, Premium George said:

It was sets when we used to count tickets on old pulse by them popping up.

Yeah, the only thing I don't know is if akvalley's tracker is by sets or not.  I presume it is sets since I don't think the underlying data on Pulse that he scrapes from contains multiple ticket purchase information.

 

But if I'm wrong, I'd be glad to hear it.

[Legion Again]

We could probably test this by finding a movie which is only selling like 1 ticket now on the fandango hourlies, buy one set of 10 tickets, and see if that hour comes in around 2 or around 11. Then exchange them after for some movies you actually want to see 

Edited April 9, 2019 by Thanos Legion

[Porthos]

7 minutes ago, Porthos said:

Yeah, the only thing I don't know is if akvalley's tracker is by sets or not.  I presume it is sets since I don't think the underlying data on Pulse that he scrapes from contains multiple ticket purchase information.

 

But if I'm wrong, I'd be glad to hear it.

@Barnack You made a scraper yourself before akvalley's came out.  Can you shed any light on this?

[stfletch]

Well this is what it says ok AKVALLEY's FML page:

https://fantasymovieleague.com/chatter/board/fml-main-chatter/topic/462064

 

"Fandango Pulse is a data visualization that pushes a subset of total tickets to its DV interface. Using the Fandango developer tools, I capture the batches of tickets and output them hourly to the files below.

 

So he says he captures the "batches of tickets" so to me that probably does mean it's the sets. Interesting that he also says that the pulse only pushes a subset of total tickets.

[Matthew]

3 minutes ago, stfletch said:

Well this is what it says ok AKVALLEY's FML page:

https://fantasymovieleague.com/chatter/board/fml-main-chatter/topic/462064

 

"Fandango Pulse is a data visualization that pushes a subset of total tickets to its DV interface. Using the Fandango developer tools, I capture the batches of tickets and output them hourly to the files below.

 

So he says he captures the "batches of tickets" so to me that probably does mean it's the sets. Interesting that he also says that the pulse only pushes a subset of total tickets.

Yes, I think people are reading too much into pulse. 

 

If it records only subsets of tickets than there is a huge chance Endgame is selling 100K+  tickets everyday as of now. 

😱😱😱😱

[Matthew]

Just now, Matthew said:

Yes, I think people are reading too much into pulse. 

 

If it records only subsets of tickets than there is a huge chance Endgame is selling 100K+  tickets everyday as of now. 

😱😱😱😱

@CoolEric258 , @Porthos   @TalismanRing   @VenomXXR

 

Do you all know that pulse only post subsets of tickets not all data? 

[XXR vs XXR]

2 minutes ago, Matthew said:

@CoolEric258 , @Porthos   @TalismanRing   @VenomXXR

 

Do you all know that pulse only post subsets of tickets not all data? 

 

I was not aware of this, actually. It doesn’t really affect our methodology as it’s still linear from movie to movie, but it is interesting. 

[YM!]

Tomorrow night, I’ll finally tackle the presale beast everyone wants to see and Endgame as well.

[Barnack]

1 hour ago, Porthos said:

@Barnack You made a scraper yourself before akvalley's came out.  Can you shed any light on this?

That a good question, I had to check, pulse raw data look like this and does not give an indication of many ticket were solds, just the movie, theater, when, etc...:

 

Spoiler

{
      "movie": {
        "poster": "https://images.fandango.com/r1.0.639/ImageRenderer/140/210/images/noimageavailable_movieposter.png/213160/images/masterrepository/fandango/213160/shazam_vert_main_grey_dom_2764x4096_master.jpg",
        "id": 213160,
        "title": "Shazam!"
      },
      "theater": {
        "city": "Addison",
        "name": "Marcus Addison Cinema",
        "country": "USA",
        "lon": -88.0316,
        "state": "IL",
        "postal_code": "60101",
        "lat": 41.9536,
        "id": "AAFEZ",
        "distance": 2794392.5605621217,
        "x": 777.9918194319512,
        "y": 249.08054080190755
      },
      "show_datetime": "2019-04-10T14:15:00.000Z",
      "buy_datetime": "2019-04-09T13:10:23.000Z",
      "buy_datetime_utc": "2019-04-09T18:10:23.000Z"
    },
    {
      "movie": {
        "poster": "https://images.fandango.com/r1.0.639/ImageRenderer/140/210/images/noimageavailable_movieposter.png/215721/images/masterrepository/fandango/215721/us2019.jpg",
        "id": 215721,
        "title": "Us (2019)"
      },
      "theater": {
        "city": "Gurnee",
        "name": "Marcus Gurnee Mills Cinema",
        "country": "USA",
        "lon": -87.9542,
        "state": "IL",
        "postal_code": "60031",
        "lat": 42.3833,
        "id": "AAFFG",
        "distance": 2808199.732157117,
        "x": 778.3939904021734,
        "y": 240.47164287982855
      },
      "show_datetime": "2019-04-09T08:25:00.000Z",
      "buy_datetime": "2019-04-09T13:10:23.000Z",
      "buy_datetime_utc": "2019-04-09T18:10:23.000Z"
    },
    {
      "movie": {
        "poster": "https://images.fandango.com/r1.0.639/ImageRenderer/140/210/images/noimageavailable_movieposter.png/215721/images/masterrepository/fandango/215721/us2019.jpg",
        "id": 215721,
        "title": "Us (2019)"
      },
      "theater": {
        "city": "Addison",
        "name": "Marcus Addison Cinema",
        "country": "USA",
        "lon": -88.0316,
        "state": "IL",
        "postal_code": "60101",
        "lat": 41.9536,
        "id": "AAFEZ",
        "distance": 2794392.5605621217,
        "x": 777.9918194319512,
        "y": 249.08054080190755
      },
      "show_datetime": "2019-04-09T12:45:00.000Z",
      "buy_datetime": "2019-04-09T13:10:22.000Z",
      "buy_datetime_utc": "2019-04-09T18:10:22.000Z"
    },
    {
      "movie": {
        "poster": "https://images.fandango.com/r1.0.639/ImageRenderer/140/210/images/noimageavailable_movieposter.png/213160/images/masterrepository/fandango/213160/shazam_vert_main_grey_dom_2764x4096_master.jpg",
        "id": 213160,
        "title": "Shazam!"
      },
      "theater": {
        "city": "Lehi",
        "name": "Megaplex Theatres Lehi - Thanksgiving Point",
        "country": "USA",
        "lon": -111.8744,
        "state": "UT",
        "postal_code": "84043",
        "lat": 40.4183,
        "id": "AAUAV",
        "distance": 924967.7633968078,
        "x": 426.44859752319644,
        "y": 264.8024517435225
      },
      "show_datetime": "2019-04-09T15:05:00.000Z",
      "buy_datetime": "2019-04-09T12:10:21.000Z",
      "buy_datetime_utc": "2019-04-09T18:10:21.000Z"
    },

 

 

Looking at one pulse bunch (1000 sales), I didn't achieve to find any case of a movie with the same show time / but time / location, so sales of more than one ticket do not seem to show up has multiple unique sales in the list.

 

Pulse push 1,000 ticket sales and refreshed it (back in the days) every 5m sometime 15 minutes, sometime longer middle of the night, I would imagine than in reality during the hours of Friday evening of big weekend they could sales much faster than the pulse interface need to be representative of what is going on and skip many transactions.

 

I imagine that has long at it is proportional between every case / movie that does not matter much, it is  not like the absolute number would be telling, it is just relative to others and how much they sold.

 

I remember back then that if you divided OW / ticket sold tracked on fandango, you had the exact same ratio for Dwayne Johnson movies (Skyscraper and rampage) indicating that it was probably very telling between very similar movies.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Barnack

[Legion Again]

Huh, so it’s both sets vs tickets and a subset of ticket sets vs all ticket sets. Didn’t know either. But as Venom says, not a huge deal *as long as* the subset is representative and the # tickets per set is similar across the movies being used as comps.     

Edited April 9, 2019 by Thanos Legion

[Porthos]

1 minute ago, VenomXXR said:

 

I was not aware of this, actually. It doesn’t really affect our methodology as it’s still linear from movie to movie, but it is interesting. 

We hope.  Lots or room for 'black box' shenanigans.  

 

But I've always viewed the Pulse data as an imperfect tool, as opposed to a law, anyway, so it doesn't affect how I view things that much.

 

The subset of data is interesting, but makes a fair amount of sense, given the sheer number of tickets Fandango deals with daily.  Did think it was kinda odd that it didn't show some ticket purchases that I presumed were being made, but I didn't put rigorous thought into it.

 

But, sure, treating it as a mostly linear thing isn't the worst thing in the world.  But it is another variable to consider (along with walkups and skew of Fandango/non-Fandango online purchases) when it comes to comparing movies.

[Brainbug]

All of this warm-up for Pika-Pikas sales is very entertaining.

[Legion Again]

Just now, Brainbug said:

All of this warm-up for Pika-Pikas sales is very entertaining.

So happy for later this week when Pika sales are underwhelming and I have hard data to respond to the hideously overdone Pika jokes with.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Thanos Legion

[Matthew]

Today, I learned lots of different things about box office. 

 

I can never look at the pulse sameway ever again. I always thought it showed all tickets purchase. 

 

If it is showing subset than there is a possibility it is not linear. 

 

As some movies performed better in one area as compared to other. This is absolute craziness. 

[YM!]

1 minute ago, Thanos Legion said:

So happy for later this week when Pika sales are underwhelming and I have hard data to respond to the hideously overdone Pika jokes with.

And that made you no less annoying than the overpredicters.

[Legion Again]

2 minutes ago, YourMother the Edgelord said:

And that made you no less annoying than the overpredicters.

I only complain about the stale Pika jokes once a week or so. They get made dozens of times a day. Pretty big difference.