AMC scored with Beyonce, Taylor Swift; now they will broadcast Olympic events

A number of AMC’s movie theaters will play NBC broadcasts of some Paris Olympics events on its screens over the summer. The move marks AMC’s latest foray into alternate content, where the theater operator recently saw major success with Taylor Swift and Beyonce’s concert films.

NBCUniversal, holder of the U.S. media rights to the upcoming Olympics, and AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron both announced the news on Wednesday.

It comes after AMC’s chief executive has talked about looking to alternate content as a way to sell more tickets and to fill more movie theaters in recent earnings calls.

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Under its agreement with NBCUniversal, roughly 160 AMC theaters across the country will get portions of NBC’s live daytime Olympics coverage over a roughly two-week span to ticket and exhibit, according to a press release from the Comcast-owned media company. The showings will kick off July 27, the day after the opening ceremony of the Games, and conclude Aug. 11.

Aron had said in late February there was "other alternate content that we could focus on other than just concert movies," specifically mentioning sports and comedy.

"When you think about the movie theater industry, it’s a dirty little secret that the industry only sells about 15% of our tickets," he told analysts and investors at that time. "And there has to be ways to create alternate content that will not replace what Hollywood’s doing, but will augment what Hollywood is doing by filling some of those empty seats that are just sitting there waiting to be filled."

The CEO of AMC went on to say the "whole notion of how do we increase content is something that’s completely in our wheelhouse, and it’s a direct result of our success in what we tried to do in the fourth quarter and succeeded with Taylor and with Beyonce."

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The company served as the distributor for both Swift’s "Eras Tour" film and Beyonce’s "Renaissance: A Film by Beyonce," something that it had not ever previously done and that boosted its Q4 top and bottom lines.

Swift’s "Eras Tour" film, at nearly $261.66 million globally, generated more ticket sales across the movie industry than any other concert film in history. "Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé" has brought in $43.99 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.

Earlier, in November, Aron said on AMC’s earnings call that the "second thing you’ll see us chasing beyond these concert films is sports," which he said he believed remained an "enormous opportunity for the movie theater industry."

"It’s been a multi-year effort to try to get the rights to do so, but it’s something that we are in active pursuit of as we speak," he said of sports at the time.

AMC has shown some WWE, UFC and other sporting events at theaters in recent years, including in 2021.

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In addition to sports and other concert films, Aron has previously pointed to Bollywood movies and foreign-language films as having potential. 

AMC’s footprint spanned nearly 900 theaters around the world at the end of 2023. Of those, about 560 were in the U.S.