The goal is simply to burn cash to get big enough that they can threaten AMC and Regal to do a rev share.
That's it for now. If this works, then the data might become valuable. But for now it's just a race to scale up before the cash runs out.
That is the exact thing that makes the data actually interesting: it removes the risk factor, aka "do I want to see a movie for $12/person and risk that it's trash?", from the viewer's decision process.
I'm a lot more willing to walk out of a movie I didn't pay for. There's not really a way to capture this data right now, but the MoviePass system requires you to have an app on your phone, and check in shortly before the movie, at the theater.
If I was them I'd be looking at putting audio fingerprinting on the phone to determine whether people leave before the movie ends.
- the theatre chains only have mostly generic datasets (the audience for movie X is mostly young white males) while MoviePass can do far more detailed analysis (and, in theory, could pass detailed questionnaires after you watched a movie, thus gathering more personalized data)
- online movie booking services (at least in my social bubble) are only used for movies where people think they don't have a chance to get a ticket without an early reservation
- movie review sites only have tiny bits of data about the readers, and the reviewer dataset is skewed - it only provides data about the people caring enough to do a review.