(Dan Tri) – In response to a post claiming that with the announced revenue, `that means 1 out of every 3 people in urban areas and from 18-40 years old will watch the movie Mai`, many people questioned the revenue.
Inflated revenue, suspicious figures?
Mai – Tran Thanh’s film work – is successively establishing record milestones in revenue.
According to data from Box Office Vietnam (an independent monitoring unit), as of the morning of February 22, Mai achieved revenue of 407 billion VND.
Mai – a `sold out` movie for Tet this year (Photo: CJ HK Entertainment).
Besides the positive reactions to the Mai fever, many opinions expressed doubts about the revenue the film achieved.
On social networks, a post received a large amount of interaction, in which network users questioned whether or not manufacturers and statistical units were `inflating` sales and publishing `false` figures.
According to the post, it is estimated that each movie ticket costs 100,000 VND on average. When the movie reached 367 billion VND in revenue, it meant that about 3.6 million people went to see Mai.
`According to the population ratio, the whole country will have about 11.85 million people who satisfy all the following factors: from 18-40 years old, living in urban areas.
With the announced revenue of 367 billion VND, that means 1 out of every 3 people in urban areas and from 18-40 years old will watch the movie Mai.
This information caused great controversy, while some people shared the same opinion, expressing doubts about the film’s revenue numbers, others said that the author used an inaccurate statistical method, lacking reference value.
The audience believes that it is impossible to calculate the method of dividing revenue and ticket prices equally to calculate the number of people who went to the theater to see Mai.
An opposing opinion: `There are people who went to see the theater 2 or 3 times, and there are people who were given tickets but didn’t see it. There are also many 16 and 17 year old students who go to the theater. In addition, there are few theaters in rural areas and provinces.
We cannot use a survey of 10 people around who have not seen Mai yet, leading to suspicion of fraudulent and inflated sales figures.`
What do publishers and independent statistical units say?
Box Office Vietnam (BOVN) is a site that synthesizes and analyzes box office revenue data across the territory of Vietnam, operating since 2016. This is also the only unit in Vietnam that compiles statistics on cinema complexes and rooms.
Revenue of movies during the day, according to BOVN statistics as of 2:00 p.m. February 22 (Photo: Screenshot).
Talking to Dan Tri reporter, Mr. Nguyen Khanh Duong – Founder of BOVN – said that all BOVN data is collected and compiled from public ticket sales data on domestic theater systems.
Regarding netizens’ post claiming that Mai’s movie revenue was `inflated`, Mr. Nguyen Khanh Duong said: `According to our data, what Mai’s movie producer announced is correct.`
Regarding the issue of the average age of the audience and the rate of going to the cinema to watch Mai by region, BOVN said the website does not have statistics on the age of viewers.
Statistics on `Mai` revenue rates by region, calculated from February 10 to February 14 (Photo: provided by BOVN).
Dan Tri reporter also asked Mr. Nguyen Khanh Duong about his comments wondering why there is a difference between the data announced by BOVN and the data given by the film producer and distributor.
Accordingly, CJ HK Entertainment (Mai’s publisher) announces revenue at 12 noon every day, with a number about several tens of billions VND lower than the actual figure at the same time on Box Office Vietnam’s website.
From this detail, netizens ask what is the exact data on Mai’s revenue, and which number is reliable?
Mr. Nguyen Khanh Duong explained: `It is never possible for a third party’s data to be 100% accurate with the issuer’s internal data. This happens in any field of data statistics.
For example, how can Forbes know the real assets of Elon Musk and Bill Gates?
Mr. Duong affirmed that BOVN’s data scanning algorithm has been improved over time.
`We also need to note that BOVN’s displayed data is the total revenue excluding value-added tax (because ticket prices of theater complexes are ticket prices that include VAT), so the real income of the publisher will
Mr. Duong added that in the case of the movie Mai, all announcements by the distributor and production crew used figures lower than BOVN’s statistics.
`I think this is correct, there is no problem here. Tran Thanh also shared BOVN’s results on his personal fanpage,` the founder of BOVN said.
Director Tran Thanh and the cast at the premiere on January 30 (Photo: Bich Phuong).
Meanwhile, CJ HK Entertainment refused to comment on the rumor that Mai’s movie `inflated its revenue`.
However, the publisher also shared about the process of confirming daily revenue figures: `CJ HK Entertainment receives daily revenue reports from theaters across the country, collects and sends them back. At the end of each screening day
Because the daily revenue report is the basis for theater businesses to re-account film revenue for the distributor, the deviation of this report is less than 1% and will be adjusted the next day if any.
Regarding the data difference, the publisher explained: `The total amount displayed directly on BOVN will include pre-booked tickets to go see the movie the following days.
Usually, we will compile the exact data on tickets sold today at 12 noon the next day.
The publisher added that as of February 21, Mai’s ticket sales were approximately 4.6 million.