Trends in movie ticket prices

I was looking at the box office numbers from last weekend supplied by Yahoo; the main stream media roll out these figures every week and quite often the headlines are about recordbreaking dollar totals for the films in release. Sometimes the fact that ticket prices have been raised is mentioned. I have wondered exactly how often and how much movie ticket prices have been raised. Well, a Google search turned up "Admissions & Ticket Prices: Two Popular Myths" in a theater industry trade publication.

Two pieces of data from that article:

Here are some U.S. admissions numbers over the past 35 years (in millions):

1970 920.6
1980 1,021.5
1990 1,188.6
2000 1,420.8
2001 1,487.3
2002 1,639.3
2003 1,574.0
2004 1,536.1

The author argued that since ticket prices for other entertainment such as pro sports had increased radically over the same time frame as the above chart, that movie ticket price increases have not been out of line. The chart is rather poorly conceived, however looking at it closely shows that admissions basically tracked population growth from 1980 to 1991; then increased somewhat faster than population growth. I attribute the increased admissions to the wave of fancy new stadium theaters that were built and the film production companies' shift in strategy to aiming for blockbuster hits. The chart and the data show that admissions stagnated after 2002. I attribute that to ticket price increases hitting the wall where casual moviegoers are deciding that ticket prices are too high.

Update: I located the following information at the site of the National Association of Theater Owners, or NATO:)...

Average U.S. Ticket Prices

Year	Price
2006	$6.55
2005	6.41
2004	6.21
2003	6.03
2002	5.80
2001	5.65
2000	5.39
1999	5.06
1998	4.69
1997	4.59
1996	4.42
1995	4.35
1994	4.08
1993	4.14
1992	4.15
1991	4.21
1990	4.22
1989*	3.99
1988	4.11
1987	3.91
1986	3.71
1985	3.55
1984	3.36
1983	3.15
1982	2.94
1981	2.78
1980	2.69
1979	2.47
1978	2.34
1977	2.23

Here is a chart of this pricing information:

Since ticket prices increased every year after 1994, it would stand to reason that ticket sales might stagnate.