Secret Cinema’s new owners want to be the Netflix of live events
The new owners of Secret Cinema have got their Hollywood ending. Nearly three years after setting sights on the immersive filmgoing experience, they are reigniting its global expansion plans as part of a strategy to become the Netflix of live events.
When they first came to London in early 2020 to discuss a possible takeover, the company was celebrating a hit adaptation of a show from that streaming platform – more than 100,000 fans would ultimately attend its real-world imagining of Stranger Things.
But two months later the UK entered lockdown and Secret Cinema, used to charging as much as £139 a ticket for its £9m immersive screenings with actors and elaborate sets recreating worlds from Star Wars to Dirty Dancing, found itself embroiled in a row over almost £1m in emergency aid it received from the government’s culture recovery fund.
“We first met with the management of Secret [Group] in January 2020, right before the pandemic,” says Brian Fenty, a co-founder of the US-based digital ticketing firm TodayTix Group, which acquired the parent company in an $100m (£88m) deal late last month.
“They had Stranger Things going on in London, which was exceptional, and had woven these relationships with [Hollywood] studios. They were attracting audiences of all ages and backgrounds. Then the pandemic got thrown at us. We had to focus on our team of 300 employees, so that took a pause.”
Along with the rest of the live events industry, Secret Cinema took a hammering throughout the pandemic. Turnover fell more than 60%, from £15.7m to £6.1m, between 2019 and 2020, and slumped to just £452,000 last year, with pre-tax losses topping £12m over the last three years.
Under the leadership of Max Alexander, the former telecoms executive and
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