According to a report by the third-party data unit Top Data, Stephen Chow's new martial arts comedy - "The Kungfu Women's Football Team" (starring Zhang Xiaofei, Dilireba, Zhang Yixing) - has been "snatched box office revenue" on a large scale after its release.
Although the recorded revenue of the work currently reaches 1.6 billion RMB (as of July 22), the rate of revenue fraud or concealment nationwide is estimated to be about 28%, equivalent to a loss of more than 400 million RMB (about more than 1,500 billion VND). The part that can be traced through the online ticketing system alone has exceeded 20 million RMB.
However, immediately after that, the person in charge of Stephen Chow's Fan Association in Shanghai spoke out, saying that the data of this unit "does not reflect the reality", and affirmed that the amount recovered was much lower than the above figure.
This person said that in fact only 404 cinemas violated, and after being guided by functional agencies, these cinemas have returned the related revenue. At the same time, law enforcement agencies have also handled violating units according to regulations.
The producer of "The Kungfu Women's Football Team" has not specifically confirmed the revenue loss due to ticket fraud.
However, the theft of box office revenue is true. It can now be confirmed that Stephen Chow's fan community has self-organized the collection of evidence and helped recover more than 1.6 million CNY of lost revenue.
Typical forms of fraud include theaters using the excuse of ticket vending machines having problems to issue handwritten tickets or blank tickets. This amount is completely not recorded in the national ticketing system, causing manufacturers not to receive revenue shares.
Issuing "two-price tickets" or "yin-yang tickets": audiences buy movie tickets but are only printed with popcorn or snack bills, or tickets are labeled with the name of another movie with few viewers, causing revenue to be transferred to another movie.
Or there are cases of enticing audiences to cancel tickets purchased through the system, then selling tickets directly at a lower price by bank transfer or cash. This transaction does not leave any data in the ticket sales system.
Faced with the above suspicions, Stephen Chow posted a picture of the handwritten ticket on social networks, along with three question marks to express his skepticism.
The producer also simultaneously replaced the encrypted film version at cinemas nationwide, and applied a 4-stage encryption lock system. Violating cinemas will not be granted decryption locks for the next stage to prevent fraud by technical measures.
In addition, the Tinh Gia fan community in China is actively collecting evidence such as blank tickets, fake tickets... continuing to help recover part of the lost revenue.
Meanwhile, the producer also opened a channel to receive denunciations, calling on audiences to quickly reflect if violations are detected.
