Move over box office collection records, Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmaavat has just created another record. BookMyShow, which is India's largest online events ticketing platform, sold over 5 million tickets of Padmaavat across 340 cities and towns since its release.
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Padmaavat was released on January 25 in three languages – Hindi, Tamil and Telugu – and in 2D, 3D and IMAX. The film, starring Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, and Shahid Kapoor, opened on a good note at the box office and went on to earn Rs 114 crore in its first weekend. And BookMyShow contributed around 60 percent of the Rs 100 crore total collection.
What's more interesting is that in just five days, the film contributed around 35 percent of the total movie ticket sales on the ticket booking platform in the month of January. This makes BookMyShow the online leader in movie tickets sales when compared to other ticket booking platforms, including Paytm and TicketNew.
"Padmaavat has definitely given the movies business a great start this year. BookMyShow sold over 500 tickets a minute, making our contribution as high as over 60 percent to the film's opening weekend collection. With some exciting releases lined up, we do expect February to be a good month for the movies business," Marzdi Kalianiwala, VP- Marketing and Business Intelligence, BookMyShow, said in a statement.
"As market leaders, we also continue to work closely with production houses and movie theatres to increase footfalls and drive ticket sales – in line with our endeavor to increase the overall share of online movie ticketing in India. Our extensive marketing strategies, backed by real-time user engagement data and incisive understanding of the entertainment industry, allows us to play a larger role in the growth of the overall category," added Marzdi.
The 5 million ticket sales of Padmaavat is laudable considering that the film was banned in several states. However, it is still not the highest ever recorded sales of BookMyShow.
According to data obtained by IBT India from BookMyShow, for Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, the online ticketing platform sold 16 million tickets. In fact, the advance booking sales of Baahubali 2 was more than 3.3 million tickets.
Baahubali also earned around Rs 120 crore in its opening weekend from just BookMyShow platform. Previously, Aamir Khan's Dangal had crossed the Rs 100 crore mark over a span of four weeks. And if Padmaavat continues to maintain its pace then it will become the second movie to break Dangal's record.
