World Cup stars score on the silver screen

By Jeffrey Goldfarb

LONDON (Reuters) – Ronaldinho and David Beckham are joining
Tom Hanks and Johnny Depp on the multiplex marquee this summer
as cinemas on both sides of the Atlantic try to reel in extra
customers by screening World Cup matches.

The Clapham Picturehouse in southwest London attracted 150
fans to watch England beat Paraguay, while the Old Town Cinema
in Alexandria, Virginia, hosted 250 mostly rowdy kids, who
watched the United States fall 3-0 to the Czech Republic.

“It took dead time right off our hands,” Old Town Managing
Partner Roger Fons said. “Now at least we have some flow in
here.”

Fons is supplying a $7 sandwich buffet, with trays that
attach into the seat cupholders, and showing all 64 matches on
HDTV on his 22-feet-wide screen during the month-long
tournament.

British cinema attendance typically drops during big summer
soccer tournaments, so this time around some theatres are
trying the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” method.

Cinema owners are trading on their comfortable seats and
air-conditioning to tempt fans used to standing in overcrowded
pubs and straining to see TV screens amid a summer heat wave.

“It’s a good environment to watch the football,” promised
Marc Allenby, head of marketing for the Picturehouse chain,
which is showing England’s matches at four locations. “You’re
guaranteed a seat.”

The ploy didn’t convince everyone, though. Picturehouse
reached out to the Polish and Iranian communities in London to
see if they might attend screenings of their countries’ matches
but found little interest, Allenby said.

EXPERIMENT

The Vue cinema chain is showing England’s first-round
matches for free at 13 multiplexes around Britain including in
Manchester and Birmingham, while at its Livingston, Scotland,
screen, it is donating the 1 pound ($1.84) entry fee to a
children’s charity.

London’s Imax at the British Film Institute is charging 12
pounds for England’s matches against Trinidad & Tobago and
Sweden, hoping to lure fans with its 40-feet-wide, 30-feet-high
screen and smoke-free environment.

“It is something of an experiment,” spokeswoman Jill
Reading said. “We think there’s an appetite to see the football
on the biggest screen possible, and we have the biggest one in
London. The idea is for us to reach out to a broader audience,
so maybe if they see the football they’ll come back to see
movies.”

Showcase Cinemas in Coventry, in central England, is trying
to duplicate with the World Cup the success the National
Amusements-owned chain has had showing Red Sox baseball games
in selected Boston-area cinemas.

“Our goal is to make each one of our theatres a community
entertainment destination,” spokeswoman Wanda Whitson said.

And while the Drexel Gateway cinema in Columbus, Ohio, said
it is shifting the games to a bigger theater after its smaller
room was at full 40-person capacity for the first U.S. match,
the Virginia cinema is expecting attendance to fall.

“It appears to me, from what I’ve seen so far, that the
United States isn’t going to make it through to any of the
later rounds,” Old Town’s Fons said. “I think I’ll get smaller
crowds, because the United States isn’t going to be there.”