Bitcoin Goes to the Movies! Lionsgate Launches Bitcoin Payments, With A Discount

Global movie and TV powerhouse Lionsgate Home Entertainment (NYSE:LGF) has announced that through its partnership with digital payments processor GoCoin, it is now accepting bitcoin payments at its online shop.

LionsgateShop.com is the primary outlet for the companies DVDs and Blu-rays. The selection, although limited, includes hits like Hunger Games – MockingJay Part I, Divergent, John Wick, and box sets for Orange is the new Black, and Mad Men.

"Our acceptance of bitcoins at our online Company shop reflects our commitment to offer greater choice, convenience and accessibility to our next generation consumers."
— – Michael Burns, Lionsgate Vice Chairman

The partnership was first announced in late April, at the convention InsideBitcoins New York, by GoCoin Founder and CEO Steve Beauregard. Bitcoin payments were enabled on the website today, along with a 25% off offer.

Lionsgate is the latest company in Hollywood taking a liking to bitcoin. This June the Bitcoin world was thrilled with the theatrical release of the film Dope, which was not only accepting bitcoin for movie tickets at its launch, but actually included bitcoins in the plot. A surprisingly good movie, Dope went on to gather rave reviews and the very fresh score of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Money as we know it is about to change, soon everyone will be using bitcoin.”
— – Dope

MovieTickets.com was the place to go for bitcoin fans, the site accepted the digital currency during the films promotion, and has continued doing so ever since. Using their service, which claims to be “the Largest Advance Movie Ticketing Platform in the World with 28,000 Screens,” anyone can now purchase movie tickets with bitcoin at “more than 900 screens in the US.”

Lionsgate, however, is a substantially bigger deal for bitcoin in Hollywood. For its home entertainment business, the Hollywood bedrock owns and distributes a library of approximately 16,000 motion picture titles and television programs. Lionsgate leads the industry with its box-office-to-home-entertainment conversion rate, of about 15% above that of the industry average in 2014.

Lionsgate’s many businesses include motion picture production and distribution, television programming and syndication, home entertainment, digital distribution, news channel platforms, video games and international film distribution and sales.

In 2014, the company had approximately 7 percent of studio market share and reported revenue of US$2.4 billion for the fiscal year 2015.

"Whether they pay in dollars, francs or bitcoins, people are spending more money to watch content across more distribution platforms than ever before, and our goal is to offer them greater choice in what they watch, where they watch it, how they watch it and how they pay for it.”
— – Mr. Burns

Even though Lionsgate is only offering a bitcoin payment option for LionsgateShop at this time, the company has many other distribution platforms that could integrate bitcoin payment options in the future.“Lionsgate is also continuing to explore additional opportunities to integrate bitcoins and its underlying blockchain technology into its merchandising and sales activities,” a company press release stated.

Payments partner GoCoin has made it their mission to allow merchants to accept Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin payments, charging only 1% in fees. The company has been focused on serving the entertainment and gaming industry, being the first e-commerce payment solution to process digital currencies for industries where traditional payment networks are considered high risk.

"Lionsgate has proven itself to be an innovator among Hollywood studios in its content, marketing and business strategies, and we’re delighted to partner with a company that shares our vision of a currency ecosystem that offers consumers the power of choice."
— – Steve Beauregard, GoCoin Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Today, GoCoin has approximately 11,000 merchants and processes roughly 100,000 monthly transactions across three different blockchains. "The Lionsgate rollout couldn’t come at a better time, as GoCoin’s merger with Ziftr offers an integrated digital coupon loyalty platform to incentivize consumer use of digital currency," Beauregard added.

Lionsgate’s feature film successes included the first three installments of The Hunger Games franchise, the first two installments of the Divergent franchise, The Age of Adaline, The DUFF, John Wick, Now You See Me and Pantelion Films’ Instructions Not Included, which is the highest-grossing Spanish-language film ever released in the U.S.

The film company is also a leader in television shows, with more than 30 television series running currently on over 20 different networks. Over the past 10 years, the company’s television programming has won 25 Emmy Awards, earned 161 nominations, and has been nominated and won numerous Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards. Thier most recent popular series include the hit series Orange is the New Black, Nashville, The Wendy Williams Show, Manhattan, The Royals as well as the multiple Emmy Award-winning drama Mad Men.

With its fingers in so many customer-facing pies, it’s hard to think of a better company to champion Bitcoin use throughout their organization in terms of helping speed up adoption.