AP govt appoints Nodal agency for online movie ticket booking, guidelines issued

Amaravati: Andhra Pradesh State Film Television and Theatre Development Corporation (APSFTVTDC), has been appointed as the nodal agency for the online ticket booking system for all cinema theatres in the state. Principal Secretary Harish Kumar Gupta issued guidelines for the new system.

A government undertaking, the agency will procure, design, develop and undertake all the allied activities to maintain a platform through the internet or emerging technologies throughout the state to enable online ticketing solutions for the cinema theatres. As per the guidelines, the Nodal agency, through its service provider, will undertake the sale of cinema tickets directly to the cine-goers through its platform on a collection of a service charge not exceeding 2% of the rate of admission into cinema theaters. The cinema theatres will be granted permission to utilize the gateway of the Nodal Agency by being granted the Application Programming Interface (API).

Further, cinema theatres that are already engaged in providing cinema tickets through their online platforms will continue their business only through the gateway created and operated by the nodal agency at a service charge not exceeding 2% on the rate of admission into cinema theatres. As per the new procedure, all the cinema theatres are asked to provide infrastructure to integrate the sale of tickets with the API of the Nodal Agency.

All the cinema theatres under the Act and the Rules shall comply with the requirements under Rule 17A within 30 days of introducing the online sale of tickets. If ignored, their license shall stand suspended pending compliance with the above rules. Also, the nodal agency shall not enable the portal for the sale of tickets earlier than seven days from the date of the first show (new release) of the cinema in theatres.

Price will be printed on tickets

As per the guidelines, the price of movie tickets will be printed on the tickets. The Nodal Agency and the cinema theatres engaged in the sale of online tickets shall display on every ticket the price charged per ticket, including the amount collectible towards GST service charges.