Village Roadshow delivers record-breaking opening weekend with Dynatrace

Village Roadshow’s cinema exhibition business has consistently delivered the latest blockbusters and other cinematic experiences to audiences across Australia since 1954. Its revenue relies heavily on ticket sales, which have undergone significant transformations as customer behavior has evolved. Today, ticket purchases often occur online, during peak periods of demand. The launch of a new blockbuster can result in more than a hundred times the typical traffic surging to Village Roadshow’s website and app. Following the conclusion of Covid-related restrictions, which had postponed routine maintenance work, these traffic spikes began to disrupt the ticketing systems, putting customer experience and revenue at risk. Since these peaks often occurred during evenings and weekends, team members felt obligated to work unconventional hours to keep ticketing systems operational.

Village Roadshow identified that its fragmented approach to monitoring was one of the main problems contributing to its challenges. Without a unified view of the environment supporting its ticketing systems, Village Roadshow struggled to pinpoint the precise root cause of issues. Rather than implementing solutions to resolve its problems conclusively, the team often resorted to simply resetting systems to restore service. This approach inevitably led to recurrent issues during future traffic spikes. The labor, and time-intensive nature of resolving downtime strained Village Roadshow’s resources.

These issues became increasingly urgent as the “Barbenheimer” blockbuster weekend approached – with the simultaneous release of the massively marketed Barbie and Oppenheimer films. This was set to be one of the biggest, most significant opening weekends in cinema history. In anticipation of the record demand, Village Roadshow’s systems integration partner advised the company to make a significant investment in its solution licensing to avoid the risk of revenue-impacting outages. However, Village Roadshow suspected its fragmented monitoring capability was obscuring the deeper problem. After a comprehensive evaluation of the market, it selected Dynatrace’s unified observability platform, due to the speed and accuracy of its AI-powered insights and rapid root cause analysis. With Dynatrace, Village Roadshow was able to rapidly identify the true source of the issue and resolve it before the peak in customer demand.

“We knew that the Barbie and Oppenheimer opening weekend was coming ahead of time, and it was going to be a big one. And we were right, it was the largest opening weekend in history,” said Michael Fagan, Chief Transformation Officer at Village Roadshow. “Dynatrace allowed us to improve our system and fix problems that we didn't know we even we had, saving us millions of dollars in revenue.”

• $5 million revenue safeguarded – Dynatrace’s precise answers enabled Village Roadshow to resolve the pervasive problem in its ticketing systems ahead of one of its highest-ever spikes in demand. By preventing an outage during this critical period, Dynatrace played a pivotal role in ensuring Village Roadshow was able to maximize the $5 million revenue opportunity from ticket sales during the “Barbenheimer” weekend.
• Greater operational efficiency – By providing unparalleled insight into its technology stack, Dynatrace enabled Village Roadshow to resolve the longstanding issues in its ticketing systems with confidence. Instead of making an unnecessary investment in a new database solution, Village Roadshow gained the knowledge to permanently address the root of the problem, through simple and cost-effective measures.
• Proactively resolving issues – Dynatrace’s single view across its entire technology stack allowed Village Roadshow to transition from a reactive to a proactive approach in addressing future issues. Potential problems are now identified and resolved well before they impact ticketing systems, leading to optimized customer journeys and exceptional cinema experiences.
• Boosting team morale – The precise answers from Dynatrace have saved countless hours the IT and operations teams previously spent troubleshooting and triaging ticketing system issues. The early warnings from Dynatrace have eliminated the need for team members to resolve issues on evenings, weekends, or during holidays, significantly improving their morale.

“One of the biggest impacts of partnering with Dynatrace is the amount of time given back to our teams,” said Fagan. “There are no more sleepless nights on the weekends. I'm confident that as we enter the Christmas period, I won't be getting a phone call on Christmas Day saying we have a ticketing issue for our Boxing Day bookings.”