Vijayawada: The state government has authorised the Andhra Pradesh Film Television and Theatre Development Corporation (APFDC) to take up online booking of film tickets by issuing a gazette notification with an amendment to the AP Cinemas (Regulation) Rules, 1970 on Thursday.
Accordingly, the APFDC has been authorised to procure, design, develop, integrate and maintain computerised services of online ticketing solution for ticketing for cinema theatres and filmgoers in the state under an online system. It will procure, design, develop and undertake all allied activities to maintain a platform through the internet or through emerging technologies throughout the state to enable online ticketing solutions. It is entitled to engage service providers to operate the portal, gateway and the platform. It will take up sale of cinema tickets through its service provider, directly to the cine goers through its platform on collection of a service charge not exceeding two per cent of the rate of admission into the cinema theatres.
The ticket aggregators/cinemas who are already engaged in the business of providing tickets through their respective online platforms, will be allowed to continue such business only through the gateway created and operated by the APFDC at a service charge not exceeding two per cent on rate of admission. They will be permitted to utilise the gateway of APFDC through the application programming interface.
The APFDC is authorised to enter into agreements with all theatres in the state to be connected to the portal created and the theatres are to provide requisite infrastructure to integrate sale of tickets with the API.
All cinema theatres are supposed to comply with the requirements under Rule 17A as introduced, within 30 days of the introduction of online sale of tickets and in default, their license shall stand suspended pending compliance with the norms. The APFDC shall not enable the portal for sale of tickets earlier than seven days from the date of the first exhibition of the cinema in film theatres.
The APFDC and the ticket aggregators/cinema theatres engaged in the business of sale of online tickets, are supposed to display the price charged per ticket including amount collectible towards GST, service charges and others on the face of every ticket.
Home principal secretary Harish Kumar Gupta issued the notification.
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