Because Sangiuliano’s Cinema Bonus is like the Battleship Kotiomkin

The fact that the idea was to Dario Franceschini should have aroused some suspicion. Instead the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano he considered that of his predecessor a genius. And so he signed a decree, he before him, “to bring people back to the cinema” through a 3 euro discountto be downloaded with the Spid, for each ticket detached in a span of three months with a maximum price of 7 euros, so “the final price for the spectator will not exceed 4 euros”, says Sangiuliano. Allocated resources: 10 million euros.

Cinemas, after Covid, have entered into deep crisis. But it’s really a challenge to logic and mathematics to deal with it like this. A trivial calculation is enough: with a 10 million allocation and a 3 euro discount 3.33 million tickets are financed. In 2021, annus horribilis of cinemas in Italy (-55% of admissions), 5.7 million tickets were sold in the month of December alone. It means that if the bonus started on December 1st it would last a couple of weeks (less than three months!). And only to subsidize the same entrances of the worst year in history.

But if the goal is to “bring people back to the movies”, that is the 13 million tickets in December 2019the bonus would last eight days. In any case, a temporary discount it will go to finance those who are already in the hall, without any substantial help for cinemas. In short the Sangiulian bonusas one who filled the halls would have said, is a bit like the Battleship Kotiomkin.

• Luciano Capone

• Grew up in Irpinia, in Savignano. Studies in Milan, Catholic University. Liberal by training, journalist by deformation. Al Foglio first as a reader, then a collaborator, finally an editor. I mainly deal with economics, but also with politics, investigations, culture, miscellaneous and possible