Final Regulatory Assessment and Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Final Rule - Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability by Public Accommodations - Movie Theaters; Movie Captioning and Audio Description

As explained in Section 2.1.4, movie theaters operating in the United States are categorized by venue type.  The final rule’s scoping requirements for captioning and audio description devices vary depending on the size of the venue (i.e., the number of auditoriums exhibiting digital movies within a movie theater complex).  Therefore, the analysis first breaks down the total number of indoor movie theater auditoriums (approximately 39,338 as presented above in Table 3-1) across the various venue types.  The Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) Theatrical Market Statistics – 2009 contains statistics of the 2009 breakdown of movie theater auditoriums in the United States by four venue types:

• Megaplex (16+ auditoriums);

• Multiplex (8–­15 auditoriums);

• Miniplex (2–­7 auditoriums); and

• Single-Auditorium movie theaters.

There has been no update to this distribution since the 2009 MPAA report.¹³  Recently, however, the 2014 MPAA report provided the percentage of U.S. auditoriums across different venue size categories (i.e., eight or more auditoriums and seven or fewer auditoriums).¹⁴  This section shows how the distribution of auditoriums by venue type in 2015 is derived using data from the 2009 and 2014 MPAA reports.

Table 3-2 presents the percentage of auditoriums operated in each venue type, according to the 2009 MPAA report and the 2014 MPAA report.  According to the 2009 report (first column), the number of auditoriums in Megaplex and Multiplex movie theaters (venues with 8 or more auditoriums) accounted for about 75 percent of all auditoriums in the United States in 2009.  In the 2014 MPAA report (second column), approximately 84 percent of all auditoriums are operated in venues with eight or more auditoriums, up from 75 percent in 2009.  The final, rightmost column in Table 3-2 shows the estimated current distribution of auditoriums by venue type, using the data in the 2009 and 2014 MPAA reports.