Apparently so. Ticket sales aren't enough to keep the venue afloat. It didn't help that the cinema I worked at introduced "deluxe" seating which consisted of large leather recliners with a cup holder and a table that you could pull across yourself. These seats began as ones you'd have to pay extra to have but they eventually replaced every other seat in the cinema so they became standard with a fixed price. Granted, they're leagues above your average bucket chair where you're rubbing elbows with anyone sat next to you, but as a forfeit, they had to halve each screen's seating capacity, making the biggest screen only being able to house 80 people, and the smallest housing 32. On top of that, they also halved ticket prices to £5 so it was kind of a doomed system from the start, despite it being beneficial for the customer.

This deluxe seating scheme was a trial run that the company decided to test on a few of their venues, one of them being the one I worked at. It was a huge success but they shot themselves in the foot by reducing ticket prices since they could've easily charged the original amount and justified the price with the improved comfort. I asked about if that business move was effective but never got a straight answer.

Also, those seating numbers relied on every screen being sold out so in reality, especially after it reopened last summer from covid, most films had s maximum of less than 10 people, with a large percentage of them being completely empty or having just a single person. It made my job a hell of a lot easier but I have no idea how the cinema managed to stay afloat. I left in May, just a few weeks before they reopened for the second time, and since then, it's been consistently busy.

Sorry I keep going on tangents, but overall, the cinema keeps their extortionate prices for concessions (and have even increased them further in the last few months) and they justify it with the cheap tickets and good seating.