Every time you buy a cinema ticket online in Australia, you're almost certainly being shown a price that doesn't comply with the law.
Not in some technical, grey-area sense. In a plain, black-letter-law sense. And the regulator knows it.
The Law Is Not Ambiguous
Section 48 of the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) is clear. If you're advertising the price of a good or service to consumers, you must display the single price — the minimum total amount a person would have to pay for that supply, including all charges that are unavoidable at the time of the representation.
Subsection 48(7) defines what a "single price" means. It's the total, including any charge of any description payable to the supplier — unless that charge is genuinely optional and not pre-selected. Taxes, duties, fees — if you can't avoid them, they're in the price.
That's not a suggestion. It's the law.
Now Look at How Cinemas Sell Tickets Online
Go to almost any major cinema chain's website — Event Cinemas, HOYTS, Village, Reading — and try to buy a ticket. You'll see a price. You'll pick your seats. And then, right at the end, a per-ticket "booking fee" gets added.
This fee is not optional. You can't remove it. You can't negotiate it. If you're buying a ticket online — which is the primary way most people buy tickets now — the fee is unavoidable at the time of the representation.
That makes it part of the single price under s48. Full stop.
The advertised ticket price on the homepage, on the session page, and on the seat selection screen is not the price you will pay. It's a component of the price. And displaying a component price without the single price prominently displayed is exactly what the ACL is designed to prevent.
The ACCC Knows This — They Fined Dendy for It
In June 2025, the ACCC issued an infringement notice to Dendy Cinema Pty Ltd for exactly this practice. Dendy was displaying ticket prices online that excluded the mandatory per-ticket booking fee, only revealing the real total at the final stage of checkout.
The ACCC called it drip pricing. Dendy paid a $19,800 penalty.
ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe said at the time:
"Consumers are sometimes lured into purchases they would not otherwise have made when businesses display only part of the price upfront."
The ACCC also said it was "looking at pricing practices in the cinema industry more broadly."
So far, so good. But here's where it falls apart.
What Actually Changed? Almost Nothing.
The ACCC's approach to Dendy — and to Palace Cinemas before them, who paid a $10,800 penalty for the same thing — wasn't to force them to include the booking fee in the ticket price. It was to make them disclose the fee more prominently.
In other words: you can still show a price that isn't the real price. You just have to put a little disclaimer somewhere saying "a booking fee will apply."
That is not what the law says.
Section 48 doesn't say "display the single price, or alternatively, put a footnote somewhere." It says display the single price. The minimum total cost. Including unavoidable charges. Prominently. As a single figure.
A disclaimer is not a single figure. A disclaimer is exactly the kind of drip pricing the provision was written to eliminate.
"But You Can Avoid It by Going In Person"
This is the defence. Every time this gets raised, someone from the industry — or a commenter on the internet — trots out the same line: "The booking fee is avoidable. Just go to the cinema and buy your ticket at the box office."
Let's think about what that actually means.
You're on the cinema's website. You've picked your movie. You've picked your session. You've picked your seats. And then you're told there's a fee you didn't know about. Your options are:
- Pay the fee
- Abandon the entire transaction, drive to the cinema, hope the session isn't sold out, hope the seats you wanted are still available, and buy at the counter
That's not "avoiding a fee." That's abandoning one method of purchase entirely and starting a completely different transaction from scratch. The fee was unavoidable within the context of the representation being made — which was an online purchase. At the point the price was shown to you on a screen, the fee was baked in. You couldn't complete that purchase without it.
And if that logic holds — that a fee is "avoidable" because you can abandon the transaction and go do something else — then where exactly do you draw the line?
Can a business advertise a product for $10 online, add a $5 "digital convenience fee" at checkout, and argue it's avoidable because you could drive to their warehouse? Can they add a $50 surcharge that's avoidable if you collect the item by helicopter? At what point does the "alternative" become so absurd that we admit the fee was never really optional?
If you've ever watched Nathan For You, you already know where this logic ends up. Nathan Fielder once helped a petrol station offer fuel at drastically reduced prices — with the rebate available only if customers hiked to the top of a mountain to collect it. In another episode, he sold a television for $1, but the customer had to wear a tuxedo, crawl through a tiny door, and get past a live alligator.
The joke worked because the "option" to avoid paying full price was technically real but practically absurd. That's satire. But swap in "just drive to the cinema and hope for the best" and you're not far off.
The law doesn't ask whether a consumer could theoretically avoid a charge by abandoning the transaction and pursuing a completely different one. Section 48 asks what charges are unavoidable at the time of the representation. If you're looking at a price on a website, and you cannot complete that purchase without paying the fee, the fee is part of the single price. End of story.
The ACCC Took Action — Then Accepted a Result That Still Breaks the Law
Here's what makes this worse. The ACCC didn't just ignore the problem. They actively pursued Dendy and Palace, identified the breach, issued penalties — and then accepted an outcome where those companies still don't include the booking fee in the single price.
The "fix" was a disclosure. A line on the page saying a booking fee applies. The fee still gets added at checkout. The headline price still doesn't include it. The single price, as defined by s48(7), is still not being displayed.
That's not compliance. That's a negotiated compromise with a law that doesn't have room for compromise. Section 48 doesn't say "display the single price, or disclose that the single price isn't actually the single price." It says display the single price. The ACCC identified a breach, took enforcement action, and then settled for a remedy that still constitutes the same breach — just with a footnote.
Every Other Cinema Chain Is Doing the Same Thing
Since the ACCC accepted that substandard outcome, the rest of the industry has taken it as a green light. Event Cinemas, HOYTS, Village, Reading — every one of them advertises a headline ticket price that excludes an unavoidable booking fee for online purchases. All they have is a little disclaimer that “a booking fee will be added after ticket selection”.
If the ACCC's own infringement notice says Dendy breached s48 by failing to include unavoidable fees in the single price, then by that same logic, every cinema company doing the same thing is also in breach — including Dendy and Palace, right now, post-enforcement, with the ACCC's blessing.
This isn't a matter of interpretation. It's the same conduct, by the same type of business, on the same type of platform, with the same type of fee. The only difference is that some of them have a disclaimer the law doesn't provide for.
Why Isn't the ACCC Acting?
The ACCC listed "misleading surcharging practices and other add-on costs" as a compliance and enforcement priority for 2025–26. They took action against Dendy. They took action against Palace in 2016. They said they were examining the broader cinema industry.
But the outcome of that examination appears to be: we told them to put a disclaimer on their website, and we moved on.
That's not enforcement. That's a participation trophy.
The ACCC has the power to pursue court-imposed penalties, injunctions, and compliance orders. A $19,800 infringement notice to a company operating 52 screens is not a deterrent — it's a rounding error. And it sends a clear message to every other cinema chain: the worst that'll happen is a small fine and a strongly worded media release.
What Should Happen
The fix is not complicated:
- Every cinema company that charges an unavoidable online booking fee should be required to include that fee in the advertised single price, as the law already requires under s48(7)
- If a business refuses to comply, the ACCC should pursue court action, not just infringement notices
- The ACCC should issue formal guidance making it unambiguous that online booking fees that cannot be avoided at the time of the price representation are part of the single price — not optional extras to be disclosed in a footnote
Consumers deserve to see the real price. That's what the law demands. That's what the ACCC should be enforcing.
The Bottom Line
The Australian Consumer Law already has the tools to fix this. Section 48 is not broken — it's just not being enforced consistently.
Dendy got a slap. Palace got a slap. The rest of the industry watched, kept their booking fees separate and carried on.
If the ACCC is serious about drip pricing being a priority, the next step isn't another media release. It's making every cinema company in Australia actually comply with the law that already exists.