There is firm which offers a paid service to predict opening day numbers for films named Ormax Media and basically last week there was a text going around in the industry about how bad their predictions were. Then a couple of days later there was a long message going around from this firm about how correct they are and how good their predictions are. It takes just one or two days to respond to negativity though you yourselves may be doing something which you should not be doing for years.
The problem here for us was not whether the predictions were right or wrong but for each first day actual box office the numbers were stolen from this site and it was not one or two films but over 20 films. The numbers were rounded off like a 39.32 crore for Prem Ratan Dhan Payo becomes 39.30 crore nett which is actually worse but clearly data for 20 plus films was taken from this website. Though you have adjusted by 2-3 lakh it does not change the fact that you have stolen the data. Tomorrow you can adjust more but the pattern is there. The company seems to be one of those unethical types as though the internet is open to all but if you are using someones work especially for business purposes you should take permission. Its the way of the internet as even small bloggers who use information ask permission beforehand.
This is not the first time this has happened though. A few months back we were alerted by a production house of this firm using our data as when they gave the production house some stupid reasons as to why their prediction had gone wrong, they wrote the source for collections was boxofficeindia.com. At the time this did not look much until this message where the data for every film is taken from the website came up. Obviously its done as they would look frauds if they took the media totals and gave to producers inflated totals as actuals. Then checking on the firm its get worse as this Ormax Media takes collections and footfalls from this website and gives to another website claiming to be the knowledge partners when that so called knowledge is coming from boxofficeindia.com. Also when someone is informed about what they are doing is wrong there is usually some sort of reason given and it stops but the ethics here are so low so no such thing.
This firm did contact us possibly 4-5 years back but we were told they also track the box office numbers but obviously thats not the case as then there would be need for the numbers on boxofficeindia.com. Now coming to the predictions game its a fools game as you are going top be wrong very often. This firm going by the message they sent seems to think that if they are within plus / minus 10% its an accurate prediction. This means when a film opens at 25 crore nett and they predicted in the 22.5-27.50 crore nett range its an accurate prediction. There is not much you can say about that as its for all to see and what chance is there of a wrong prediction with that range.
Its hard to say what they predicted right or wrong before as we did not collect their data but there were studios who did note the company jacked up the opening of M.S Dhoni - the Untold Story over a matter of days as they probably got hold of the advance figures. But that is the past we can only go by present. The firm last week had the following.
The Ghazi Attack - 1 cr (actual opening 1.52 crore)
Running Shaadi - 30 lakhs (actual opening 12 lakhs)
Irada - 20 lakhs (actual opening 11 lakhs)
For the films coming
Rangoon - 5.9 crore
Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania - 11.2 crore
Internally our expected first day numbers are 10-12% higher for both films. The above is just an example and not all the films this firm is tracking but the point is its not hard to find the data this company is feeding within the industry and put it up without permission and this can be done all the time but that means going down to the same level.
Also this gives us an opportunity to tell why predictions are not up on this website. There are emails all the time to make predictions a few days before a release on the website and though we do internally it does not go up because simply the business has so many permutations. You can do things like 5-7 crore or 25-30 crore which is all laughable as far as the reader is concerned. Last year internally 48 predictions were there and only 15 were correct and this is working on a minus / plus 5% ratio which can be called a good prediction. So for a film opening 25 crore nett, a 23.75-26.25 crore prediction would be correct range. So with a ratio of just 30% being right it hardly deserves to be up on the website.
Now it remains to be seen how long this firm keeps on stealing data and how long do they pass off boxofficeindia.com numbers as ormax knowledge.
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