The rules
Two economies share one room. The house you sit in is bought and held. The eight seats that reach the screen are rented by the hour, to whoever wants them most this hour.
Your seat is what you have paid
Rank inside a tier is your cumulative spend, and ties go to whoever paid first. There is no editorial board, no ranking model, no engagement score. Somebody with a bigger card can always sit in front of you, and you can always pay to sit in front of them.
Being outspent moves you, not out
When someone passes you, you slide to the next seat your total still qualifies for. Your spend stays on your ledger, so raising your position later costs only the difference — never the whole amount again. Nobody is ever evicted from the hall for being outbid.
The front row is not the best seat
Rows A and B are closest to the screen and among the cheapest in the building, exactly as they are in a real cinema. The eight best seats sit mid-house, behind a brass rail, raised. The map is worth learning.
The Eight go up every hour
Only those eight seats reach the screen. Eight slots at thirty seconds is a four-minute reel that loops fifteen times an hour, so each holder plays fifteen times. Rank sets your position in the reel, which means slot one opens every single loop.
You pay the second price
Name the most you are willing to pay. When the hour seals, you pay one increment more than the bid below you — never your own maximum, and never less than the reserve. So there is no advantage in shading your bid, and no penalty for naming your real number.
A bid placed in the closing minutes pushes the close back, so nobody wins by being last. The extension can never run past the moment the reel is due to change.
Standby is the cheap way on screen
The twelve seats directly behind the rail get a three-second logo grid at the head of every loop. And if any of the eight slots goes unfilled, the highest-ranked Standby holder is promoted into it, free, for that hour. It is a cheap ad plus a lottery ticket on the expensive one — and it is how the reel never shows a blank slot.
Money never leaves through the auction
You top up a wallet, and every bid is held against it. Losing a bid releases the hold; it does not trigger a refund, because nothing left in the first place. Winning moves the held amount out and onto your ledger.