What do people do over the holiday break (other than catch up with friends on Facebook, resolve to diet and hit the gym)? Go to the movies. Christmas Day was the busiest day of the year in share of US Internet visits for websites in the Movies category. IMDB, the top ranked Movie website and popular movie ticketing websites such as Fandango and MovieFone saw their busiest day of the year on December 25th.
Movie ticketing websites enjoyed particularly strong gains over the holidays. Fandango, the leading movie ticketing website, saw US visits increase 3-fold on Christmas Day compared with the site’s average for December. While visits to movie ticketing websites are down year on year, Christmas Day was a rare bright spot, with visits to Fandango up 11% year on year, to MovieFone up 14% and to MovieTickets.com up 6%.
Fandango enjoyed a boost this Christmas from its partners. On December 25th, 22% of visits to Fandango came from movie theater websites (14% from Regal Cinemas alone). In fact, 82% of visits from the Regal Movies website went to Fandango which powers the cinema’s movie listing engine. The following table lists the top 10 websites sending visits to Fandango on Christmas Day.

While Fandango is the leading movie ticketing website, the lines between going to the movies and staying at home to rent a movie continue to blur. LG Electronics recently announced that it will start selling high definition TVs that stream Netflix movies directly. NetFlix ranks #2 in the Hitwise Movie category, ahead of Fandango at #4.