It counts how many critics liked a film, not how much, and PR firms have been caught gaming it.
What it's really for A film and TV review aggregator; the score counts how many critics were positive, not how good a title is.
What our grade covers The grade on this page is about its Tomatometer share-of-positive-critics score, not everything the site does.
High Scoring Confidence Checked against primary sources. We are confident in the facts and the grade here.
The strongest direct evidence is a 2023 Vulture investigation showing PR firm Bunker 15 paid critics roughly $50+ per review and steered the favorable ones onto Rotten Tomatoes to lift scores (e.g., Ophelia rose from 46% "rotten" to 62% "fresh"); separately, parent Fandango earns a fee on every ticket it sells for the same films Rotten Tomatoes scores, so higher scores can drive parent-company revenue.
Source →- Operating since
- 1998 (28 years) · source
- What it costs you
- Free to read The reviews are free to read.
- How they make money
- It makes money through advertising on its site (movie studios are primary advertisers) and affiliate fees on movie tickets sold through its corporate parent Fandango.
- What they do
- It aggregates professional critic reviews of movies and TV shows into a single Tomatometer percentage (the share of critics whose review it judges "positive"), plus a separate audience Popcornmeter score.
- What to watch for
- You don't get a measure of how good a film is, only the percentage of critics who liked it at all, so a barely-liked 95% film and a beloved 95% film look identical and a single bad scene can flip a review from "fresh" to "rotten."
- Composite score
- 2.40 / 5.00 → grade C
How the grade was reached
Does the site take money from the very entities it ranks? Pay-for-placement, vendor-funded data, and affiliate commissions all pull this down. The less the ranking can be bought, the higher the score.
What is the ranking actually built on? Hands-on testing scores highest, then verified first-hand reviews, then opinion or popularity surveys and self-reported figures, then pay-to-rank, which scores lowest.
Is the methodology published, specific, and reproducible? Can a reader see how a given rank was reached, or is it a black box?
Are commercial relationships, sponsorships, and affiliate arrangements disclosed clearly and near the rankings themselves, rather than buried?
How hard is it to game? Controls against fake reviews, solicited reviews, and vendor gaming raise this; an open box anyone can stuff lowers it.
Evidence
- Rotten Tomatoes launched on August 12, 1998, created by three UC Berkeley undergraduates (Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, Stephen Wang); ownership passed through IGN/News Corp, Flixster, Warner Bros., and in 2016 to Fandango (NBCUniversal/Comcast), with Warner Bros. retaining a minority stake. Current structure: Versant ~75%, Warner Bros. Discovery ~25%. Source: Wikipedia: Rotten Tomatoes →
- Rotten Tomatoes' own About page: a title is 'Fresh' when at least 60% of critic reviews are positive and 'Rotten' below 60%, the score being the percentage of reviews judged positive, collapsing each nuanced critic review into a binary fresh/rotten bit; Verified Audience ratings are prioritized when a ticket purchase can be confirmed. Source: Rotten Tomatoes — About →
- A September 2023 Vulture investigation reported PR firm Bunker 15 paid film critics about $50+ per review and prioritized sending positive ones to Rotten Tomatoes to inflate Tomatometer scores over five-plus years; 2018's Ophelia rose from a 46% 'rotten' to 62% 'fresh' after such reviews were added. Studios also game scores via embargoes/limited early screenings. Source: Vulture — 'The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes' →