He was seeking a mass audience and he found one. With people lined up at the box-office waiting to get in, Pantages would limit a vaudeville turn that usually was on stage twenty minutes to half that time, and the moving picture streaked across the screen so fast you could hardly recognize the scene. Turnover was all that mattered. Pantages made enough from the Crystal to open a more pretentious establishment at Second and Seneca in 1904. He unblushingly named it The Pantages.
Tickets still cost a dime and customers still lined up to wait for the next show.
In 1907 Pantages opened a third theater in Seattle and began to expand his circuit southward along the coast. Big John Considine became aware that in the little Greek from Alaska he had a rival who might run him out of business. The duel between Considine and Pantages was intense. Each man wanted to break the other, yet in the moments when they were not trying to steal each other's acts and customers they got along well. Each knew the other was an able operator in a difficult field.