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LBX Collective
The LBX Show #17 - Holey Moley Tourney, Chuck's Arcade Launch, and more!
Sponsored by Intercard!
Themes of innovation, competitive tournaments, and marketing strategies dominate our latest episode of The LBX Show with guests Kevin Williams, Adam Pratt, and Chuck DeMonte. We announce live podcast plans for the Amusement Expo, highlight the importance of the IAAPA Global Benchmark Survey, cover the reveal of Chuck's Arcade, and more!
• Amusement Expo details and live podcasting plans
• The importance of the Global Benchmark Survey for industry insights
• BW visits the latest Round1 in Chandler and shares his experience
• Holey Moley tournament aimed at enhancing patron engagement
• Introduction and concept behind Chuck's Arcade for older audiences
• Open and Shut segment discussing shifting trends in entertainment
• Arcade market updates and emerging technologies from Adam Pratt
• Marketing strategies and recommendations from Chuck DeMonte
All right. Well, welcome everybody to the LBX show. It's number 17 for January 23rd 2025. I'm your host, brandon Wiley, and we have a great show lined up for you today. First of all, we've got news you should know. We've got a couple of cool things we're going to be covering here, and then Open and Shut with Kevin Williams. We go and we just dig into all the latest openings and closings, and then I've got some commentary afterwards as well. And then Arcade Corner is back this week with Adam Pratt, and then we also have Promo Pro Tips with Chuck Tamanti, and, as always, it's super power packed. It's about eight minutes and he's going to deliver some really great marketing tips for you.
Speaker 2:All right, as we get started, let's jump into News you Should Know, all right. Well, first thing we should know is that Amusement Expo is coming up in just a couple of weeks. It's like getting closer and closer, of course, because the way time works, but March 17th to the 20th is the Amusement Expo and there's education at the beginning, there's a trade show at the end, and I will be there, primarily for the trade show, alongside Kevin Williams, and then we'll have a number of other guests. We are going to be doing some live podcasting on the show floor, so very excited about that and, again, you never know what kind of guests we might grab and throw in there. Might be some Clint Novak, it might be some Adam Pratt, might be some other people, some Pete Gustafson, who knows? We're going to grab a couple of different people. We're going to have some fun on the show floor and be covering the Amusement Expo, so that is coming up very shortly. So if you haven't already booked your travel, definitely would advise you to do that. It is at the Las Vegas Convention Center this year, although I have heard some rumors about a change in venue for next year Still in Vegas, but perhaps a change in venue. So we'll see if that all comes to play.
Speaker 2:All right, I want to cover this as well. So if you are not familiar with IAPA, you probably should be if you're listening to this podcast. But IAPA does regular research and they have a whole research team and they're doing the 2025 Global Benchmark Survey and this is something that's super important because the more feedback, the more insights that they're going to get from operators, from manufacturers and suppliers, from just people in the industry in general, the better they're going to be able to report on how the overall state of the industry and the health of the industry and where there's areas and room for improvement, especially in some of the services that they deliver. So if you are watching this, you can scan the QR code that is here and that will take you directly to the Global Benchmark Survey link. If you are not watching this and you're just listening, then you can just go to IAPAorg and just go through their brand new website that has been launched and you can find out. You can dig around and find the Global Benchmark Survey there. Otherwise, you can just ping me and I'll shoot you an email with the link Makes it easy. So you can just shoot me an email. My email is always brandon at lbxcollectivecom. So that is the IAAPA Global Benchmark Survey, all right.
Speaker 2:So last week I believe it was during open and shut Kevin mentioned that round one has opened up a new location. It's actually their third location in Arizona and this one was opened at the Chandler Fashion Center. Well, I just so happened to live in Chandler and be not too far away from that venue, so I thought you know what, I'm going to go swing down there this week and take a look at it. So the venue is about 65,000 square feet and takes over a space. It was recently occupied by well, not recently, but like a while back was occupied by Sears. It's been vacant for a while, and the two other locations, interestingly, are in, while back was occupied by Sears. It's been vacant for a while, and the two other locations, interestingly, in Arizona, are Tucson. So I'm surprised they opened up Round 1 in Tucson first, which is surprising If you're from Arizona, you would understand and then Glendale as well. Glendale, there's a lot of big entertainment venues going out there. There's an Adretti opening up, the Mattel Adventure Park is out there. It's also where the Cardinals play in the stadium outside in that side town. So, anyway, this round one location has bowling, billiards, karaoke, their full arcade, all of their cranes that they typically have, but they also had pickleball. So we'll take a look at that as well.
Speaker 2:So let's do a quick little photo tour of my visit. So this is as I pulled into the parking lot. This is the former Sears entrance from the parking lot. They also have an entrance from the shopping mall as well, as you would imagine is as typical, and so we'll just walk through this. So this is when I first walked in. Now the entrance from the mall was much better. You actually come in and we'll get to some of these pictures, but you actually come in where all of the dancing machines, like Dance, dance, revolution and the others, are all there, and so there's a lot more of activity and I think it's a much better entrance. This was fairly underwhelming, frankly, when I first came in, like I see, you know, a bunch of redemption stuff on the side and some wheels like one random little air hockey machine, and then their merchandisers or the coin, really specifically their coin pushers on the right, and then, like, obviously, the video that tells me that I'm being recorded, so sweet. But anyway, all in all, like I was actually really impressed.
Speaker 2:I've been into some round ones and been very, very disappointed with the round ones that I've been into. This one was very nice. Now, granted, it was brand new, but I felt like it was. There was a good flow to the space. It really did, other than I just didn't like the way that I walked in and I wasn't really greeted with any strong direction. Here. I do feel like it was one of the better round ones that I've been into. So this is just a quick glance to the left, you know you can see.
Speaker 2:So one of the really interesting things about this layout and I know round one tends to do this, but this was very much defined in this location, especially with, like, the carpet you can see there's clear delineations around where you're walking and where, like, the walking paths are. But everything was subdivided. So they had the redemption all on this left side. They had their cranes all right in the center, as we had pointed out and I'll take we'll have one more picture at the end here their coin pushers were all to the right when I first walked in. So like everything was segmented by attraction type. Now there's, I think, benefits to that and then there's obviously some downsides, but this is the way round. One has attempted to do it.
Speaker 2:So this is their party room section. I will be surprised if they have a lot of parties, frankly, just because they're not the typical. I don't know, they're not what's considered typical when booking a birthday party, but I did like their party rooms. So they had a number of different TVs, they had a whole projection, they actually had a couch as well, and then this is where they also double as karaoke. So their karaoke was also in their party rooms. I think I could have gone with like a little bit more intimate karaoke room as well, for, like some of the older ages, like I'm not sure that you're going to see a bunch of 20 and 30 somethings coming in here and playing and doing karaoke. I could be wrong, but this, this did not seem like the type of a karaoke environment that I would really want to be a part of.
Speaker 2:They don't have their liquor license yet, but here's their bar, so they are in the middle of the liquor license application. But it's a good, decent sports bar, decent number of spaces, but I think most people are just going to be getting their drinks at the bar and then walking away. I don't know how many are going to be sitting at the bar. And then obviously there's bar service at the bowling area, which for some reason I didn't take a picture. You can sort of see it on the left here, but I didn't take a picture. You can sort of see it on the left here, but I didn't really get a good picture of the bowling lanes. I don't know why. I think I was going to do it and I forgot.
Speaker 2:But this is their big eating area, again, lots of TVs, tvs running all the way down here both directions, and then you know a big projector screen down at the end. So this was their food and I think no, all right. So I'll just zoom in here, because one of the really interesting things you get with round one is that they're obviously from Japan and so you get exposed to a little bit more of the Japanese menu options. So you know you have your standards here, which is, you know, your standard stuff like pizza and wings and chicken tenders, mozzarella sticks, like your standard American fare, which is typically OK. Round one is not known for having great food, but what I like is they. Obviously, you know you can get some of the Japanese stuff as well. So they have bento boxes and you know some ramen and other bowls and different things that you can get here. So you know you do have a bit of a difference. You know your bao buns and your matcha lattes, so you have a different F&B mix, but that is really all they offer and obviously you can order at your bowling lanes to if you want to have it there.
Speaker 2:So you know again, round one known for all of their cranes. So you know they do cranes very, very well. They stock it with really interesting plush. I did see that. I was there on a Wednesday early afternoon, so this is why you would see like there's not very many people here. But you know you did see people walking around and almost every person walking around, even if they weren't in the crane area, they had some sort of plush that they had got from the crane. So definitely one of the main drivers here. You know you're always going to get some really unique games from from Japan that you don't typically see at other fecs or other arcades. So that's one of the unique things about around one as well. And then you know they do uh, they do a lot of the different dancing, um, you know a bunch of different versions of ddr and then others as well that you can go and do billiards.
Speaker 2:And then here is their one pickleball. So I thought it was interesting. It's a very nice pickleball court, nice pickleball space. Like, if you know, it's like a little bit of a hidden gem. Like, out of the way, I don't know what they charge for pickleball, so I would want to find out. But, like you know, honestly, if you're into pickleball and you don't want to go do the whole big pickleball venue thing and you just want to like get a cool great indoor court with some food and like get a drink or whatever. This could be a little way to hide out, like it's. It's interesting, it's only a single court, so you know you take a crap shoot and whether or not it's going to be available. But anyway, I just thought that this was a unique little ad.
Speaker 2:And and then you know, love Bomberman, you know old Bomberman fan, and so like, here obviously is a you know cool, cool four-player Bomberman arcade. And then this one was interesting. So this was by Raw Thrills and this is the first time I've seen this game I'm sure Adam Pratt would be laughing at me because it's been around for a while. But this is by Raw Thrills again and they call it Bust a Move Frenzy, and I don't know if that's because they can't use the Bubble Bobble IP name or whatever, but this is very clearly Bubble Bobble from back in the day. So anybody who grew up with an NES definitely, or most likely anyway, played Bubble Bobble, and so it's cool to see an arcade version of that.
Speaker 2:So, and then again, as you're walking around like tons of your rides, and then this they had these. So, like again, I really felt like this space was laid out very well, and then, in between each of the machines, they had this warning sign here about not going in, and so this is the first time I've seen this. This might be around one thing typically, but I've not seen it before and I don't typically see it at other FECs. It's not everywhere, but in areas where the cabinets don't back up to each other. Well enough, then they would put these things there, and so, anyway, I just thought that was unique In my view, and I've not been here on a Saturday afternoon, but this is way too many fucking big bass wheels and everything else too many wheels. But you know, whatever they had a wall to fill, I guess, so they might as well went into it.
Speaker 2:And then you know you've got your, your cranes, and you know some of the cranes were very much clearly like you're just buying the plush, so you're going to the crane thing to try to pick up the single plush that's sitting in the space, like here or here, and each of these gameplays, based on their pricing, was about three to five dollars for a gameplay, so you're not guaranteed necessarily to get it every time, but you're pretty much guaranteed to walk away with a plush. I mean, that's the idea here is that you are getting it. So here's their pricing 70 credits for $16. And each one of those game plays was about a $14 or 14 credit gameplay for for one of those cranes. So anyway, that is round one. I know there was a lot of pictures there, but you, but sometimes if you don't get a chance to go and see one of the newer versions of round one, then I thought that this was a good opportunity to check that out.
Speaker 2:All right, so a few other things. For news you should know is first of all, I thought this was cool. So Holy Moly is launching a tournament and Kevin talks about this a little bit in the upcoming SoundOff number 63. He touches on this and a couple of other tournaments, and so what we're beginning to see is that these types of competitive socializing venues and brands are starting to run their own tournaments, and so Holy Moly is experimenting with this in their three venues in Texas.
Speaker 2:So it begins March 25th with their city championships, and so they're going to be held at their three different venues. I believe one is in Austin, san Antonio and then Houston. I want to believe. I want to say but anyway, so it's across their three. So they're going to start with city championships and each team will play a round of nine holes with a maximum of a plus six per hole. The scores will be kept, there'll be an official caddy there and then penalties will be dealt for off course balls, interference and everything else. The team with the lowest combined score wins, and then the winning teams at city championships will be offered travel accommodations to advance and compete at the next stage, the state final, will be on April 8th in Austin. So pretty cool, right, like? You get to go and play and you get to have travel accommodations as well. And then the cash prize for winning the Holy Moly Open that's what they're calling it.
Speaker 2:The Holy Moly Open is $10,000. And so they do encourage costumes during the competition. They'll have DJs, confetti showers, they'll have food and drink specials during the event. So if you're in Texas and you want to join, you could register. Registration begins on February 25th so just in a few days and then ends March 10th. For teams of four, registration is free, but the players must be 21 years or older to participate and the Holy Moly will select the best 60 teams to compete across the state. So I don't know if it means 20 from each location or what, but that's what I'm assuming. And then you know, just as a quick background, holy Moly is from Australia originally and they opened their first Texas location in Austin in just March of last year, so this is like basically an annual. I'm assuming this is going to be an annual thing for them, but a pretty cool way to promote the brand, drive engagement, drive repeat visitation and look, if you want to compete to win, then what are you going to do? You're going to come and you're probably going to practice and you're going to practice on their courses. You're going to pay to come and practice on their courses with your friends. And while you're there practicing with your friends, what are you going to probably do? Buy drinks, get food. So, anyway, I think this is just a brilliant thing and we're probably going to see more and more competitions coming up along the way.
Speaker 2:All right, the next and last thing I want to cover on News you Should Know, is Chuck's Arcade. All right, so this is some new scuttlebutt happening out there and it has now been officially announced just a few days ago, this Chuck's Arcade mysteriously appeared on the Simonon malls website. And it was. And it said it was scheduled to debut at the mall of georgia. And it says, while this was, you know, while it seemed to be a variance of the fun spot arcades which we all knew was but you know, chucky cheese was behind it was unknown if this location was going to be a little bit different or decor. Well, um, just a couple of nights ago, mark kupferman he's the CMO of Chuck E Cheese he would like, all of a sudden, just pop in and started. He started an unprompted Q&A on the Chuck E Cheese fandom Discord server and then a lot of questions were answered. So you know, here's a couple of questions, basically, all right.
Speaker 2:So what is a Chuck's Arcade? How is this any different than you know? Something than what's a Fun Spot Arcades? He says it's a new concept they're using for mall-based arcades. He said they're just arcades. There's no pizza, no live entertainment, no nostalgic artwork and no animatronics. And then they, you know, they're basically keeping the Chuck E Cheese name for their family-focused venues for younger kids.
Speaker 2:But they say the Chex Arcade is aimed at older kids, teens and adults. And they said it's basically a fresh take, while also still giving a nod to Chuck E Cheese. And look, I think it's brilliant, right? You start at Chuck E Cheese when you're younger and then, as you get older, you graduate from Chuck E Cheese but you still want to play games and you're in a mall and you have the remembrance of the Chuck E Cheese logo and everything else and so you go play at Chuck's Arcade.
Speaker 2:It makes way more sense than Fun Spot, and he said that they felt their original name, fun Spot Arcade, didn't tie back to who they are, and many of you know this, but Chuck E Cheese is actually the largest operator of arcades in the world. They have almost 50,000 games across all of their locations and this is their way to bring that expertise to new locations and new areas, and you know obviously a way to diversify what it is that they're doing so anyway. They asked if one of the other questions was is Chuck's Arcade exclusive to Simon Malls? They said no, it's not. They're going to be opening in a bunch of other places, but this is just one of the first places where they were able to implement the Chuck's Arcade brand change, and so there's actually not going to be anything, you know, as far as the type of game mix, even though the logo is kind of retro arcade bar-ish, it's actually not. It's going to be all the newest arcade games and everything else. So you know, definitely don't go to Chuck's Arcade if you're expecting a retro arcade. It will definitely be all of the new games out there. All right.
Speaker 2:So that is it for News. You Should Know, and we'll come in up after our word from our sponsors. We're going to hear from Kevin Williams at Open and Shut. Intercard is the only cashless system designed, developed and manufactured all under one roof. They introduced cashless technology to the amusement industry and have been leading the way for over 30 years. Cashless systems from Intercard increase customer spending, guest satisfaction and boost revenues by up to 30%. Intercard is so proud to be serving the amusement industry and if you aren't already part of their global family of customers, they hope you will become one soon. All right, so we have a great open and shut here with Kevin Williams and then we'll have some commentary after that.
Speaker 4:Hey, a big hello to everyone. And yet again we jump into the deep end. A lot of things have been happening in the sector and so let's start with the first of the openings. Then and it's been a crowded couple of weeks really February has seen the developments of a number of new social entertainment venues, as well as conventional entertainment facilities redeveloping themselves to include a competitive socialising element. Anyway, a total standalone concept, 100,000 square, so that's quite a large one. So that's quite a large one. It's like as an experience, as one of the members of the LBX team gets a chance to go out there, staying again in the Saudi and UAE area.
Speaker 4:And Bonkers is an active entertainment and amusement chain. It's been run through Adventure World Entertainment and developed by KCC. As it says. Riyadh and Kiefer are going to be the first of the latest rollouts or additional branches to the chain. It's more of an immersive entertainment space than it is an active. Sorry, it's more of an immersive, active entertainment space than just an immersive entertainment environment. But it also has an F&B component and has been themed heavily to suit the local audience, has been themed heavily to suit the local audience.
Speaker 4:Redevelopment here, so transferred from Playland Skate Center, turned into Pin Wheels or Pins and Wheels. So that's a roller skate rink with amusement. It's now got VR experience added. It acts throwing the karaoke rooms, which seem to be ubiquitous across all of the 55 square. So it's also the facility first started in 1974 as a roller rink and so it has gone through a number of progressions, from Playland now to pins and wheels, and we wish them a lot of luck with the redevelopment of the concept.
Speaker 4:Another redevelopment taking another traditional entertainment venue, and you know Arkansas, really famous for some of its bowling facilities. This site has now mixed along with the traditional 10-pin bowling lanes that it has. It's dropped in some duck pin. It's added some amusement. It's changed its F&B. The facility closed in 2020, as the news report said, due to COVID measures and the impact of COVID on the owners. Now the new owners have reopened. It has been refurbished. We're not sure how much money has been spent on that refurbishment, but we wish them a lot of luck with the new entrance into the market, nitro, this French chain of entertainment facilities. This is the third site, again just in the suburbs of Paris. This is 100,000 square and it is a mixture of active entertainment with trampolines, climbing walls. It has karting, it has amusement and it has F&B. This is a chain that is trying to establish its brand identity at this moment in time and you know two sites opening back-to-back, quite close together shows that there's a lot of momentum to establish this brand.
Speaker 4:Anvios they are really the gold standard for me in location-based VR arena installations. The company is involved with franchises as well as installing their arenas as self-operated sites. I have a list of their facilities about 60 venues across 35 countries. Wherever you come across a VR facility that isn't a sandbox VR or zero latency, it's usually an Anvios system and you know they have a very strong following for their wide range of free roaming game experiences. This latest installation is a franchise going into Florida crowded market and this particular facility is interesting because they're also including some VR arcade kiosk machines as well as the arena and a little bit of FMV. I'm not too sure how much the bar that is attached to this particular venue will be serving the full gamut of refreshments.
Speaker 4:Continuing with the popularity of VR franchises, control V Canadian chain very, very popular, one of the early ones, but they've gone through some swings and roundabouts. They expanded their operation, then COVID knocked them down and then now they're regaining ground again. This latest opening in Ontario will be their sixth venue and offers their arcade VR entertainment experience. They're not free roam, tethered VR systems allowing you to select from a number of titles that they have licensed. I like to call the VR tanning salon approach Eclipse, or Clipso if we're going to be exact.
Speaker 4:This is an interesting one as it is part of the VR adventures or immersive adventure kind of facilities that I talk about, where it is a large number of users moving through a virtual space experiencing together a shared reality adventure.
Speaker 4:This particular one is based on the Titanic. Based in Camden, this facility installation allows groups of individuals to walk through a virtual recreation of the historic ship. This is the sixth center that Eclipso's has opened. Not all of them are permanent, some of them are temporary, but it is a VR adventure or journey more than it is a free-roaming VR game experience, and we will be talking in the next SoundOff about the separation between the free-roaming arcade approach and the free-roaming virtual adventure approach to the market Redevelopment. Here here are friends at Keloan Karting in British Columbia, canada. The facility first opened in 2024, so it's very fresh behind the ears and they have decided to parachute into their site a brand new zero latency. So they've taken on the zero latency franchise, adding to their karting experience with a VR component. Interesting to see that kind of pivot from a central entertainment experience to adding a secondary or a tertiary entertainment element.
Speaker 4:We look forward to hearing a lot more about how that does. Now, going back to what we were touching upon a couple of sound offs ago about the explosion in the simulator golf sector and we have a new addition to the concepts nine-yard golf lounge, familiar format, bar, f&b, simulator bays. You know they've gone for the full approach. They're using state-of-the-art simulator systems. So I expect to see them using either the track golf platform or the X system and again riding the wave of popularity for golf simulation and competitive socializing Pennsylvania All the way over to Switzerland and RU Racing.
Speaker 4:Sorry, ru Racing Unleashed. I like the name. The venue is one of eight facilities in the Canton or within the area of Switzerland's breakup of its city states. I can't get a count on how many simulator rigs that they have within the facility, but by the looks of it they are the monocoque high-end simulator racing system. So this is a very high-level simulator race den. A little bit of information about this is it's more of a training, simulation and racing experience rather than a VR lounge or a simulation racing lounge. So less social entertainment, more simulation. But again, we look forward to finding out a little bit more about this when we do our visit to Switzerland Flight Club continuing the momentum. You know the facility is up to 15 sites at the moment and they've just added Newcastle to that list 10,000 square foot Interesting.
Speaker 4:I didn't do the research on what their average size of facility is, but I think, going off my gut, they're usually in the 8, 9, and 10 size. So nothing, you know, stupendously unusual here, but pushing forward the popular formula that is Flight Club and we know that there is some news coming that they have some more additional rollouts planned internationally ivy alley, social house relocation uh, it's, it's quite uh, you know. So it's a vintage venue that has been stripped and then turned, uh, in indiana, into a both a eight lane bowling duck-pin bowling establishment but with also a large restaurant and entertainment, social entertainment components to it. The space was traditionally a car dealership, so it's a garage, as we would call it, that has been reformatted into an entertainment space, formatted into an entertainment space. It looks traditionally. From the pictures of the build-out that's taking place, the operation is going to be open for the summer. I think it's going to be at least an atmospheric environment for this and we wish them a lot of luck on the rollout.
Speaker 4:Continuing the bowling boutique mix in the UK and Kingpins has added a Bristol facility to their chain chain of three sites. This is competitive, socialising and boutique writ large. It's got karaoke room, shuffleboard tech, darts, which we assume is our friends at 501, and some F&B components to it. It's a nice drop-in to space. I was trying to find out what the space previously was before Kingpins took it over but I couldn't find that out. But from what I can see from the information available, this is dropping into a very crowded market in Bristol for competitive socializing. So it's going to have to really prove itself to be able to stand up against a competition.
Speaker 4:Four quarters well-known chain, six in the UK. It is a retro console and arcade facility with cocktails and food. Six facilities, as I said, dotted around the UK, mostly in the south of the UK. This new venue in London is going to have 25 amusement machines, it's going to have some console bay areas and it's going to have its unique cocktail mix. It will be fascinating to see how this competes with all of the other retro arcade bars that circulate around the city of London. I know of about seven that this will be competing against, two of them being four-quarter venues. So they feel we assume that they've done their homework and that they feel that this is a perfect mix for the market.
Speaker 4:Another of the retro bar arcades, this time in Denver, colorado. So one-up arcade, relatively well-known of those chains, four locations so far, this will be the fourth. So that's 55 machines, classic machines and current amusement machines going in as well as pinball and along with the bar, which is more of a bar and tavern kind of approach. And then we have Marcade I like the name, at least it's unique New Jersey Retro Machines, f&b Cocktails interesting location. This is the second in their chain. We're seeing a pattern Rollhouse great name.
Speaker 4:They have redeveloped so they are an entertainment facility in Ohio. They have redeveloped so they are an entertainment facility in Ohio. They have amusement. They're part of a chain of seven which is the addition of the next generation of laser tags. So they've taken their traditional laser tag facility and they've now updated it to be part of the gel blaster Nexus range, which is really an important moment in our industry's history where we're seeing laser tag now move into the next generation of technology the physical capability of the gel blaster supported along with the conventional laser system, with much more intuitive and immersive vests that monitor the impacts, that can monitor the player's scores, that that work with the player's app Much more next-generation approach. And Rollhouse is joining our friends at main event in updating their system. Our friends at Jailblaster have some announcements that will be made in March to give a better idea of some of the rollouts that they've now been instigating since they've entered the market Roadhouse, so from rollhouse to roadhouse the cinema chain.
Speaker 4:Not all of their cinema operation have entertainment, but they've redeveloped their facility in Arizona it's a 36,000 square foot facility and and they've parachuted in a 12-lane bowling, they've added axe throwing, they've dropped in Topgolf swing suites, which are the simulator bay versions of the golf system, as well as some arcade, and the doors have been thrown open on this site. Cinetainment, as I would like to call it, oxygen Active Play active entertainment facility, manchester gets a brand-new site. This is part of a 10-chain facility, so they have been updating and rolling out more active entertainment. So they have been updating and rolling out more active entertainment, not just the trampoline, but they're also adding in inflatable slides. They have some interactive attractions as well as some amusement.
Speaker 4:Fun Station is a chain of what I would call traditional kinds of amusement. It's a high-end amusement. Some of these facilities have bumper cars as well as mini attractions. There are 10 facilities in the chain, mainly in the UK. I think they also have one in Ireland. Again, correct me if I'm wrong and this latest facility is about to throw its doors open in Leeds in the UK and we wish them a lot of luck on this particular one because it's a crowded market, but also it's establishing a unique brand into that sector, jumping all the way over to Tokyo and we were talking about Taito and their developments of their social entertainment brand. They also have another brand, which is the Exabar chain, and they just announced that Exabar Tokyo Plus will be throwing its doors open in March. This has social entertainment through interactive darts, it also has mini golf, it also has duck pin bowling, or mini bowling at least, and it is all supported by an amusement mix. And this is kind of Tato's take on how to create a social entertainment component for their market, entertainment component for their market. I still don't know about the F&B side of this operation compared to some of the other social entertainment variants that we've been seeing in the Japanese market. Hope to get a chance to go out there and put this through its paces. But this one throws its doors open in March.
Speaker 4:Our friends at Andretti's Karting their latest facility in Kansas 103, interesting three 103,000 square multi-level track. I suppose that's where the three comes from. You know the amusement component that we've come to know with the Andretti's mix, both high-end and midway play, as well as supported by their F&B great cocktails, great food. The Andretti's brand has been on a strong trajectory to increase its operation and this will be its seventh facility out there. I expect by the end of this year that we'll be up to nine there. I expect by the end of this year that we'll be up to nine. Just to round off in the shots, and our friends in Dubai tell us that the Immersive Esports Centre there is going to be closing. But it's been closing for a reason. They have some major announcements about a relaunch. I'm not sure if they're relaunching at the venue or if they're coming up with a brand new concept which will be dropping into the market, but that's a definite new phase and that's a watch this space for us.
Speaker 4:Our friends at Barcade in New Jersey. They have about 10 facilities out there of their retro bar facility. Last year they celebrated their 20th anniversary. They've been at the New Jersey site for 14 years, so that's one of their earliest sites and anyway they've had to move out of that site and close it down due to redevelopment of the location. So the landlord, where they are, is going through changes and they're moving on. No word if they're going to be moving into a new New Jersey location yet.
Speaker 4:And then AJ Playgrounds not an operator per se of facilities, but a developer of attractions. That facilities, uh, the you know the company was founded in 2022. Uh, and they're in san diego and, uh, they have closed down the operation, stating that they're going to be going through a new chapter of their business, uh, with new business ventures planned. So, again, another watch this space. Some companies are pivoting now that they see how the lay of the land and how the market is rolling and maybe that they could be better positioned in a certain way to enjoy the market.
Speaker 4:And then, finally, our friends at Swingers UK again, another need to relocate due to landlord needing the property for redevelopment. This is one of their first facilities. This is the city of london site and this was opened up in 2016 and you can kind of say that this was one of the the many. The lane sevens, the all bar uh, all bar ones, uh, and the swingers were the first of what we could start to see as being the beginning of the competitive socializing revolution in the UK, which has now exploded on the world's market. Anyway, they're moving out of that site, but they have their 2023 investment 40 million to start rolling out and, as we've seen with their Dubai and with their Las Vegas facilities, they're actively rolling out new sites. Anyway, that's enough from me. A lot more to come next week. This is really rolling this part of the market it's interesting to keep an eye on. I hope you're finding this informative.
Speaker 4:Any corrections or any other issues, please come back to me.
Speaker 1:But thank you and see you next time. Check out Radius. They use real-time location data and customized marketing strategies to help brands like yours stand out. Radius can boost your foot traffic and build a loyal customer base. Plus, they're offering a complimentary local market analysis to show you exactly how they can help you grow Curious, Visit Radiusco and ask about your free market analysis.
Speaker 2:That's R-A-Y-D-I-U-S dot C-O. That's R-A-Y-D-I-U-S, dot C-O and man. They spent just under $100 million to develop their swingers location in Vegas, which is just unbelievable to me. But the theming is absolutely amazing, the gameplay is incredible and it's not just mini golf. They have some other attractions there as well, but my point in talking about the one in Vegas is where are we going to be in Vegas in a couple of weeks for amusement expo? So that is one of many, uh, one of a couple of different attractions that have opened since last year, actually, when we were in amusement expo. So we'll definitely go and check out swingers play playground as well in the Luxor we plan to check out, and there'll probably be a few others that we'll go check out at area 15 as well. Um, all right.
Speaker 2:Also, I am heading to Dubai. I'm flying out. Well, if you're watching this at uh, if you're watching this on sunday night, I'm leaving tonight, and if you're watching this some other day, well then I've already left. So, but I'm going to dubai for the next week. I'm going to be having a couple of meetings, but while I'm out there, I'm all I'm excited to check out a couple of different attractions, one of those being the house of hype that kevin talked about during Open and Shut. So I will be visiting that. It's right in the Mall of Dubai. My hotel is within three minutes walking distance from that. I'll also, of course, be having a cocktail at the world's tallest building, at the very top, so it'd be the highest cocktail bar in the world. So of course I'll have a cocktail there and enjoy my time at the Burj Khalifa and I'll come back with some pictures and talk about the House of Hype and see how it was and hoping to experience it myself.
Speaker 2:Also, I'm just surprised and shocked continually by the number of retro arcade bars. And look, I get it, there's old arcade machines out there and they're available and people like them. But I do think we are going to be dealing with a glut of arcade bars, especially retro arcade bars, coming up here pretty soon, of arcade bars, especially retro arcade bars, coming up here pretty soon. And you know we're actually this is one of the conversations that we have on SoundOff, the one coming up, number 63 with Kevin Williams, and so definitely join, you know, definitely, like you know, watch that episode and, and you know, love to hear your thoughts if you disagree with us around what we have, some more thoughts around saturation, but the arcade bar saturation is definitely something that's an issue for me and one to keep an eye on and watch. The last thing is he talks about Gel Blaster or just references some of the attractions you're seeing popping up along the way. Gel Blaster is really beginning to take off and we do also talk a little bit more about that in SoundOff 63. Again, that's coming up on Tuesday.
Speaker 2:The reason I bring up Jailblaster is Fun Across America. One of our good friends over there, barry Zelikson, is the producer there and then Nate Reinhart is the host of that show and they go around and they tour different things. Well, they did an expose on Jailblaster and so you can definitely go and check out funacrossamericacom or go to their YouTube channel youtubecom slash at funacrossamerica and it's their latest video that just went live, so you can go and check out, learn a little bit more about Jail Blaster. It is definitely shaking things up in the attraction space, especially with regards to laser tag and everything else. So that is our friends over at Fun Across America. All right. Next up, we've got Adam Pratt walking us through some of the latest things happening in the arcade space with our Arcade Corner.
Speaker 3:Greetings. It's Adam for the Arcade Corner and it hasn't been a super busy week for arcade news, but there have been a few developments out there and so well, let's get it right into those. First off, the company known as Exa Arcadia, which is headquartered out of Tokyo, but they sell games all over the world. That's something I need to stress a lot of the time because oftentimes when there's a new game announcement coming out of Japan, from, say, namco or Sega, and it's that Japanese division doing it, they're usually just saying it for that region and those games rarely find their ways over to North America and Europe. Different divisions of the company will handle games that they feel will work better for the markets here, and of course that's what I also try to focus on for that. But Exarchadia, they're worldwide.
Speaker 3:If you're not familiar with them, they are essentially the modern Neo Geo MVS, and so their platform has cartridges. It's easy to swap them out very quickly. It keeps the costs very low Once you already have a cabinet and a board. Some of these games can be as low as $500, some as much as $2,000. But even with a cabinet and all that stuff, it's a lot cheaper than a lot of games that are released these days that are well above $10,000. And so it's a good solution for routes and smaller arcades or any company that's on a budget and such. And chances are, if you are somewhat familiar with them, you've seen them at a trade show it's iapa or amusement expo and so they also are able to release a lot of content, just like you see on this page here from their website, where there's just tons of games, and they've been able to resurrect a lot of games that are genres that have been become uncommon or unheard of in modern arcades, such as one-on-one fighting games, scrolling shoot-em-up games and just shoot-em-ups and platformer games and things of that nature. And so they held a live stream event this week to talk about some of their latest releases or upcoming releases, I should say Now were at IAPA 2024, and chances are that the games that they talked about if you stopped by their booth, maybe you played one of these there, but the first one was Air Gallet, exolabel, which is based upon an arcade game from 1996 by Bam, presto and Gazelle called Air Gallet, and it's not very common outside of Japan.
Speaker 3:I'd never played it before myself, but it's a scrolling shoot them up kind of like the Raiden series where you're just piloting an aircraft and you get a ton of firepower but there's also a lot of bullets coming at you and you shoot down a bunch of fodder enemies and then eventually fight a big boss and you go through different levels, like that. This one also has a lot of voiceovers, like chatter between the pilots and things like that, and EXA likes to hire voice actors quite a few voice actors, sometimes very well-known voice actors to be doing the voices for these games. But this particular game started testing out at a I think it was a Taito station in Tokyo this week and it should be launching pretty soon. I'm not sure what the price is on that, but that's one benefit to the X Arcadia, as I mentioned, the pricing can be a lot more reasonable. Somewhere between $500 to $2,000 is where you see the ranges, although I say most of them are in the $1,200 to $1,500 range per cart. And so this one I wouldn't be surprised if it's somewhere in the $1,200 range. That seems where a lot of the ExoLabel ones land Bunny, bomber Blast, which is a quirky game. That again, this video here is showing it at IAPA when I played it, think Dig Dug meets Bomberman. But this one is going to be one of the cheaper titles. It's going to be in the realm of $500. So that's again a great great deal compared to what you might expect otherwise. But of course graphically it doesn't stand out. It looks like a game from 1982, 83,. Of course graphically it doesn't stand out. It looks like a game from 1982, 83, somewhere around there, and I guess for retro arcades or if you have a retro gaming section, it would work out really well. But it also won't set you back all that much either, which is nice and I had fun with that one.
Speaker 3:Chaos Code Next is a sequel to a fighting game that was released for X Arcadia a few years back called Chaos Code. Chaos Code Nemesis Experiment is just updating it with new characters, new levels and such, and as far as I'm aware, this one is fully, 100% exclusive to arcades. They might do a console version is fully 100% exclusive to arcades. They might do a console version. But that's one nice thing is anytime Exa has done a game that is on consoles, they add their own stuff to it, their own music, sometimes their own content, new characters, new levels, things of that nature that aren't found on the console versions, so that it stands out and stands apart.
Speaker 3:Here's CyberBlocker R, which is actually, you think, arkanoid. It's going to be basically like a newer Arkanoid, but with power-ups and things of that nature. This will also use a trackball to control it, and so later this year they're going to launch a trackball controller and they're going to launch four games at once that all support that, cyberblocker R being one of those, and so they just discussed that a little bit. It also has music being done by a former member of Zunitada, which was Taito's in-house music group, very, very famous in Japan. If you've played Taito games and you love their music, then it's because they had real music professionals who just also happened to work at Taito that composed, arranged and crafted all that music.
Speaker 3:Here's another one-on-one fighter called Demon Bride X. Again, demon Bride has been available in Japan for a while, but never really never saw an arcade release here. It's been available on consoles, but also just kind of a limited release, not a super well-known game, but it's about angels versus demons. But this version of it will be the essentially the director's cut, featuring the best balancing and possibly new characters that I'm not 100% sure on. New artwork and a lot of the graphics have been remastered in HD and so no other version will have that, and so just overall, the best version of that game. And then they talked about version updates, including a new mini marquee with stickers. One thing they've been telling me about is how they've been incentivizing locations to just focus on one game at a time, because that way they seem to earn better. But perhaps having a mini marquee like this that points out the different games that are available there might help people realize that there's more than one game. But then they did a little tease about a new game. Not sure what this is yet, but that'll be coming sometime later this year.
Speaker 3:Now the other piece of news that we have to talk about is also from a Japanese company, although kind of sort of and that is from Sega. I say kind of sort of Sega Amusements did a management buyout a few years back, and so now it's headquartered in the UK. But of course they still work with Sega Japan on plenty of things, and that's what this new surprise announcement was, where just all of a sudden earlier this week on their website they showed off this new theater model of house of the dead scarlet dawn, and so I talked with marty at sega about this and we just basically confirmed what was available on the website, as well as this flyer here, where they removed that black or that back plastic piece and that 3d zombie head and the sensor and all that. They also removed the fans and the lighting from the top. They don't have the curtains on the side anymore and basically just presents still the same game. It still has the surround sound system, the rumble in the seats, the same guns, same software. All that just in a slightly more affordable package than before. And this is also where you can see where they're talking about the immersive gameplay experience with the different sound and such.
Speaker 3:But I should also say it's not just Sega. This is something I've noticed at a lot of the other trade shows that they've been at is they have a Sega banner and then they have a Kaizen Entertainment banner right there, and so they're certainly pushing that a lot more than they used to. But either way, this is a new model that's available now. Contact a local distributor if that's something you're interested in. Again, a little bit slow, it's to be expected, sometimes in the middle of winter, in February, although traditionally February has been the time where most Japanese companies are making announcements, which is also where it makes a little more sense to be having things like this, but soon we'll have an amusement expo in Vegas. We'll have a lot more to talk about, and I assume that this new House of the Dead model will be there in vegas along with that new my my game that I talked about last week but that gets us up to speed on the arcade news of the week.
Speaker 2:Thank you for watching and we'll catch you on the next arcade corner, all right? Well, thanks Adam Pratt for that walking us through everything. And yeah, we have a lot of news coming up in the next few weeks. A lot of these different places are going to start. Manufacturers, suppliers are going to start dripping out news as we're coming up to the Museum and Expo.
Speaker 2:But already a lot of news coming out of ExaArcadia and one of the little tips that they did put out. There is good to showcase one game. So if you have an X Arcadia or a couple of cabinets in your facility, you know good tips to just showcase one game at a time. But obviously, like they present that little mini marquee concept so that people do understand that they can play different games on the XR Arcadia and it's not just the one that might be live on that cabinet at the time.
Speaker 2:Also very cool to see some of the changes happening with the House of Dead, you know, in their Scarlet Dawn. I do agree that I think reducing and taking out some of those unnecessary things like the fans and et cetera, but as long as you have an immersive sound. You still get that haptic feedback when you're playing through the rumble seats, but being able to remove some of the other stuff can lower the cost and also still provide great gameplay and experience for the guests, and so definitely excited to check that one out as well at Amusement Expo from Kaizen slash Sega.
Speaker 1:All right. Coming up next, we've got Chuck DeMatti with a really quick, hard-hitting pro tip, number 14. Hello and welcome to Promo Pro Tips with Chuck DeMonte. That is me. So today I want to discuss how much money you should be spending on marketing. What is your marketing budget? A lot of times we talk to clients and, honestly, they're not spending anything on marketing. And I know business is tough, I know there's a lot of expenses. I know you need budget for all these things. You need to be spending some money on marketing, right? I promise you it will pay off. And so everything I say today and I've been pushing on this so much lately is all underpinned by you have a very well-run business. People have fun when they go there. It's clean, the staff is nice, the attractions are, you know, are good and safe and all the things right. It's a very well-run place. Okay, if you have that, you need to be doing marketing. I promise you it will pay off. People need to know about you. You need to stay top of mind. They need to be first aware of you, right? So do some marketing.
Speaker 1:So how much should you be spending in marketing? Now? Industry averages are between seven and 10%. Okay, so some of you might be going, wow, that's really high, right, that's what people are spending seven to 10% on average. So I have some thoughts on that. Before I do that, give you my thoughts on where you should be range-wise. Just know it also is dependent on how much you want to grow. If you want to grow 100% year-over-year revenue, you better be spending 10% on marketing, right? If you have some goals that are a little bit less than that, you could spend less. So how much do I think you should be spending? At the very bare minimum, you should be spending 3% on marketing. In my opinion, a lot of times our clients are in that range, the 3% to 5% range and we find it to be very successful. And so, to give you an example of why marketing is so important and why you need to have a budget allocated for it Marketing is so important and why you need to have a budget allocated for it.
Speaker 1:We recently took on a client. They are unbelievable operators. Okay, their location is excellent, great attractions, clean, all those things I just mentioned previously. We started with them in November, really didn't start marketing. You know doing marketing things execution until December they were up in revenue 30% in December. In January they were up 60%. Okay, that's, that's like. That's because we put a spotlight on him and there's some other things he was doing, but again he had it like everything was wrapped up. He had all the equation ready to go. We just came in there and you know the the all the puzzle was in place. We were the final puzzle piece, just to put a spotlight on him. Okay.
Speaker 1:So again, if you have a well-run place, put some market dollars, have a budget for it. So let's discuss if you are on the lower end, where would you start? If you're marketing on a budget, what things would I suggest? Starting with Awareness, right, and so think of any strategy that's going to get you awareness. Now you can get very technical with marketing and get into these technical strategies. Awareness is the top of funnel for marketing, sales, anything for business. People need to know about you before they're going to do business with you.
Speaker 1:So easiest, low hanging fruit, lowest cost, in my opinion, is getting a videographer out there. Slash photographer, right. Pay them four or 500, $600 to come out and get as much video and photos as you can. Okay, you're going to sign up for a platform and now keep in mind you could let me just actually, you're going to do content marketing, okay, to do content, you need videos and photos and assets, right? You have your family entertainment center. Your location lends itself to cool content, right, the attractions, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:And so a lot of people try and have an internal employee or somebody do this. That's fine, but a lot of times you either lose that employee or they just don't stay consistent because they're doing other things. Right, unless it's a dedicated internal marketing person, don't a photographer, slash videographer $500, right? Sign up for a social media publishing tool. It could be as low as $10 a month. Right, take those assets they give you, schedule it out for the next three months. Right, and just make posts. Here's a picture fun captions, have chat, gpt, write you captions. If you are not doing content or you think it's going to cost you a lot, are kind of living under a rock. Right? There are so many tools and it is so easy and so inexpensive to do content marketing. It doesn't need to be this unbelievable content marketing Again, the name of the game of awareness.
Speaker 1:Honestly, bad content is better than no content, right? Uh, so content marketing would be the first thing I do, Okay. Second thing I do um, I would start boosting that content. You could take a hundred dollars a month on meta and boost that content to get more exposure. It's really easy. Watch YouTube video how to do it, right? It's not hard, right? Meta makes these things really easy. They're trying to get your money, right, to be completely honest, they're trying to get your money. They want to make it easy for you to boost content and get in front.
Speaker 1:Called first party data Emails, phone numbers, contact information, first name, last name, right, maybe, where they live, birthday dates, whatever, right, if you're not getting waivers, it could be hard for you to get this data of your customers. We like to run first party data campaigns. We're running giveaways. I won't get into that too much, but run actually yeah, I mean, let me actually, let me expand on that a little bit Run giveaways for what you're trying to increase. You want to increase birthday bookings. Run a giveaway for a monthly giveaway for a birthday booking. We use a tool called sweep widget, right? I've covered this in other segments of the promo pro tips. We use a tool called sweepget. We run ads to it, right?
Speaker 1:Again, it doesn't have to be a lot $100, $200 per month, you're going to get people to sign up. You could also have them follow you on Instagram to enter. You could have them follow you on Facebook. You could have them do all those things enter it, opt into email, opt into SMS. You're growing that first-party data. Now you could do email and SMS marketing. So these things are not expensive. Ok, some of it might take some of your time, but they're not expensive. So, again, first party data and then email and SMS using that first party data. If you don't have contacts, you can't email or SMS them, so you've got to get contacts first, ok.
Speaker 1:Next thing I would add is meta awareness ads. Okay, you're keeping it simple. You could do, you can get complex, you could do conversion ads and all a bunch of different things, but you're just going to tell meta get this out in front of as many people as possible in a local audience, okay, and you'd be shocked. And now you got that videographer. Remember I told you to get. Now you have great assets to put in front of them. Okay, because you had that videographer and the photographer come out. Next would be Google paid. This is where we start getting into a little bit more of intricate strategies, right? So that's why I'm putting them on the tail end, because you got to make them work properly and you need media spend for them and all that other stuff, right? So Google paid.
Speaker 1:Next, I would suggest SEO search engine optimization right? The reason why that's on the tail end of offering is because a lot of times when you're on a lower budget, you need every dollar you put out there to make you more dollars right away, right? Seo is more of a long-term strategy. It takes a little while to get going. Right, love SEO, but it's not like a flip of a switch type of strategy where you start doing it and you get customers from it the next day.
Speaker 1:Okay, so those I'll stop there, right? So basically, we're talking about content, first party data, email, sms, meta awareness ads, google ads, seo. Okay, you know, if you did all of those things yourself, right? I mean, you're looking at I don't know you could probably get away with. Well, you couldn't do SEO on your own. But you know that's that's three to $5,000 to implement all those things, right? So, again, that's why you'd start lower. You can do content for a hundred dollars a month if that. Even so, again, if you're on a budget, you got to do something for marketing. I suggest that 3% and I suggest layering in those strategies that I just went through. So start marketing, you will notice the difference and if you ever have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.
Speaker 2:Intercard is the only cashless system designed, developed and manufactured all under one roof. They introduced cashless technology to the amusement industry and have been leading the way for over 30 years. Cashless systems from Intercard increase customer spending, guest satisfaction and boost revenues by up to 30%. Intercard is so proud to be serving the amusement industry and if you aren't already part of their global family of customers, they hope you will become one soon. All right, well, thank you, chuck, for walking us through. Man. A load of promo pro tips in that segment.
Speaker 2:So a couple of things that stood out to me bare minimum of 3% in marketing spend, man. If you are not spending that much, then you need to bump that up. Obviously, if you're spending 5% or more, that's great, but 3% has got to be that floor. Totally agree with him on that front. And yeah, content marketing, especially with ChatGPT or any of the other chat AI tools that are out there, really make it a lot easier to be able to generate some of that content marketing. And then running giveaways, as you mentioned, for the things that you really want to promote, like that giveaway one birthday party for a month. But you have to fill out this form. You fill out that form. Now you've captured that first part of data that you can use to then market to them. So, again, all great things from Chuck there. Thank you so much for delivering that to us.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, to wrap up for today, we've got the LBX Galaxy. So, if you aren't familiar with the LBX Galaxy, that is a online community where we're sharing information and getting connections and connecting with other people directly through direct messages and other things, and so definitely scan this QR code to join. It is free to join. So join the lbxgalaxycom, or go to the lbxgalaxycom and join as well and be a part of this location-based experience and entertainment industry that we are all in and love is, you know, absolutely. So, that being said, this week we have SoundOff number 63 coming out on Tuesday, the 25th, and so we're going to cover the latest trends and we're also going to do some house cleaning. So we're going to talk a little bit about some of the stuff coming up, that we've got some changes going on with some of our content and everything else. So, anyway, this is Brandon Wiley signing off. Stay tuned and keep kicking ass.
