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LBX Collective
Sound Off #67 - LBE Market Trends and Transformations
Sponsored by Intercard!
Kevin Williams and Brandon Willey examine the changing landscape of location-based entertainment with insights from recent industry events and emerging trends.
• Five different golf simulation venues opening in Nashville, raising questions about market saturation
• Red Engine (operators of Flight Club and Electric Shuffle) planning aggressive expansion to 84 locations by 2030
• Limited VR presence at Amusement Expo International revealing shift in industry focus
• Growing trend of oversized "big box" arcade games requiring significant floor space
• Tournament-connected entertainment systems gaining popularity in hospitality settings
• Companies pivoting from VR to active entertainment solutions showing strong ROI
• Valo Arena reporting impressive 70% utilization and nearly 4,000 hours of usage at UK location
• Gashapon machine integration at LA Angels Stadium demonstrating amusement crossover into sports venues
Join us for upcoming events including the World Experience Organization's London Experience Week (April 28-May 2) and Amusement360 in Indianapolis (May 6-8).
Are you on the edge of your seat Because we're about to Sound Off with Kevin Williams, covering today's latest trends in location-based entertainment Brought to you by the LBX Collective your community to connect, engage and inspire.
Speaker 2:All right, everyone, let's buckle up, all right? Well, welcome everybody to Sound Off with Kevin Williams, number 68 on April Fool's Day.
Speaker 1:I don't know, do you celebrate April Fool's Day? Kevin? I am a journalist by not profession, but by inclination. So you know, I am a very bad journalist, as well as a consultant, as well as a researcher, as well as, from time to time, a director. I do not appreciate April Fool's Day.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. Yes, well, you have to always be wary of what you read, and read on April Fool's Day, because there will always be at least one. Every company likes to put out a press release of something that's just bullshit, so we'll see what happens in this industry.
Speaker 1:Most people treat the Stinger Report as bullshit, so I won't go through that. There is no April Fool's in any of this as far as I'm aware, and if we find out that one of these openings, closings or information is a fool, I will make sure and I will string the individual up who provides it.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, hopefully all of this news has come up before april fool's day. So what we'll have to work, what we have to watch out for is the news for the next sound off.
Speaker 1:For sure there's one there's one thing on the uh friends of the stinger report that I was given. That uh actually made me think that the japanese may have done an april fool's early, but other than that you're clean here. But anyway.
Speaker 2:All right, all right. Well, let's dive into it. What do we got for changing our mind?
Speaker 1:Well, change my mind about. Can you have too many golf, social golf entertainment venues in one area, one location? The reason I use this meme, or the reason why I'm bringing this up, is that we recently heard in Tennessee that they've got five venues of different chains of golf simulation bays opening up in good old Nashville.
Speaker 2:It's insane to me. All Nashville that's. It's insane to me. I mean, nashville is, it's a, it's a big city, but really where people go is Broadway right, like they're down on Broadway and that's that's it. I mean there's some stuff is growing here and there as the overall population changes and there's some, you know some younger generation coming in to live in Nashville instead of just visit Nashville, but it seems like five is just too many for a town that really is heavily driven by tourism versus local residents.
Speaker 1:But this could be an example of how new the competitive socializing sector is, that everybody's feeding off of the same research data. I wouldn't be surprised if one particular agency has got their hands on one piece of public information. Maybe the Nashville local council has undertaken an ABC report on the consumer spending and the demographics of their population and that has been fed upon by the machines that are used by the various chains to work out where they're going to place their facilities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. The only thing I can think of that would maybe support this many is the number of, obviously, tourists that come flow through Nashville. Nashville is one of I think, arguably one of the top 10 tourist destinations in the US, but then also the number of bachelor and bachelorette parties that flow through Nashville. It's on par with Vegas and Scottsdale, arizona. There's a lot of bachelor and bachelorette parties, especially bachelorettes, that flow through the Nashville market.
Speaker 1:Well then, that goes back to what we were talking about a couple of sound offs ago when we were saying about how important private parties and social entertainment is to your mix, and I would argue that most of the competitive socializing golf simulator venues are dedicated as private bays, hire and, you know, rental kind of experiences. So that would kind of marry up. Maybe these guys are following where the bachelorettes and stag do's, as we call them in the UK, are going. Maybe that is an untapped market that we need to do some research in. Maybe we could talk about that in your coming uh convention.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that'd be, uh, that'd be interesting to definitely do, um to to chat a little bit more about that at, uh, yeah, the LBX Academy that's coming up at, uh, at an Andretti Carding in Dallas actually, where there's also a large number of competitive socializing venues opening up. So, yeah, it'd be interesting to get into it. And then, when, yeah, you think of scottsdale arizona, uh, every single one of those brands, except for maybe true golf links, is, uh has a location either opening or open already in the scottsdale arizona area as well.
Speaker 1:Right, so heavy true golf is the is the uh, the one unusual outlier there? There is also third one sorry, a sixth one on the list that I have going into Nashville, which is a brand new concept and that didn't get a lot of publicity in the media report.
Speaker 2:Yeah, excellent, all right, well, coming up, we'll dive right into the openings. Intercard is the only cashless system designed, developed and manufactured all under one roof to the openings 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. I realized I said openings and I meant the upcoming trends that we're seeing in the biz.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it shows you I didn't even catch it that that. So yeah, we're programmed us robots now. So trends and, in the biz, a little bit of housekeeping. I will be presenting in the end of April at the World Experience Organizations event. We're having, for the first time, a London Experience Week where we're going to be talking about escape rooms, live action experiences, the theme park industry, location-based entertainment and competitive socialising and I've been asked by the guys to come in and give an overview keynote about that. I'll give a little bit more information as we get further into April about what we're intending to do there. So if you're in London area, please sign up and come along. I think you'll be impressed by Phantom Peak if you come to that event, and WXO is really good at organizing an event, as you would expect from professionals that work in this sector. Also, at the beginning of May or the first weeks of May, we're going to be having Amusement360.
Speaker 1:I am now reprising my regular appearances at Amusement 360. And I will be giving an overview of the most important part. I think I get the good one, the most important part of what's going forward, which is how do you future-proof your business now? So not talking about how you start your business, which this boot camp is renowned for. But now talking about those individuals that are old puppies, old rabbits in this sector, who now have to prove their worth and how they have to maximize and look towards the future of their business, and so again so you'll be bouncing almost directly from Heathrow over to Indianapolis, almost back to back.
Speaker 2:So April 28th to the May 2nd is the London Experience Week by the WXO, and then May 6th to the 8th is the event for Newsman 360 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Speaker 1:Let's hope that the fire brigade are on call around Heathrow Airport. Yeah, indeed, talking about the M&a uh components in the industry, as well as future proofing, uh, our friends at gender feel that the best way to future proof their business is to acquire everybody that is standing in the market. I think, uh, you know, their 800 chain of geico facilities has been expanded a little bit more by the acquisition of Game Goose. This is quite a large operation in the Japanese facility. I couldn't nail down the exact number of facilities that will be rolled into this, but you know, again, this is the latest upon latest of acquisitions that we're seeing from the company as they go for their world domination, as I like to say, talking about world domination, and Red Engine, who are famous for Flight Club and Electric Shuffle, have revealed that they've set up a brand new structure within the company. They're looking at their business and they're now planning a serious rollout of 45 facilities by 2030. So they've got five years to complete this. They're looking at opening 45 facilities to build a whole operation up to the magic number of 84 locations, both flight club and electric shuffle. This is an interesting point for any corporation when they get beyond the tens of facilities and they start looking at the 20s, the 30s, the 40s and then the 80s and the 100s. We have very few competitive socialising companies that are getting to these kinds of numbers and we can expect that the M&A component of the expansion component is going to take place. So I would say that Red Engine has put down serious investments to be able to roll this thing out, the same way that our friends at Social Play have done with Puttshack and where our friends at Bounce and Boom Battle Bar are also undertaking extensive rollouts. Watch this space Talking about the trends in tech, and this is the fallout, really, from Amusement Expo.
Speaker 1:Where was all the vr? This particular chart is a rundown of all the vr products that were at the show, not physically on the show floor, but the majority of them that were being promoted by companies on the show floor. And then the highlighted ones were products that were new, and even saying new, I have to use the caveat there should be a giant asterisk by each one. For example, our friends at Sega that were saying that they had the brand-new version of Alpha Ops was not quite correct. The final, final, final production version of this comes out in May. They actually had the version of the unit that they had at IALPA. Also, our friends at Relix are saying that they've got a brand new mini coaster version which is for rental markets. But really fundamentally you can't tell the difference with the new rental version from their other versions, other than it is a little less. It's more compact for easy storage.
Speaker 1:The only product I can really put my hand on my heart and say that was a brand new product with an asterisk, a game buy, is the Colosseum Nova product, which is the foosball game. Now people are shouting at the screen saying, oh, but they've already launched that product. Yes, they have already launched this product, but now it has gone through a redesign and it is in a new cabinet and it is using a new head-mounted display setup and the game software has been updated. So if you want, it's a reboot rather than brand new. But this is very telling.
Speaker 1:Of all of the amusement at the amusement expo, of all of the highly hyped vr, there was really fundamentally no 100 brand new products. Our friends at nightingales didn't bring the final version of kung fu panda which they secretly launched or promoted at last year's event. You know there were a lot of omissions. There was no free roaming products other than a demonstration of a mock-up by our friends at Neotech. And even then that was just a demonstration. That didn't give you a play demonstration, it just showed you the layout and the game operation. So we didn't actually have any free-roaming VR at the show, other than people that were lucky enough to be part of the VIP team during the VR Games Summit that went off to the MGM and went into the disused facility there that was reopened especially for the VR Games Summit. Very telling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the well. First of all, I mean, I don't know why anybody needs to have VR foosball. I think that's absolutely that's something that nobody needed to have. But but anyway, I would totally reiterate that you know your point, I think. I do believe Zero Latency had a 10 by10 booth with maybe just some literature out there. There was again a handful, but if we're talking about amusements only, then yes, this was all that. There was Very, very little, and I think it comes down to the fact that booth space at Amusement Expo is expensive and for even a 20x20 to put in some small, let you know, let's say, a small footprint, like a hero's own footprint style um, free roam VR. It's an expensive show to go to and you have an attendee mix that just isn't there and ready to support VR. Free roam, um, even, uh, vr, uh, you know, when you think about route operators, I don't know how many rod operators are going to want to have to maintain VR amusement machines. I think that's why we're seeing the limited VR at Amusement Expo.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to name the company, but a well-known VR hardware provider turned around and said it's not the right fit. And so I was saying, oh, but there the vr game summits and all of that. And they said it doesn't matter. You know, we're sending a team to vegas uh, very expensive. Um, we have to take a space if we're going to go, because what's the point if we're not going to promote it's? I'd rather spend the time on holiday. And they literally spent the time on holiday uh, recouping uh their time and getting to getting together with certain friends and certain clients away from the hurly-burly.
Speaker 1:And that's the problem with amusement expo international. It has been perceived as more of a street route distributor event than as an FEC entertainment event. It previously had a very strong FEC component but, funny enough, that co-located event was acquired by IALPA many years ago and was rolled into what IALPA now represents as its FEC pavilion component. As its FEC pavilion component. I think we're going to find that VR in the AEI component is going to need to reinvent itself, and I know that there's a lot of discussions going on behind the scenes within the amusement trade and the amusement associations about how technology and trends can be adopted, rather than just focusing on one particular aspect yeah, totally agree moving on, and another popular component, uh, of the show was the big boxes, and we really were dominated by the big boxes if you look at all of the products.
Speaker 1:Now I'm I am focused, laser, focused on video amusement, uh, and virtual reality and immersive entertainment and all of that, the gamified side. I am not pointing to the big boxes in the redemption, redemption and price sector, but those boys have got very big with those machines as well. But for the sake of what we're discussing here on the size of the boxes and the real estate that they're trying to inhabit shows the arms race that we're going through. You know, one of the largest virtual reality elements in the sector is our friends with HyperDeck, and that machine takes up the space of I think last time I calculated eight conventional amusement redemption pieces, where all of the other machines I'm showing here take up usually the space of two or three amusement machines, some interesting ones here.
Speaker 1:The environmental cabinets are back, so we have the products from LAI Wallop, we have our friends at Raw Thrills and we also have Bandai Namco now with Gold Coast running it, but also we have Triotech with the success that they've had with their Super Blaster, as well as a new entrant, blue Games, with their new shooter, which is going to be a direct competitor to the Triotech product, and then, fundamentally, the one product that everybody was talking about, why it was so big and why it was so expensive, and where we're going to put it, is, of course, cyberpunk LAI. Of course Cyberpunk LAI, and the jury's still out whether it's worth the candle of the expense as well as the space that it takes up, though I'm waiting to see the ROI, now that it is properly out on test and being deployed in Dave and Buster's facilities, and I hope to be surprised.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean I struggle with some of these super large footprint boxes, especially depending on your game room size, that you have to work with.
Speaker 2:If you're a Dave and Busters we've talked about this before on either the LBX show or here you know you can take a swing and drop in two cyber punks and, you know, put them side by side or even just put one of them in with something else and you have the space to play around with. If you're a smaller arcade and you have to really make a concerted decision around what to drop in and what to put in and the cost of these machines for the square footage that it requires, for the potential ROI that you're going to get, it really begins to question whether or not it's worth it, especially depending on length of gameplay, because then you have a throughput issue as well. So now, if your gameplay length is longer, which some of these bigger machines want to provide, because you have to pay more per play or per experience, now your throughput is down and you're also occupying more square footage, and so, yeah, the ROI calculations on these are going to be interesting to see, you know, for the next year or two.
Speaker 1:It is essential we get the ROI numbers rather than we depend on the height machine. One of the things I haven't included here is the arenas, the VR arenas, because they take the largest arena space next to a laser tag installation or a full immersive attraction. So you can kind of say that the gateway drug is the hyperdeck before we then fall into the full free roam VR enclosure, and that is an argument for separate. What we're talking about here are amusement configured products that are going to sit in all kinds of entertainment facilities, from the street route all the way out to the FEC and the mule location. Not every operator is going to pull out a number of machines that are generating good revenue to drop in an unknown. So a lot of this, and we've been here before.
Speaker 1:The environmental cabinet had a heyday during the House of the Dead period and Luigi's Mansion period and all of that, and we sort of had a high and then a low where operators didn't want to take risks until they saw the ROI.
Speaker 1:And then, when they saw the ROI, they thought, well, it isn't that much better than if I purchase an equivalent type of product and so I will stand off, and that is the kind of danger that I think that this market needs to be aware of.
Speaker 1:The going big box with poor game is dangerous. Just because your box is big doesn't mean that the game is big, and a lot of the ROI data that we'll be getting in the next couple of weeks, months, is going to dictate how many of these units get sold, but also how many machines get replaced, because we're at that point now for many operators where they've had certain of their products in their facilities for over the nine-month period, for over the 24-month period in some cases, and they should be looking at updating, and, because of stagflation of the current financial conditions, they may sit on their hands a little bit longer just because they're not seeing 100% better revenue return from dropping in a brand new machine. That said, a number of those machines in the list there in front of us have, on test, shown some really interesting numbers. So you know it swings and roundabouts. Are you prepared to take the risk and put one of these machines into your facility, remove the current setup that you have and benefit from their popularity of being both new and compelling?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, you talk about dropping in an unknown, for example, and I'm I'm a big supporter of, of indie developers, a big supporter of somebody trying something new. Um, but one of the you know, one of the ones that we came across, uh, you know, amusement expo was desert chase from blue motion games. They had two new things and this is this was the third from the top, that's the third from the left of the top that you had, uh, on your list, kevin, kevin, and this is, yeah, the Desert Chase. This is, according to Adam from Arcade Heroes. This is a $53,000 piece and when you think about the amount of the footprint, it's a totally brand new game. You know, the gameplay for me was, you know, having issues, but again, it could have been some of the halogen lighting in the space, but the tracking from the gun was was create was creating a frustrating gameplay experience for me and a few others that that I was playing that's.
Speaker 1:That's what we. We heard that the tracking on the guns uh, just interesting. A little bit of background for those that haven't had a chance to see um adam's excellent uh coverage of the show floor. We also talk about in the stinger report coverage of the show floor. We also talk about it in the Stinger Report coverage of the show. This is a team made up of ex-Triotech individuals, so they have some knowledge of the shooting gallery game system and to see them launching a new product that was suffering teething troubles in the game shooting tracking sort of like having a car that doesn't drive well, you know, this is one thing you would hope that they would have nailed down by now and again, we all know about show jitters, so I'll give them the benefits of the doubt, but we're going to be keeping a very close eye to see how this works in the market, how this works in the market. Moving on, and one of the aspects that hasn't been touched upon in most of the coverage but we look at in a little bit of depth in the Stinger report, is the explosion in what I would call social tournament entertainment products, products that have a tournament capability, that's, online, and products that fall into the category of being able to be dropped into hospitality entertainment environments. This year's Amusement Expo had quite a considerable number of those, and I've actually missed out one of the darts machines from this list, so there were at least four different tournament connected darts machines, both soft nose and steel tipped dart systems. Important that this offers a tournament capability. It's a very hospitality centric product and this is not really your usual fec fodder this. These are type of products that you would find in bars, taverns and competitive socializing venues. We also had the latest and greatest in uh, of course, the video amusement tournament systems, which also only find well, not only, but majority find their success in the hospitality sector. Both Golden Tea as well as Big Buck Hunter are products that are amusement products and have amusement lifestyle, but their real benefit, their real performance factor is in the bar, tavern and competitive socializing sector and, of course, their big tournament events that they hold either in Chicago or in Las Vegas are big what I would call e-sports events, which are streamed on Twitch, that have large following and have the big cardboard check for the prizes. I think the incredible I don't know, it's the Big Buck Hunter tournament. We're talking a prize pot of $160,000 up for grabs. I think I'm correct on that one.
Speaker 1:But we also have a new entrant into the tournament play style and that is the boxing machine. Excuse me, the boxing product has been a very big seller in the amusement scene for the last two or three years. Always, it's an evergreen product. But we have recently seen that a lot of venues have dropped in boxing machines into their space. They've been making some serious money. I would argue that that's part of the active entertainment uh aspect that we're seeing being raised into popularity in the market. But we saw from a new entrance uh attractions and more uh who are working with birmingham vending, that they launched a japanese system reconfigured for the Western market called iPlay, and it is connected, it vends prizes and it is not just a boxing machine but it is also a football kicking machine. So it's a test of strength on your boot as well as your fist.
Speaker 1:Now I have to agree with some people that say that this seems to be over-engineered. You know, it's vending, it's tournament, it's boxing, it's kicking. But it is a system that is very interesting to watch because of the tournament popularity. That test of strength isn't just limited to you and your mates, but you can actually take part in a tournament which will have a championship component added to it. Very interesting to see how these machines, as well as what we see in the larger attraction sector, especially in the VR arena sector. We were talking recently in Open and Shut about how certain companies, such as Eva and their esports free roaming VR experiences, are now finding popularity in their particular market. Esports is one thing. For me, tournament and competition is a very strong draw to any entertainment facility, be you a route or an FEC or an LBE, and the nice thing about it is it generates repeat visitation because you want to beat your score, you want to compete, and it also brings an audience because people also want to watch people compete.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah. Well, I would just say, at least as the boxers are concerned, tying an esports component into that is going to give the boxer this specific Birmingham Bend company's competitive advantage, because when I walked on the show floor, one of the products that I saw more of than anything else was boxers. Almost every felt like it felt like every booth had a boxer in it, and so you know they need to find a way to stand out, and so tying it into an e-sports and tournament gameplay is probably, you know, one of the more interesting ways that I've seen be a differentiator for a boxer, which is pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1:I think there's something about Cudo regarding connected boxing machines, because at the moment most boxing games are a little bit pedestrian. It is the digital display and the worn punch bag bag where here there will be a little bit of finesse with the digital screen, but again we wait and see how it performs in the market. Talking about companies pivoting away from their vr interests towards a more active entertainment, immersive play space and our friends at spree interactive revealed that they have launched a brand new product called spree play uh, and this machine is a tracked machine. It tracks the player's hand gestures, uh, using uh computer vision, and up to three or four players can play at the same time in a mini game experience very Mario-esque, very Wii gaming-esque, but it offers a unique audience entertainment experience and is not the only one out there that is using computer vision tracking. But it kind of shows a pivot from companies that were previously established in VR towards looking at other aspects of the entertainment market that they can jump into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is an inevitable shift for Spree and, again, I think we're going to see a lot of this happen either consolidation or closures in the VR space. But I'm glad to see that Spree is at least experimenting with new mediums.
Speaker 1:I think the impetus for this is our friends at Innerwise. Innerwise that was a VR developer and they still develop VR products, but they decided to put their main focus in their Cubix system and that pivot into the projection mapped enclosure environment worked out very well for them, and I'm sure other companies are now thinking what it takes to take their VR content expertise and move it into a medium that is a little bit more suitable for location-based entertainment in the current conditions. One of those companies that has an immersive enclosure system again not based on projection mapping but a projection-based display system is our friends at Valo Motion, and one of the things we're kind of looking at is we're getting the roi numbers. Now you know these. You can always tell when a company is happy to share these numbers that you know they've got something to shout about. When the company's kind of a standoffish to talk about their roi numbers, then you know that, uh, they're not performing as well as can be expected. And you know the Valo Motion Valo Arena system is not a cheap puppy. They've worked with Creative Works to develop it into a much more form-fitting FEC and LBE standard, but this is still a machine that you need to see it generate some revenue.
Speaker 1:And so our friends at Valo Motion were keen to share one of their venues an English venue around the twist, a family entertainment center, you know, an English style FEC. So a lot of active entertainment trampoline, amusement, climbing wall and they decided last year to take the plunge and buy a Velo Arena, one of the first of those to be installed in the UK. And here we go. We see a 70% utilization of the system at the facility. We also see that over the you know, the 21 months that it's been installed in that site, it has had over 3 000 hours of usage.
Speaker 1:Those are serious numbers and if you've priced it right, you've paid for that machine within. So I would say they've already paid for that machine within 10 months. Yeah, and everything on top of that has been cheddar. And this is the kind of thing that makes us in the location-based entertainment industry such a profitable industry when handled right and it is also important to see. These are the type of numbers that we need to see from not just Valor Motion and their active entertainment system, but we need to see across all of the expensive location-based entertainment attractions around in the market, and I can sadly say that we don't.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, these are impressive numbers, and you said over 3,000, it's actually nearly 4,000. It's 3,900 hours, which is absolutely incredible, and you know. What's interesting, though, is this is not the first time that I've heard this level of utilization rate for Valorina. I've heard about AR's entertainment hub, specifically in San Antonio. Although they have many locations throughout Texas, they have a VALO Arena deployed in every one of their locations, because they saw the same. When they tested it out in their San Antonio location, they had a small not a small spot, but they had a footprint that they could drop it in, and they saw this level of utilization, and they immediately went and installed one in all of their other location because of this. So this is in no means meant to be a shill for Valo Motion and the Valo Arena, but you can't deny the numbers and hearing the numbers from other operators as well, it's clearly not just a one-trick pony in a single location.
Speaker 1:We know that it's not a one-trick pony. This isn't lightning striking wands. This is other examples of this enclosure immersive active entertainment, big ball throwing systems. Our friends at Neo Experience have also seen some very strong numbers. This enclosure approach is also I've already mentioned in a wise once today. I'm not going to mention them again, but these are examples. We have seen a serious pivot towards an active entertainment experience market and I would argue that this has superseded the downturn that we've seen in some aspects of the XR market. So, where maybe VR has not had the longevity of installation that some had hoped for, we're now seeing the other aspect of XR motion tracking, projection, mapping now taking over the vacuum that is created, and I wouldn't be surprised if the IALPA show floor in November is littered with big as well as small active entertainment enclosure systems that will be vying for what is seen as a very lucrative market. These numbers will make many people reconsider both the pricing they charge per play but also what space they make available, and I know that our friends at Valor Motion are looking at following on the success that they've had with the Valor Arena with other developments in this genre. But again, I don't want to steal their thunder. Yeah, talking uh of uh stealing thunder. No, no, talking about uh placing products into uh unique locations.
Speaker 1:In the sound off, excuse me, in the sound off we talked about a number of competitive socializing uh entertainment systems that have been put into sports stadia, both in the cricket sector as well as in the baseball sector.
Speaker 1:Here we have an example of amusement being put into the Los Angeles Angels Stadium in California.
Speaker 1:That's 56 Gashapo units full of unique Gashippo prizes with some level of japanese style, um baseball-esque uh I'm not sure how many of them are baseball-esque um toy prizes or if they're puttman infused or a mixture of the both.
Speaker 1:But the, the toys, uh or the collectibles should say the collectible capsules inside these have been appropriately placed in here. This is much more away from the amusement business and much more down the path of what Bandai Namco has been doing with their cross-store business, where they are getting the merch out there, they're getting the branding out there and they're actually utilizing the Gachapon machines in unique locations. This is the first time that we've seen uh us baseball league embrace this kind of approach andi wouldn't be surprised famous catchphrase to see that they also look towards maybe including some competitive socializing entertainment into the space as a secondary business model. I'm not saying that they're going to drop amusement in there, but I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see one of the baseball or shuffleboard platforms going into a location like this for secondary business generation. It was an interesting story for me, seeing this especially linked to what we were talking about in SoundOff, and so I wanted to include it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, this is a perfect fit for Dashpone, actually. I mean, when you think about people coming, they want memorabilia, they want collectibles from their experience, and they may not want to go through the lines to go and get a hat or a shirt or a baseball bat signed by some, you know, and they may also not have that budget, but they can go and they can turn a crank, you know, drop in a token and turn in a crank, and so, yeah, I think we'll probably see more Gashpong throughout other professional sports venues, you know whether it's, you know, hockey even, and basketball or other MLB venues as well.
Speaker 1:So, I wonder, in the current climate, if in Japan we follow the surgence of Gashapon due to that kind of, you know, simple, quick and also attractive prizes. So it's merchandisers that are easy to embrace and offer a wide selection of collectibles. That's an aspect of the toy industry that's very famous. I am wondering how much of this will be transmitted to the Western market and how. As you say, we don't just see it at Sports Stadia, but where we see it wherever there is a large audience that can be entertained with these types of products. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how long Gashapo stays in the amusement sector and doesn't get eaten up by the vending industry, but that's a conversation for another time. Anyway, I've touched upon most of the trends that I've seen. Is there anything that you want to follow up with Brandon? No, I think touched upon most of the trends that I've seen. Is there anything that you want to follow up with Brandon?
Speaker 2:No, I think it was a great sound off and so thanks everybody for listening to sound off number 68 on April Fool's Day. So everybody go and mess with somebody for today. So there we go, all right.
