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Sound Off #106 - Sporttainment’s Fork In The Road, EAG Trends, and more!
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On this week's show we trace where sportainment actually works for guests, where it slips into sports training, and how competitive socializing reshapes what operators buy and build. From CES signals and Meta’s retrenchment to EAG’s on-the-floor realities, we highlight tech that matters and formats that last.
• the split between competitive socializing and active t.24raining
• funding rounds in baseball and golf concepts
• GameStop closures as a cautionary signal for retail and LBE
• why memberships fit training-first facilities
• CES takeaways on AI glasses, AR, and VR positioning
• Meta pullback, studio closures, and investor sentiment
• hygiene and uptime wins with self-cleaning VR hardware
• EAG London trends: fewer novelties, stronger ROI focus
• DDR’s return and music games’ crowd power
• high-fidelity simulators and accessibility design
• AR shuffleboard, modern shooting galleries, projection golf
• the need for multi-activity mixes to drive dwell and spend
• upcoming talks at Amusement Expo and AWE
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Are you on the edge of your seat? Because we're about to start with Evan Williams, covering today's latest trends in location-based entertainment. Brought to you by the LBX Collective, your community to connect, aid, and inspire. All right, everyone, let's buckle up.
SPEAKER_02:All right. Well, welcome everybody to Sound Off with Kevin Williams. This is episode number 106 for January 20th, 2026. Kevin, my friend, how are you doing, sir?
SPEAKER_04:Zooming along through uh 2026, it feels like, but I'm fine. How are you?
SPEAKER_02:I'm doing well. I'm doing well, yeah. Looking forward to getting into this and seeing how you're going to uh change my mind this time.
SPEAKER_04:Well, we've touched upon sporttainment on a number of uh occasions, and we just really need to see uh is it going to be a standalone entertainment offering or is it going to be a major part of the social entertainment's next phase of development? I think it is. I uh from the number of competitive socializing venues that we're going to be reporting on, opening their doors for the first time in uh open and shut, a number of these have wrapped themselves very heavily in sporttainment, uh, whatever that means, depending on how they uh try to sell their brand.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I think it for me anyway, I think it heavily depends on the way that it's implemented, the form factor and the level of engagement you can have with your friends or your family coming to again hang out. Now, I guess there's maybe two different angles of sports taintment. There's the competitive socializing sports taintment direction, right? So this is clays for shooting, this is uh five iron for golf, this is toka social for soccer, right? And maybe home run dugout for uh for baseball and all the other variants thereof for some of these, right? So I think if we're talking about that as sports taintment, then it really the form factor is important, the F and B is important, the way that we're, you know, if we're talking about something different like a well, like a spotchaw with round one, which is like just a bunch of different sports courts, and you're supposed to go to round one, play amusement games and some bowling downstairs and eat some sushi, and then go upstairs and then like run around on a basketball court. Uh, you know, I I'm not sure about that um actually succeeding. So I think there's like deep, heavy sports, and then there's like the competitive socializing. I would also put pickleball in that like sports tainment category, but not in the competitive socializing side, like in more like I'm gonna go play this game and maybe have a beer afterwards, or maybe have a drink, but I'm not really there to like hang out. I'm there to play pickleball with my friends, but I'm really there to you know to play pickleball. Like that's why I'm coming. And I think those there's two distinctions that I think are important for sportstainment.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you you're you're heading in a direction that you know I've been thinking about for some time. I actually would say that the competitive socializing approach like Clay's is sporttainment, i.e., they're using recreations of sporting shotguns, uh, though the gamification of the actual experience is very uh soft. You could say the same about uh uh Toca Social. They're using real footballs, and you know, you're showing football skills, but you are not playing on a pitch, as it were, you are playing a video game using that as your tool. And where Spocha uh comes into that, and all of the others, I would uh put into the the basket of active entertainment, where they're using physicality and active uh uh um enjoyment, but really they're not focusing on the sports. So that poor old pickleball experience sits in the middle of that. Though uh I feel it is important to separate if you're doing a hard sports uh entertainment venue against just an active entertainment environment. And maybe the sporttainment terminology could be confusing, um, especially now that we see a high level of investment going into what has been defined uh to the investors at sporttainment. You know, our friends at Home Run Doug Owl raising$22 million uh for their Series A funding is a considerable investment in what would be uh called in their uh reporting as Sport Tayman. The same way that Baller, uh Ballers, sorry, has raised 22 million for their Series A. And these are operations that are now going to be looking out, uh rolling out a competitive socializing environment, but with a strong sports element. Anyway.
SPEAKER_02:All right, well, coming up after the quick break, we will dive right into some more trends. 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, get 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 a global family of customers, they hope you will become one too.
SPEAKER_04:Thank you, Intercard. And jumping straight into the economy side, uh, and we touched upon this in open and shut, but uh one of those victims of uh the changing landscape in the retail sector, uh, and also a company that had toyed with the idea of even putting some retro arcade machines in their facilities to try and increase their dwell uh was uh GainSpot. Now, you know, we wake up to the news as we enter 2026 that they have decided to bite the bullet and gone for a considerable route and branch closure of facilities. Um, you know, over 300 of their retail stalls have been cut or scythed by management uh as they totally restructure and replan their business going forwards. It is an example for all of us of how uh brands go through this kind of uh boom and bust. We saw GameStop uh becoming a stonk uh share uh opportunity as the uh the markets vied and played, and people took a punt at trying to boost uh or elevate their uh pricing. But fundamentally, GameStop was a busted flush as a mon uh as a concept, and I would actually argue is the um really uh you know the video store uh of our society. You know, maybe in 10 years' time we will not even think that uh purchasing uh uh video game content is something that you do at a retailer because physical media will have disappeared, and maybe most people will be purchasing their peripherals and consoles that they are buying uh all online. And that may be pointing towards uh a future model for something that we in the outer home entertainment industry could embrace, which is maybe uh having venues that include a place to test out and physically play games uh in a priced model. But that's just an idea I'm throwing out.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, I gave uh a little bit of a diatribe on uh on GameStop and their their uh outdated model uh on open and shut. So you know, I'm not gonna repeat that for here. But uh yeah, it this is just it's it's disappointing for all like you know, as you mentioned, you know, all the employees. You know, this is not an insignificant. If they're closing down an estimated 390 stores, then that's a significant number of employees. I mean, not in the grand scheme of things, but for each of them individually, that is uh disappointing. And it's just frustrating when it was clear the mismanagement and lack of vision at the executive level that ends up leading to this uh these these employees losing their jobs.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and we wish them well where they uh move on to next. Uh though I, as I say, this is a blockbuster moment for the uh video game sector, uh, and there are implications much greater going on uh to the trending in the bits, a little light uh this run round. Uh brand new managing director for our friends uh at uh Professionals at Play. We were talking about them in Open and Shut with uh new venues that they had uh opening. Um, you know, they're known for the Roxy Lane, the Roxy Ballrooms, uh the Kingpits, and their new Star Pins uh operation. 26 sites out there, so uh definitely uh I get the feeling that Ben's coming in to uh try and increase that number considerably against the competition of the lane sevens and the gravities and the others, the Hollywood bowls that they have to compete against.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and you know it's it's uh it's good, I think, to see them. I mean, they haven't had many missteps yet at this point, so it's good to see him as the finance director moving into the managing director role. So he's definitely coming from internal, so he's gonna have some of that internal culture, and it's not gonna, you're not gonna see significant shakeup, but really a fairly early, still relatively early stage for the brand. Or the set of brands, I should say.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, uh, and we know that they've they've got some restructuring going on with some uh other aspirations, which I'm sure we'll be reporting about later in the year. Uh, one of those kind of sporttainment concepts that we were touching upon earlier, uh, and we have a brand new, well, pseudo-brand new uh soccer uh active entertainment experience. There's not a lot of uh technology here other than maybe some wristband uh connectivity that uh they incorporate. This is one of four facilities that exist, mainly in Portugal uh and uh the UAE. Uh and this is their first US location. You know, not my cup of tea. Uh, you know, I'll lay my cards on the table. I'm not a uh a soccer follower, but it is uh scratching an itch for uh a large audience, and the idea of this merging active entertainment with a sportstainment kind of feel is maybe an example of the future that we will see from other sports.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. I this is this one is this tough for me. Um, I mean, not that they won't be successful. Uh you know, in fact, like you know, we talked about an open and shut. Um, you know, I I did question whether or not Orange County was in California, was really the best first US location. And even the more I thought about it between recording open shut and recording this, uh, if we were to stick with California, which to your point, Kevin, you said you know, the soccer mom sort of like became became a thing from California, which I don't necessarily disagree with. It is a much bigger thing in the Bay Area than it is in and the Los Angeles area. And so I could have seen this like popping up in San Jose, just south of the soccer stadium there, and and really being able to draw from a large swath of a diverse population that plays football and comes from playing football, uh, you know, because they bring in, you know, there's a lot of immigration that happens due to the tech sector up in the Silicon Valley area. So I could have seen that almost be a better location in California, given what this is, you know, and so this is where I really struggle with like this is definitely active play, active entertainment, but almost not just for the pure enjoyment of just going and kicking a ball around. This is like meant to train you to be a better soccer player or football player, right? And they have group play, they have uh individual training, and yes, it's it is high high tech. There is some AI, quote unquote, um, that they're using to implement. Uh there's there's the wristbands that are tracking their scores and their health, their their health metrics and everything else, but it really does come down to this facility is built around helping me become or my kid become a better football player. And that I don't see as a successful entertainment venue, right? Um, this could be a very successful instantiation of a training facility for young kids to get better at football. Um, but I don't see it as a place where like they're just gonna go and run around and have fun casually.
SPEAKER_04:And and it's that entertainment level, that engagement, uh, the agency and the engagement uh with an entertainment model that kind of draws a line. So I would argue that some of the early golf simulator centers were purely there to improve your swing, improve your long or your short game, and the entertainment value was supplied by them offering you a coffee or a drink during your sessions. Uh, I would argue that some of the driving ranges, and I don't mean the golf driving ranges, but actually the racing uh carting ranges, some of them are set up purely to train you as a better racing cart driver or even a racing car driver. The the level of fun uh has been eased back towards competition more. And there's a lot of competition going on at Foot Labs. There are teams competing against each other, and there will be league games and such like. So, again, we must be careful that that Venn diagram, that uh uh mess that I have will have a section now that will incorporate sport, but uh how much that sport feeds into being an entertainment or as just uh a side component uh of the overall offering is uh is interesting. And again, I would argue very strongly that this is more of a training ground for soccer than an entertainment facility for football.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, completely agree. And um I'm just trying to get pricing for what I have the right now.
SPEAKER_04:The only way sucks, the big one. It's very flashy, but yeah, it's it's non-functional.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, I just shouldn't say that it's functional, but in even in order to book, I still don't even know. I've gone through the booking process, I still don't even know what the actual pricing is for me to come there for one hour in in the facility. I also would argue that they should absolutely have memberships. And if they haven't, maybe they sell memberships when you get to the front counter, but they're not selling them online, and this is entirely a membership model. This is this is the gym membership model, the trampoline park membership model that somebody's going to want to come every day or multiple times a week in order to again continue to improve their skills.
SPEAKER_04:I I can't work out why the web page is so bad, especially as they have four facilities. I try to jump into their Lisbon site just to get away from this one, and it won't let me, you know, it's and it won't give me information. So uh, guys, if you're watching, please sort sort it out. But anyway, moving on to the tech trends, and we had CES take place, and you know, I told you so. The VR was very thin on the ground. There was VR there, you know, there were companies uh promoting new form factor VR, but it was drowned out by the continuing shouting from the AI smart glasses market, who are working incredibly hard to try and uh get some difference between the variety of different glasses out there uh that seem to bring zero to the table compared to what has already been done, uh, and also trying to blur quite actively the definition between AR and AI glasses. You know, the AI glasses gives you hardly anything other than maybe um uh audio capability, phone call capability, and some photographic capability. The AR glasses or the AR light glasses give some text-to-speak information uh in the glasses. But the real fundamental of having that uh HUDS, that head-up display, still seems to be only limited to a very small number of manufacturers who can't really pull the price down, and so these systems get pushed into the corner. And we're at that stage now where you know the AR glasses and the AI glasses are a platform looking for an opportunity or uh an application that will get people to put their hands in their pockets. We are told that uh these uh AR uh AI glasses are selling well. Uh they always point to the Ray-Band, uh meta-rayband series of AI glasses, but I also noticed that a lot of the reporting about that mistakenly reports these as AR glasses or claims that most of these sales are of the display version of uh the Ray-Band system. And the display system, which only has one screen and one eye, which has been causing problems with uh early adopters, is also that it's very small sales. They've you know, Meta even turned around and announced that they would be curtailing plans to roll out the display version of their smart glasses to Europe and the rest of the world while they focus on sorting out the American market. To buy these glasses, you actually, in many cases, have to go, you can't just buy them online, you actually have to physically go to one of their facilities, go through the demonstration, and then commit to purchasing. And that kind of security of sale tells me that there's a lot more going on behind the curtain regarding how successful AI and AR glasses are as a replacement to VR.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends what we're considering the future killer app to be. I don't see these glasses as being a replacement to VR. I think they will be truly what the AR thing, you know, augment your like daily experience, but it will come down to the killer app and it'll come down to the operating system. But currently, as it stands today, this overwhelming amount of you know of variety is just ripe for dissolution or consolidation.
SPEAKER_04:Consolidation, we hope. We don't want to go through uh a bloodletting that we saw in the VR sector. And I need to be a little bit more clear when I say as a replacement to VR. From a customer's using point of view, I totally agree with you, there isn't a replacement. But from an investor's point of view, they need to find the next bandwagon to jump onto because they got a black eye over VR. And we have now seen that ratcheted up to 100 over the last couple of days as we've entered 2026. So, smug mode on, and I told you so on, you know, back in 2024, I tried to advise everybody at the IALPA uh conference that we did that, you know, please, guys, try and head towards the XR exit rather than the VR exit because VR is going to be tarnished quite heavily by a level of toxicity as you know, the big companies in the consumer VR. Sector. Forget how good the revenue generation is for us in the location-based entertainment. It is the customer's perception. And we really have seen a never-ending number of news stories kind of hinting that VR is over from their point of view and that XR is in, and maybe AI is the replacement. And from an investor's point of view, if you sunk a whole load of money into VR and you've got nothing out of it, you're going to try and sink money into the AI and the AR glasses, hoping that you can uh dodge the loss. We saw uh the global shipment of mixed reality and virtual reality headsets in last year, 2025, at a seven-year low, you know, minimal sales. And most of those big sales numbers were in our sector, in the commercial and in the location-based entertainment sector. But don't tell anyone because the media doesn't really want to sell that story. They're just wanting to sell their story. Uh, it bleeds, it leads, VR's in trouble. And really, Apple's decision to pull back on their aspirations. And then the rumors that started last year that Meta was in the process of pulling back on their aspirations started a kind of VR is dead attitude amongst the media and some of the influencers. A lot of influencers jumped ship and ran away from covering VR and even uh covering the uh Apple system, even though uh they were receiving quite interesting uh suggestions to keep on supporting that. But it really hit the fan, as it were, a couple of days ago when Meta just had a bloodletting and they admitted that they were pulling money away from uh their mixed reality and virtual reality interests, and that their meta-reality lab would be focusing more on their uh AI glasses and their AR aspirations. They then turned around and started saying that they had started job layoffs uh within their VR divisions. We then heard that another group of layoffs, another 10%, had been cut, and then we started seeing the game studios that had been creating content, successful game content for VR platforms, these studios that Meta owned been shuttered, they've been closed down. Sometimes in mid-game development, sometimes after just recently releasing a VR title, one of these studios had uh released uh the Deadpool VR experience, and you know, though it wasn't a stellar seller, uh, and then to cut the studio so hard, uh close the studio down, kind of tells us that Meta has had intervention from its financials. It's kind of had someone sit down, and an intervention has been, you know, you spent nearly$80 billion on the metaverse uh uh on your virtual reality experience, and you've got nothing to show for it. You've you've got a transient audience that doesn't have retention, you've got kids running around guerrilla tag, which may be fantastic, but you've cheesed off all of the other VR users that actually have money to spend on uh content. And fundamentally, all of the targets that you were claiming that you were going to hit in the virtual reality sector with your subsidization of your platform have been failed, they've been missed. And I don't think we've seen an ending to the bloodletting. It's quite serious. Uh, as we're recording this, there is a meeting taking place at uh Reality Lab's headquarters where I think some major announcements are going to be made about even further cutting back on their VR aspirations. And sadly, for the consumer VR sector, this is quite a blow. They've been living on copium for a long time, hoping that things were going to get better for them. Um they're looking towards the valve uh steam frame PC VR system coming in and being a savior of them, though I do believe the light that they see at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming steam train.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, I don't have much. You've covered it all very well. Um I don't have much else to add here, other than the fact that the the very fact that they're closing down not just layoffs within the VR and meta divisions, but closing down actual game studios that they had acquired over the years. That is the clearest signal to me that at the executive level, management, and board level, they've decided that this is absolutely uh to you know this is not the direction they're going, and to shut down all investment.
SPEAKER_04:We we said for many, many times, I'm a broken record about please understand that putting your hopes and dreams in meta is you know kind of being the uh the fox carrying the salamander across the uh the water, you know, at some point halfway through the middle of the river, you're gonna get stung in the back. And and uh it was poo-pooed a lot of the time. And you know, oh, they're subsidizing the market, they're growing the market. No matter how much they've grown the market in the consumer VR sector, this level of withdrawal will do more damage than if they hadn't touched it. And we're so lucky in the location-based entertainment that our VR boom is not tied to this, and that's again another reason why I was trying to emphasize we're an XR sector rather than a VR sector. One of the success stories in the VR uh application uh has been the development of uh patents and technologies that help drive the sector. And uh our friends at VR Leo uh received a patent for their self-cleaning system. If you're not familiar with this, their suspended VR headset uh at the end of play is sucked up into uh a housing above your head, waiting for the next player. And within that housing, the company came up with an idea of putting in a UV sterilization system, which has been awarded a patent. And maybe this is an application that we will be seeing uh applied in other tethered VR experiences that we have in our sector.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, if they're not already planning to license this technology out to tethered VR providers, then I think they're missing a huge opportunity. The one other advantage I'll say here, besides obviously the self-cleaning, which is actually just brilliant, um, you know, brilliant uh move on their part, is that it retracts the headset back up into a box that is out of the way of the little crazy kids running around who run and jump and hit it and just so they can watch it swing or they pull on it or hang on it or everything else. It only comes down when you've swiped your game card and you're ready for gameplay, and it comes down and not only comes down, but it comes down clean. And you know it's gonna be clean because it's been an EUV box. So uh you know, great job here, and I do hope we see this rolled out in some sort of licensed format.
SPEAKER_04:It I'm going to make a point of trying to hunt down uh what our friends at VL Leo are going to be doing in the sector because they've been very quiet uh uh regarding new product releases and installations, but again, this is one to watch for our sector at least. Anyway.
SPEAKER_02:All right. So coming up after a quick break, we'll continue with the trends.
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SPEAKER_04:Thank you, Alan Wong. And we're jumping into uh a talking point here where I recently come back from the EAG show uh in London, the first of the big uh amusement exhibition trade shows that takes place uh in January. Uh, the London show has a long and rich history. Uh it's been going through uh the changes of the industry, and it is also a very good barometer post-IALPA to see where the things that we saw launched at IALPA, how many of those have stuck, how many of those things have gained momentum, how many of the trends that we charted uh are actually uh finding interest from the people at the coalface, the operators that are purchasing this. So the show took uh took two and a half days. Um it's fair to say that it is much smaller than uh it it previously was. It's gone quite quite drastically through the change, and part of that is the dependence on distributors. Distributors now take uh boost space, and where you would have had six or seven companies exhibit, uh they now use a distributor to represent all of their interests, and so of course, smaller. Um, there is also the issue that it's expensive to do exhibitions, and so you have to be very careful to pick which ones you're going to be doing in the year, especially if you're an international company. London has a double whammy. You know, we have a perfect storm going on because this year we had uh EAG uh in the Excel Center, and if you wait six months, you'll be having uh IALPA Europe in the Excel Center, and that played on a lot of people's minds. Even people that would have had bigger booths uh cut them back because they're thinking about the double expense. Also, it is difficult for the amusement trade in the UK to really get its brain around how uh the future is for it. It is embracing the technology, it is embracing the new machines, but the fundamental business model is not throwing as much new blood into uh the business. And so the show is a kind of an indicator of an industry in transition. Uh some of the we had all of the amusement new releases uh that we saw at IALPA. We saw a couple a very small amount uh of new uh surprise redemption models, mainly from China, and I'll leave Adam to be the one to go into the forensic examination uh of uh of what we saw at the show. But I think it would be very small beer uh compared to uh what we would have uh expected in previous years. I can remember uh 10, 15, 20 years ago when this show was where the Japanese manufacturers would test the waters with their brand new Western uh releases, and you know, it'd be a big wow. Now I would argue that there was only really one big video uh amusement piece that got the wow effect, uh, and that was really uh from uh a game that uh is already known by the market, just has come out as a new addition. We had the appearance uh of all of the new wave uh crane and claw machines. We also had the capsule vendortainment. Uh uh the disgruntled chap in that photo. Uh I was trying to get a picture of the e-claw 2.0 machine, but uh yeah, it was it was difficult to get a picture without uh one of the attendees of the show not wanting to be in the photo. But anyway, it was there and it wasn't as earth-shattering yet. Uh as many had, you know, to be honest, I had to actually go back to the booth to double check that it was the e-claw uh 2.0 rather than just another of the claw machines. It isn't as stunning as I uh I think it was sold to be. And uh I'll be interested to see how it is received uh when it's not behind an inflatable wall uh at Amusement Expo in March. Moving on, VR was there. VR still plays a part in the amusement trade. Um I would argue that this is the kind of number of VR machines that we're going to expect in our future, where it will be in the fours, the threes, and the fours of machines, categories that we see, rather than the 20s, 30s, and 60s that we saw in previous years. VR is also going through a transition, which is it's moved away from being the novelty and it's now the revenue generator. So many of the machines that you're seeing are uh have proven revenue generation capability or fit uh uh or fit a business model that uh is working. Our friends at Relix, for example, uh broke their duck and were uh exhibiting at uh the London show with a very cost-effective VR platform which offers something to uh UK operators compared to the more expensive VR platforms.
SPEAKER_02:Um just a quick question on the one on the right. Um, that is uh the VR coaster, is that just a or the VR simulator uh coaster simulator? Um is it a um is it like a full rotation, like a DOF robotics, or so so how many DOF like, or is it just like vibe the seat vibrates?
SPEAKER_04:That's a four-dorf uh motion-based system, Swift Ride. Uh it's it's actually quite an older system. Uh the company behind it uh has developed a number of uh VR systems, and there's some interesting news that this VR company is now merged with another company to offer a stronger representation of VR products into the market. So consolidation is being uh uh is being seen in the sector. But no, yes, it does look like it's going to be the uh 360 hurricane uh kind of approach. Uh but no, it is just a quite an energetic four-door motion platform. The music game scene, uh, we've been charting this as gaining momentum. Funny enough, Sega didn't bring their touchscreen music system to the uh UK show, but uh our friends at UDC had uh quite a selection of uh the you know the evergreen uh Step Revolution. They also had their new touchscreen music game. While on the ElectroCoin booth next door to them, the big wow, uh the horde of active players was around the appearance of DDR Dance Dance Revolution uh world. Now, this has been developed in partnership with Konami and ElectroCoin, and it has been specially created for uh Western application, and it kind of indicated what we're going to be seeing with the return of Konami into the Western amusement market, that they are prepared to do deals and package their products accordingly to suit the market. It will be fascinating to see if this machine actually makes it over to Amusement Expo, and it will be fascinating to see if Amusement Expo gives us a clearer picture of how Konami is going to be uh returning to the uh amusement scene. We had uh new products uh vended. Uh a company called Robobike, a brand new uh operation, has developed a very high-level uh motorbike simulation system in two flavors. You can have the superbike version or you can have the off-road trial version, a nice energetic motion base, a total ride-on experience. And it was interesting. The company has created a quite a high-level simulation system, and we were at a show that was full of arcade-style motorbike racing system. So you you had the uh the industry sort of going from the arcade-y simple ride, hit all the walls, and then having to go to the more complicated and much more realistic simulator. And the company I had a chance to speak to, they are looking more away from the amusement application and looking more at this as an attraction, a standalone e-attraction competition system. So we'll be uh interested to see how they fare in the market with this approach. It was also nice to see that they had uh created uh a version of their system that accommodated uh a wheelchair. Uh accessibility is very important in our sector, and uh I know I know that uh they are going to work very hard to get as many people to enjoy their rating simulator experience.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I really do appreciate the the uh wheelchair uh adaptive experience. Uh I'm curious though, I don't know if you had a chance to try it, but this is definitely one that I wanted to, I would have loved to have experienced and just see if it actually worked. And and the different level of accessibility is how accessible was it as far as gameplay is concerned, right? So, or how skilled do I have to be, and how many tries at the wheel, so to speak, do I have to keep giving it in order to really gain proficiency in order to truly enjoy the experience?
SPEAKER_04:I'm not a bike rider, so it took me uh a number of games to get the hang of uh using uh both uh I had much more luck on the trials bike than I did on the super bike because those curbs can be a bitch uh at high speed and you go flying off. Uh but it it encouraged me to come back and try again, and that is very important. It I wanted to improve, I wanted to try uh my skills out, and many people the the company itself was complaining that uh they had to turn the skill level all the way down for all of these arcade operators so they could be able to get but you know from my point of view, I'm going, well, you know, yes, obviously uh Joe Schmo arcade operator plays all of his machines. No, uh you know that uh it that's not your target audience, and I'm looking forward to when they get some real ROI numbers of dropping the product into uh the target market that they're looking for, how much it draws. I could see this being a kind of an equivalent to an uh F1 arcade kind of experience. That said, this level of simulation would be much higher than F1 simulation would ever allow into their facility. I mean, this is even higher than their expert pro setting on their games, you know, the the detail, the you know, changing up, changing down the proper braking, the cornering, the body movements. But it does have an appeal, and we know it has an appeal, and maybe with the right IP behind this, this could be quite a major system. You know, competitive socializing was everywhere. Um, and this was a concern uh by the traditional amusement trade of you know how much is the market going to uh eat into their business because it was made clear that traditional amusement and competitive socializing entertainment can live in the same orbit, but they can't mix, you can't cross the streams because the playing style for an arcade and a redemption machine is totally different from the durational play uh of competitive socializing. And we had all of the big players uh from the competitive socializing scene there, a very UK centric market, so uh the London show proved a useful sector. The golf, uh, our uh friends from 360 uh were there with uh their golf system, uh uh Holly. Of his. We had uh our friends from 501 showing their interactive golf system. And I uh had a chance to speak to all of the directors uh at these companies and get a little bit more of a handle of where they think the market is going, and we will touch upon that in later sound offs. Uh and then our friends from Social Rivals was also there with their projection-mapped uh golfing experience, and they all kind of sit in different uh aspects. And we had the amusement industry trying to jump in on the bandwagon, as we've touched before, with the pottery uh system that uh our friends at Sega are fielding.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I do appreciate at least the diversity in approaches. So these are not, you know, this isn't your pixel floor where every laser tag company at IAP Expo had their own version of a pixel floor, which is just basically squares that light up and the gameplay is not significantly different. These are at least different approaches to solving the um, I guess we'll call the mini golf bay, um, you know, solving that that conundrum.
SPEAKER_04:We're we're in that middle ground now where a location-based entertainment facility is arguing about having a mini golf uh nine-hole layout, where now competitive socializing venues are thinking about having a interactive single bay uh uh golfing experience, which kind of you know changes the perspective on this. But it's one to watch how much these interactive golfing experiences, which are fidgetal, they have a strong uh digital uh physical aspect to them, uh are going to you know help push the market forwards. You talk about everybody having the same system again. I would argue that the shuffleboard, uh the augmented reality shuffleboard and the augmented reality darts is where everybody seems to have the same kind of system. It's just uh the content's different, and there were a number of companies showing off. Our friends at Sega uh had partnered with uh a new company to have their uh augmented or gamified uh shuffleboard. Uh we we we had everybody doing it, uh our friends from uh Conduct R with their system, which is the gold standard, I would argue, uh of the application. And it was great to talk to the guys at Conductor about how much uh they're growing beyond just uh creating product, but also uh getting directly involved in facility business. And they've got some big news uh coming up about some of the deals that they've done. Uh and then we had the shooting uh aspect. Uh our friends from Simway uh who were there last year when we first launched the uh social immersive entertainment expo component to EAG. Um they had their gun system there, they've upgraded it, they've made it more applicable for the competitive socializing market, and surprise, surprise, they now also have a golf simulation system, which they're going to be rolling out. Uh so they've entered the crowded waters of uh the projection golf simulation experience. And then our friends uh at Conductor had their shooting game, blasting uh experience, which was you know drawing a lot of uh uh positive reports. I feel it is what Clays should have been. It is a ratcheted shotgun, it doesn't weigh a thousand tons, uh, and it's a much more gamified experience. But again, it's easy to say that after you've launched the first concept, will Clays now have the ability to pivot and embrace some of these elements that uh the other systems are now incorporating.
SPEAKER_02:Uh one quick follow-up question on Simway. Uh, when we were there at EAG last year and they were just really launching their their new uh shooting gallery, their guns were significantly heavy. Um has Simway solved for that. I mean, obviously, Conductor has taken a different approach with lighter weight guns, but Simway's guns with guns were really heavy, and you know, we went for you know a couple of rounds, and I was actually pretty fatigued by the end.
SPEAKER_04:Simway offers now multiple guns. They offer lightweight guns, they offer realistic guns. They come from a hunting-shooting simulation market, so they're still falling back on uh realistic representations of guns, but they're now offering a lightweight rifle system uh as well as uh the heavier shotgun system that we were using. And I think they've they've taken on board what the market needs and they've pivoted more towards uh less realism and more uh uh entertainment, shall we say, from the sporttainment experience. As I said, uh, so many of you may not be aware that uh, you know, I was approached by the organizers uh of EAG last year to set up a uh excuse me, a competitive socializing uh component to their show as they felt that uh this was a trend that they wanted to embrace. Um they have now moved forward with this concept uh and we had uh uh quite a large uh speaker selection over the two days uh of the event, uh some interesting conversations from some of the leading lights uh uh uh operators uh of the sectors. We uh our friends from Baller came over from Australia. Uh, you know, we we had Tocker Social, and we actually had a mixer at Tocker Social uh after the event. So it is clear from the way that the amusement trade was looking at this, that the the more flashier of the booths, the more, shall we say, market interest wasn't from the amusement side uh per se, but it was that the competitive socializing side had grown considerably, you know, the cuckoo in the nest, as it were. And it is clear now that the amusement trade is thinking very hard uh about how they position themselves in a universe that will see more investment going into competitive socializing. And just so you understand, um, the UK, especially London, is the hotbed, the crucible of where many of these uh systems were. I had to go to uh an event uh on one of the days of the show, and I just got off the uh the train early and walked directly to that venue, and I passed over four different competitive socializing venues uh just in the centre of London, dealing to the office crowd and the tourist crowd, but mainly to the office crowd, the social engagement, the third room aspects. You know, we have Roxy Lane's latest uh uh version of their boutique bowling, uh, curling, beer pong, uh uh interactive dots, and uh their unique uh crazy pool, which is kind of a mini-golf using pool cues. Yeah, an interesting take. We had Potchak and what they offer to the table. We had uh Fair Games, who's just uh recently been acquired uh as a successful Fairground Social Entertainment. They were really crowded. I was really surprised on a wet Wednesday evening how you know in January uh how popular these venues were. And then, of course, we have F1 Arcade again uh popular with social parties. I noticed that two of their uh private party rooms were uh were hired for uh for the event. It really does show how much competitive socializing has overtaken more traditional entertainment mixes.
SPEAKER_02:There's a number of other brands as well, uh, that obviously you know you could just keep cramming them in here. But I think one of the big ones, uh just because it's it's an area that's still being explored, we just talked about Foot Lab World is Tokosocial, which started at the O2 Arena in London as well.
SPEAKER_04:If I jumped off the train earlier uh and then jumped back on the train, I could have gone to the O2 Center as we did uh Toca Social. Um Hollywood Bowl, of course, within the O2 Center. Uh then there's some, you know, we did I didn't go to a Clays uh on this trip, and I definitely didn't go to a Sixes on this trip. And uh Sixes, of course, has just gone through some uh interesting uh uh financial situations, which we will be reporting on more in uh coming reports. So it's not all roses in the garden for competitive socializing, but it is also clear one of the key statements, you know. I again uh my ego exploded, my Tol Jiso t-shirt became uh even bigger was that all of the operators that I was speaking to, and all of the manufacturers I was speaking to in the competitive socializing scene are now admitting that they cannot live on one entertainment uh component uh alone, that they have to think of a secondary and a tertiary component, if not a full mixed leisure entertainment uh offering to an audience that is becoming more sophisticated in what they want to do. And that kind of leads me to a pseudo-announcement, which is the uh the embrace of the amusement trade towards trying to deal with the competitive socializing scene, uh, has seen, you know, I was very kind of back to to uh you know, allow me to formulate the idea uh towards incorporating a competitive socializing element to the EAG show. And uh I've been heartened by our friends at uh Amusement Expo who've turned around and asked if we will uh do a presentation uh in March at their venue, a keynote that really focuses on where social entertainment begins and where amusement can fit into this and the trends that will shape our business going forward. And once I have more details on uh the structure of that, I will pass that on to our audience.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I either way, I'm looking forward to being there in Vegas with you for Amusement Expo, with just the opportunity to check out uh some of the new venues that have popped up, specifically in Area 15's phase two.
SPEAKER_04:So um I I would argue it's the uh Amusement Expo, the uh restaurant and bar show, and what has popped up in uh uh the trifecta is going to be very interesting. It's going to be a uh well, my liver may leave me at that point in time, but it's going to it's going to be a very interesting period of time, as well as I think by what will have happened in the industry by the time we get to March, but I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. And then jumping forward to June, we have the augmented world expo that has now incorporated a location-based XR zone component to that. I'll be running some uh conference sessions there, as well as uh welcoming a number of the XR industry in location-based entertainment to the show floor, giving them a chance, a stage to present their products, separate maybe of the confusion of being too close to uh other entertainment offerings. And it will be important to see really where we are by June in uh location-based uh XR application. It'll be a fascinating time. Anyway, I've taken enough of your time, and if you're still awake, uh please remember to uh jump on the LinkedIn and send me any information. It's always welcomed, and I really appreciate those people that hunted me down during uh EAG to say hello. It was very heartening to hear how popular the video uh many of them listening rather than watching, but uh it was very heartening to hear how popular that is. We have some more stinger reports coming out talking about the beginning of the year, uh, and when I uh get enough free time, I've got some more entertainment social arenas to get out the door. But that's it really from me. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_02:All right, excellent. Well, another great sound off, Kevin, and we will see you on the next one. Have a good one.
