Kick, bounce, swing. Roll, throw, twist. Win, lose, and draw… it’s no longer enough just to go out to eat and drink with friends. Like so much of modern life, socializing has been gamified. 

This is an open, work-in-progress, think-out-loud piece on a key experience trend: competitive socializing.

I think the rise of competitive socializing tells us a lot about what people today want (have always wanted, will always want). And that there's useful ideas in here for all experience sectors.

This article contains a mix of leading and emerging innovators. And my attempts to figure out what's now and next. I'm sure I've missed a LOT of brilliant examples, and got a lot wrong here. I'm looking forward to hearing comments and building on this.

The concept and business model are simple:

1.    Pick a game - preferably an old one that everyone understands

2.    Update it with new technology

3.    Serve it with an Instagram-able backdrop and great F&B

4.    Watch the Millennials roll in. (And others 😊)

 Side note: it all looks simple and obvious in hindsight, right? But that doesn’t mean the path was easy for the pioneers who made the leap and built this new form of socializing.

A handful of key suspects: 

• Crazy golf / mini golf – eg, Swingers - the crazy golf club by WXO - World Experience Organization Co-Founder Matt Grech-Smith
• Darts – Flight Club Darts
• Ping-pong – Bounce Leisure Ltd
• Football / soccer – Metrix from WXO - World Experience Organization Founding Member Walljam & Tim Worboys
• Board games – MONOPOLY LIFESIZED from The Path Entertainment Group

Is Competitive Socializing the 'New Escape Room Trend'?

There’s something here that reminds me of the rise of escape games in the mid 2010s, for example: 

• The speed of the take-off
• The ready pool of eager consumers
• The flexibility for venues to work for B2C and B2B markets: owners can work their asset during the workweek as well as during traditional leisure times
• The economic model works, hence so many players jumping into the market

Why Competitive Socializing Is Different

There’s differences too.  

1. It’s not the same audience: Competitive Socializing Went Mainstream Fast

Everything begins with the freaks and the geeks – the crazy innovators who’ll try anything, as long as it’s new. And yes, escape rooms made the jump to mainstream people like my Mum doing them. But I suspect the competitive socializing market jumped to the mainstream much quicker.

2. Escape Rooms Don’t Understand The Value of Time

Escape room creators focus on throughput, competitive socializing creators focus on dwell time.

Escape rooms want to get you in, have the game, get you out the other end. The reflection is a moment of congratulations, a photo for Facebook, and then you’re off for the rest of your day/night – and spending your time and money elsewhere. That's a mistake, from a revenue point of view.

It’s a truth of the Experience Economy that time = money. Starbucks , as Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore showed in their seminal work, figured out that the more time people spend, the more money they spend.

Escape room owners could learn a thing or two about that. Where’s the dwell time? Perhaps the problem is the name, and the mentality of the escape room operators? 'We want people to come here, and then escape.' But that means the escape room’s share of wallet evaporates with every person who leaves so soon.

Secondary thought: what if an ‘escape room emporium’ surrounded the escape room with F&B? Consider how Monopoly Lifesized works: come for the game, then go directly to the restaurant or bar…

3. The Economics Of Competitive Socializing Are On A Different Level

In the old days, you could pull an escape room together for $30,000-40,000. But because of limitations on throughput, there are limits to the amount of revenue these generate.

The answer, for some, lay in the tried and trusted economies of scale and cookie cutter model: design an escape room in one place, and roll it out around the world. Hence Escape Hunt floated on London’s Alternative Investment Market for £14m in 2016. ( WXO - World Experience Organization Co-Founder Musty Omar advised on this.)

Compare that starter price to a competitive socializing venue: the original Swingers in London cost £500,000 to create. 

So competitive socializing venues require more upfront cost, therefore higher risk, but that’s worth it because the returns are much higher. So while the trend may be just as scalable – individual success stories are much more scalable. So competitive socializing brings in higher level investors, generate much higher revenue – and lead to higher valuations.

Let’s Start At Very Beginning: Who Started the Competitive Socializing Trend?

Like so many trends, there’s nothing new here, except for the packaging. Consider golf or football or darts or netball: the competition always came with socializing. And, as Jim Barksdale said, there’s only two ways to make money: bundling and un-bundling. What’s happened here, of course, is the bundling of one activity with another.

Some say that Kevin Williams and his weekly e-newsletter, The Stinger Report, popularized the term "competitive socializing". He says “is a blending of a hospitality atmosphere married to a re-imagining of conventional competitive entertainment."

This is different to “eatertainment”, which veteran leisure venue designer, compeitive socializing expert and WXO - World Experience Organization Co-Founder Randy White notes that “only denotes a venue that offers both entertainment and food and drink, not necessarily one that combines the two into a single experience".  

“When a large segment of consumers, including most millennials, choose a restaurant, they are looking for "a new experience"... they are really looking for experience-based social environments that incorporate food and drinks combined with experiences such as a game night, live entertainment, or social games”
Randy White, White Hutchinson        

Randy offers some stats supporting this:

• 42% of millennials are influenced by a restaurant's entertainment offerings when choosing where to eat, according to a survey by restaurant tech firm TouchBistro
• more than 50% of consumers say they are very interested in revisiting an eatertainment experience, according to a survey by F&B insights firm @Dataessential

F&B Is Key

The F&B is an essential ingredient in successful competitive socializing for two simple reasons:

• F&B brings people in

32% say new and better food options would motivate them to visit eatertainment venues more often, showing that the food and beverage is an essential driver of repeatability.

• F&B makes money

The “food and beverage revenues exceed that for the entertainment in most socialized gaming venues”, Randy White wrote in October 2022.

F&B accounts for almost half of revenues. “For Junkyard Golf Club and Puttshack , F&B income accounts for 45–50% of income.” according to a report by Tom Whittington at real estate firm Savills .

Why Is Competitive Socializing Taking Off? And Why Now?

There are new and old reasons from both the demand (ie what consumers want) and the supply side (ie what producers create).

1. Phono Sapiens

24/7 social connections… Sharing a pic of me and Jill in the pub isn’t very interesting. Much better to share a pic next to a windmill.

2. Post-Pandemic Bounceback

Now we're allowed out again. Is it enough to go to a pub?

3. Evolution of the Experience Economy

Just as innovation has made shoes and modes of transport different, more varied, and better over time, the ever better, creative-destruction of capitalism is playing out in the Experience Economy too.

4. Connected World

Ideas spread faster than before. Especially good ones that make money and make people feel more alive.

5. MARS

Combine Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory with evolutionary psychology, put them into an easy to remember mnemonic and you can quickly see what people want: Mastery, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Status. Competitive socializing provides all of these. You might combine this with modern neuroscience and observe the neurotransmitters that appear during competition and socializing: oxytocin, dopamine, and adrenalin.

Is The Competitive Socializing Market Here To Stay?

Given the strong psycho-social and socio-economic factors that support competitive socializing, I think this is a structural rather than cyclical trend, that is, it’s here to stay. Competitive socializing has fundamentally changed how we socialize.

(And its potential has only just been tapped. Why not create a competitive socializing venue that teaches history?)  

A few signs that we're already here.

• 32% of the leisure market is now rented by competitive socializing tenants, according to real estate firm JLL
• 41% of Gen Z Britons have been to competitive socializing venues, 47% would like to go the future; 29% of Millennials have been before, 60% would like to go in the future, according to research by a firm named KAM Media

Similar & Sub-Sectors: LBE, Athleisure, Escape Rooms

Some argue that ‘true’ competitive socializing venues contain a number of key ingredients in the game:

1. very approachable
2. high-repeat appeal
3. analogue interactive games - that are often technology-enhanced (a good example is New York-based Lazertron’s tech-enhanced approach to axe-throwing)
4. played by a small group of people who don't have to be experienced players
5. the competitive element is light-hearted and not taken seriously.

There’s also a difference in terms of the F&B on offer, and when you consume it. In competitive socializing venues:

• they serve ‘trendy’ [love that word 😉], high-quality food and beverage
• the players usually drink and eat while the games are being played

So this POV suggests a subset of competitive socializing types… 

Location Based Entertainment / LBE

The focus here is on providing the sort of entertainment you could get at home, but via the even better OOH (out of home) version. Nowadays this means:

• VR, eg, Sandbox VR , Uncontained VR, Jonathan Nowak Delgado 's Spree Interactive
• AR, eg, Chaos Karts
• Tech-enabled group gaming Immersive Gamebox , by Will Dean MBE who founded Tough Mudder . More than 60 Immersive Gameboxes are opening around the world in 2023.

Athleisure Entertainment

Borrowing from the name of the fashion trend for 'athletic leisure wear', this is where people can become better athletes in their leisure time, eg, established player like Topgolf , and emerging outfit Walljam , whose Metrix is backed by UEFA.

Escape Rooms

They may not be the hottest trend on the block anymore, but they're here to stay, and evolve. Witness:

• the Alchemist from two @WXO members Victor van Doorn and Francine Boon at Sherlocked in Amsterdam. It's taken more than three years to make and is 'bursting with technomagic, smoking potions and a dangerous ritual'.
• the new ‘bouldering meets escape room’ concept at City Bouldering . (And I've been expecting an escape room / sports mash-up for years. One day it'll happen... :-)

Then there are the innovations that don’t yet fit a trend…

Side Note: Boundaries Blur When Innovation Blooms

Just think about the innovation in shoes in recent decades. Is that shoe for road running, trail running, hiking, working, dancing, looking your best? As shoe innovators have blurred the boundaries of our footwear, so today’s experience innovators are blurring the boundaries of experiences.

A Punchdrunk experience has game elements to it: you want to see as much as possible, put the pieces of the puzzle together. A Secret Cinema experience often contains game elements. As Andrea Moccia shared at a WXO - World Experience Organization Campfire 87/88, their experience for Netflix 's Arcane in LA deliberately used team and game elements. They even hired an escape room designer for some sections.

We will only know properly when we look back. But for now we can try to categorize, and accept that some things just fit in two categories, and that’s OK...

Here's three boundary-breaking innovations:

1. A TV Game Show For Everyone: Gameshow Studios

This brilliant new idea in London (pictured above) is where everyone gets to be in a TV gameshow without the hassle of the actual cameras from Josh Ford (who co-created Time Run with Nick Moran and | Sheena Patel FRSA ) opening in early 2023.

2. An Immersive, Gamified Theme Park: Phantom Peak

Phantom Peak in London is a gamified, open-world experience (pictured above) that opened to huge acclaim in August 2022. People who have raved about how good it is to me include Stuart Wee , Emily Png , Olivia Squire , Victor van Doorn . It was created by Nick Moran , who created Time Run with Josh Ford and WXO - World Experience Organization Co-Founder Sheena Patel FRSA . (Anyone noticing a pattern here??)

Side note: Nick is giving a talk in Season 6 of the WXO - World Experience Organization Campfires, that is, in January 2023.

3. A 'Challenge Fest': Hijinx Hotel

3. Funlab Pty Ltd 's Hijinx Hotel (pictured above), Sydney - opened in June 2022, made up of 15 challenge rooms, each designed for between 2 and 6 players to work together to complete challenges and score points.

 

Six of the Best Examples of Competitive Socializing

1. Putt, Swing And Socialize: Swingers

One of the OGs of the scene, Swingers - the crazy golf club ’s winning combination of crazy golf, creative cocktails and street food has been upping Londoners’ first-date game since 2014, evolving from a warehouse pop-up to two permanent locations in Oxford Circus and the City of London. It now has a further two outposts in Washington DC and New York City, with more reportedly on the way.

 Also many similar: Birdies , Golf Fang in the UK. Puttery in the US (locations in Washington, D.C., Dallas, TX, and Charlotte, NC, with more on the way in D.C., Miami, Chicago, Kansas City, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Houston).

Funlab Pty Ltd ’s Holey Moley Golf Club in Australia: A Holey Moley venue consists of 18 to 27 mini-golf holes, each with a different theme influenced by pop culture and nostalgia. Holey Moley currently has 206 uniquely themed mini-golf holes that it rotates to keep its venues fresh.

2. Old Games, New Look Socializing: Flight Club & Hijingo Bingo 

Flight Club Darts started life in London as an upscale version of that most classic of pub games: darts. Unlike the sticky board you’ll find pinned up in your local boozer, Flight Club’s dart-throwing lanes feature automatic digital scoring and the ability to order yuzu guacamole with your game. A Las Vegas branch opened in Las Vegas in November 2022.

No longer the preserve of the shell-suited, bingo has been given an upgrade with the likes of Hijingo Bingo, “a multi-sensory bingo experience combining live entertainment with stadium-grade lighting, groundbreaking sonic effects and mind-blowing motion graphics.” Accessed through a cocktail bar and with an upcoming Halloween edition promising “dystopian horror bingo fun”, your nana won’t know what’s hit her. Hijingo and Flight Club are owned by State of Play Hospitality , who also operate the ping-pong bar AceBounce .

3. Sport Socializing: Metrix

The brainchild of sport technology company (and WXO Member) Walljam , METRIX launched as the first official UEFA Champions League experiential venue in Europe at Westfield 's mall in White City, London. Featuring tech-inspired football experiences for players of all ages, there's a range of physical and virtual game zones focused on control, technique, speed and accuracy. Harnessing the latest in AR gaming tech, the fully integrated digital experience enables players to see how they fare against all competitors through a universal scoring system.

What makes this stand out, in my view, is the possibility of transformation. While most competitive socializing venues are about fun and entertainment, Metrix offers its visitor the chance to improve their skills.

Anther competitive socializing venue built around football / soccer: TOCA Social , opened in London in 2021, opening in Dallas in 2023.

4. Boardgame Socializing: Monopoly Lifesized

MONOPOLY LIFESIZED is an immersive, on-your-feet version of the family favourite, played on a 15m x 15m life-sized Monopoly board. Players compete against the clock in a series of tasks that take place in various challenge rooms for a chance to buy properties in the capital’s plushest districts, solving murder mysteries, code-breaking and staging heists along the way.

6.    Old Game, New Spin: Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club

A nightclub where the thudding beats come from pucks being slammed as well as the bassline, Royal Palms reinvents the cosy game of Shuffleboard for a younger generation, with customers playing into the early hours of the morning.

“It’s like trying to like be the anti-nightclub in a way,” says  founder Jonathan Schnapp. “Never so crowded, never so expensive, never door stress, never cover charges, never any of these things that make it so we don’t want to go out anymore.”

Now along comes Electric Shuffle in in London and Leeds and Electric Shuffle USA in Austin and Dallas. They've reimagined shuffleboard as socialized gaming by redesigning the shuffleboard table to accommodate up to 24 people playing together while they eat and drink, watching one of their party play.

Just Open and Coming Soon… 5 more examples

1. F1 Arcade

Opened in November 2022 and created by Adam Breeden , a pioneer in competitive socializing - he created Flight Club, Bounce, Puttshack, All Star Lanes and more - F1® Arcade in London features 60 motion F1 simulators combined with high end food and drink offerings. This crosses the line to #esports , of course.

 

2. Old Fairground Made New: Fairgame

Opened in October 2022, Fairgame is “first-of-its-kind immersive fairground experience” is an adults-only playground where stressed City workers can cut loose after a long day in the office. Featuring fairground favourites like whack-a-mole and duck shoot, players wear RFID wristbands, allowing them to log their scores, track their performance and battle it out for a giant pink teddy. Fairgame is the brainchild of Gymbox founder Richard Hilton, who secured £5m in funding for the venture.

 

3. A Competitive Socializing Rival To Starbuck? Meet Your 3rd Spot

The third place, that wasn’t home or office… wasn’t that supposed to be Starbucks?

Anyhow…

Your 3rd Spot™ Social Dining , which opened November 2022, looks a lot like competitive socializing to me, but as the owners claim, “Your 3rd Spot is NOT "eatertainment". It is a CONNECTION venue that happens to have shareable small plates, craft beverages and curated social experiences”.

The venue includes bowling, curling, air hockey, darts, ping pong, shuffleboard, billiards, Cards Against Humanity, and table and lawn games. The 27,000-square-foot venue will include a restaurant, bar, beer garden, mezzanine, and patio.

 

4. 1940s Nostalgia: Camp Pickle

Robert Thompson, best known as the founder of Punch Bowl Social – which is very similar to Your 3rd Spot, is preparing to launch a chain of dining-and-games venues focused on the surging #pickleball #trend .

There’ll be strong theming here: Camp Pickle will feature a nostalgic "1940s national park/summer camp" motif, with a food and beverage menu designed to match.

The first Camp Pickle locations are scheduled to open in Huntsville, Alabama and Denver in 2024, with 10 more to follow by 2026.

Reflecting two key points supporting the success of competitive socializing - namely, how the business model works for consumers and corporate, and the importance of F&B - it's interesting to hear that Thompson believes:

• corporate events will drive 35-40% of sales
• 80% of Camp Pickle's revenue will come from food and beverages

5. Another Ancient Sport Reinvented: Sixes Cricket

Opened in late 2020, the world’s first social entertainment cricket concept Sixes Social Cricket now has seven venues, including their latest at shopping mall Westfield London, which shared some stats on what people now expect and why they’re opening more competitive retail spaces:

• 59% of consumers expect more than half of retail space will be devoted to experience rather than product by 2025
• 81% of customers globally are willing to pay more for innovative retail experiences.

So, I hope you can see why I think competitive socializing is so interesting and important. Please now tell me in the comments what I got wrong, and what I missed.

I'm especially interested to hear about new & different subtrends, and how competitive socializing is taking off - or not! - in other countries.