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LBX Collective
The LBX Show #38 - BW visits Harkins Backlot, Resident Evil 2, Meta ads, and more!
Sponsored by Intercard!
On this week's episode BW visits Harkins Theatres' new FEC concept, Backlot, with a discussion on how theater chains are evolving to compete in the entertainment landscape.
• Harkins Backlot in North Phoenix combines bowling, crazy darts, and arcade elements with subtle movie-themed design touches
• The venue features an impressive sports viewing area that potentially outperforms competitors like Dave & Buster's
• DivrLabs introduces a self-service free-roam VR attraction that eliminates the need for attendant staffing
• Resident Evil 2: Dead Shot arcade game generates buzz during European testing, highlighting continued innovation in the arcade sector
• Multiple sports entertainment venues are opening globally, showing significant investment in "batting cage 2.0" concepts
• Chuck DeMonte explains Meta ad strategies for FECs, emphasizing the importance of conversion tracking for optimizing marketing spend
Subscribe to the LBX Collective for more insights on location-based entertainment trends and join us next week for a deep dive into the state of the industry with Kevin Williams, Adam Pratt, and Brandon Willey.
Tuning you in. Now to the LBX Show with your host, brandon Wilder, brought to you by the LBX Collective, your community to connect, engage and inspire.
Speaker 2:All right, well, welcome everybody to the LBx show for july 20 2025. We have a good for you lined up today. So, um, this is uh, yeah, well, we'll dive into it. I guess first we're going to kick off with some news you should know and then we're going to roll into open and shut. With kevin williams. We'll obviously talk latest openings, some of the latest closings, but a lot of the trends happening in the openings area. The next we're going to hear about Resident Evil 2. So Adam Pratt's going to talk about that on Arcade Corner, and then we're going to close out with Chuck Conte as he talks about meta ads on Promo Pro Tips. So, with all that being said, let's dive into some news you should know All right.
Speaker 2:So, as we'd like to talk about, as I have talked about the last few weeks, is the IAAPA Foundations. So IAAPAorg, so the IAAPA organization, the Global Association for the Attractions Industry. They have announced the FEC Scholarship for 2025 through the IAAPA Foundation, and the deadline is fast approaching it will be August 15th for you to apply. It's for students or employees that are currently in the entertainment or hospitality industries and it's a fully paid trip, more or less up to $2,500, but fully paid trip to the IAAPA Expo, to all the education events, to a lot of the, obviously, to the trade show floor and everything else, and so if you are interested in applying for that scholarship, you can go and visit iapaorg and go ahead and apply. So I highly recommend that you do that.
Speaker 2:Okay, so this last week well, not last week, I mean, it was actually like three weeks ago technically but they really quietly opened. A soft opening was Harkin's Backlot, and I've been excited about these guys for a while now, and so Harkin's Backlot is. I'll expand this a little bit here so you guys can see a bigger version of this picture. Maybe you can go a little bigger there we go, all right. So I'll go really tiny in the bottom corner, all right.
Speaker 2:So Harkin's Backlot is a new FEC concept by a theater chain in the Phoenix area, and they have some theaters outside the Phoenix market as well, but so basically they opened in the Valley, so the Phoenix Valley in 1933, the Harkins Theater did the first one. They now open 19 theaters across Arizona Again, a few outside of Arizona, but mostly here. They're a very well-known brand in the Phoenix market and in the Arizona market, but they realized that they needed to start evolving right. So, beyond just theaters, to the multi-attraction venues that we've begun to see popping up, we see a lot of them out of Texas Santicos and Evo and others you know, in Synergy and then we also seen some coming out of Salt Lake like Fat Cats is another example there and we're seeing amusement components and other attractions being added into these theater chains. So Harkins decided okay, we're going to go and do a similar thing.
Speaker 2:But for this first location they built a separate building. So they have a Harkins location, a Harkins theater that's in the same shopping complex. It's within. It's probably about, probably about two, maybe a hundred yards. It's going to be about 300 feet from each other.
Speaker 2:So, as you saw, that backlot is a separate location. This is their Harkins Theater that they've had here in the Norterra location. This is North Phoenix. So very, very North Phoenix. If you're like leaving the Phoenix market on your way up to Flagstaff to see the Grand Canyon, this is where you would be passing by. Their next location is obviously going to be implementing a Well, it's going to be a full theater and with the backlog component added in that's going out in the West Valley. So if you're leaving Phoenix heading to LA, for example, that you would cross that one and that one is under construction now.
Speaker 2:But this is the Harkins Theater chain and the little placard that you see there in front of it is just their only indication that Backlot even exists over there. I really think the cross-promotion so far has been terrible. Now we did talk to the general manager over at Backlot and they said well, really one of the reasons we haven't done a lot of cross promotion yet is we just wanted to figure out our operations, really make sure things are smooth. We've only been open for three weeks. We don't want a ton of people flooding over here. We didn't even tell people we were open, we just opened our doors, and so I think it's a good reason. But I do think that they are missing some significant opportunities. Also, when you come in this was the only placard I saw talked about they're 25 off bowling, food or crazy darts, as well as a bonus five dollar card, a game card that you can get. This was also in the theater, but only at the guest service area, which most people don't go into. You know, go up to.
Speaker 2:This is the arcade that exists currently in the harkins. It's a player one route operated arcade and it's fucking terrible. I haven't seen an arcade component this bad since, like I went to some pizza chain. Uh, first of all, it's tokens. Only their duck crane is empty and out of order. Their, uh, their actual crane machine is, um, uh, you know, claw machine is just, uh, you know, it's like you can see it here. It's completely empty. If you're not looking at this, it's like it's abysmal. This is this is like, against all best practices, so definitely not being operated.
Speaker 2:Well, but now let's talk about the backlot, because I'm really excited for this thing to open. They've been talking about this for a long time and frankly, I think this was one of the best executed versions of an FEC that I have seen in a long time. They just did a really good job with the aesthetics, with the branding and really light touch theming to go along with this backlot concept, this movie backlot. They had big lights hanging on trusses and they had other things that just gave you that flavor of, but it was very well done. It wasn't overt like you were trying to make you feel like you were in a back studio, but that it was just playing to that backlot concept. And so this is the front entrance. As you first walk in, they've got the nice projection mapped on the ground Harkins backlot, you know light as well. You turn right to the left and there's like a little selfie screen or you know selfie wall that you could take a selfie on. And you know, again, just, they've done a very nice job with the overall layout too. So they because it's backlot, because they have access to movies and trailers and everything else, being a part of a theater chain, they had big screens up around their, their amusements area and their arcade and they had trailers playing and different clips of movies playing, and so it gave you again that kind of like movie theater feel, even though you were in an fec.
Speaker 2:They had a good mix. They had two crazy darts, very well um, very well implemented, so they didn't go with the standard crazy darts seating and everything else that you can get as part of their package. They went and they augmented that seating and some of the aesthetics was like some cases, like the little table that's next to the chairs. You can't really see it very well, but they're like carrying cases that you would find in a movie set, for example. And so, again, just little nods to that overarching theme. But crazy darts was popular so there was a group that was playing when I first came in. Another family came in and they were like having a blast, really enjoying the game. So there definitely was a. They even talked to the GM that the Crazy Darts had been a key component of their attraction mix.
Speaker 2:This is the bowling. So they've got nine lanes of bowling, six main lanes and then nine VIP lanes. The VIP lanes are just to the left of this bowling, but even this little divider between their VIP lanes and the main bowling lanes are the actual canisters that you could see that you would have to put the film reels in. So again, all those little nods very subtle but very well done. Now this is a quick view into the VIP area. Again, three lanes over there and there was a party going on, a birthday party going on in there. So I didn't want to walk too far and take any pictures of what was going on there. But they have again movie trailers and movies playing on those back screens behind the bowling. So they could be playing other things music videos, whatever but they're playing movies, movie trailers, to align with their theme.
Speaker 2:This was the only area that I think was a little bit disappointing. This was their party area. So there's room for four individual parties, so four tables, but they're not subdivided. So you really can't have a private party. You can have your party table, you have your party food and drinks and stuff set up here. So that at least was well done. And they're in a cool little themed area just to the left of this. I didn't include a picture here, but is the redemption area for the arcade right near the exit. Um, it's like a little. It's a redemption store, so you actually go in and you can do your redemption choices, make your redemption choices. But this is like the thing that was a little underwhelming. We did find back by the restrooms a uh, what looked like could be subdivided into two but was open for like a corporate event or a larger party. But it would have to be a larger party, but there was a corporate event space in the back. So they did at least have something that was enclosed that could be a private besides just the private VIP bowling suites.
Speaker 2:Now here's where I thought they really nailed it and I think, frankly, they are doing their bar and sports viewing better than I've seen anybody else do it period, better than Dave and Buster's, better than anybody else. Their bar was excellent. They had some seating to the right of this bar. That was like wraparound seating. That looked out so you know you could have a larger group sitting around booths but looking out still seeing all the TVs. The sight lines were excellent from everywhere from the bar. I could really see the whole venue from sitting at this bar corner. I had a drink there while we talked to the GM and that was excellent.
Speaker 2:But here's what was the most stunning is their Backlot Arena, and it is truly a sports viewing venue. It was unbelievable. So you had these tables and chairs here. You did have booths again, wraparound booths in the back that you could get and you could just watch sports and they had sports going. And what was cool about this is they had a ticker down at the bottom and then they had a ticker going on outside the Backlot Arena too. Backlot Arena with all of the different sports tickers basically going by, basically going by. They also said that they had the ability to connect all these screens together to have one big screen. So they wanted to have a big movie showing or maybe the World Cup was playing, or the Super Bowl or any of those types of big games. They could connect them all together and have one big experience, or you could do a buyout, a corporate buyout, and have something done here as well. So this to me was the Backot arena was absolutely phenomenal and I think they did a great job with their amusement selections. Their layout was well done. Overall, this was one of the best implemented FECs that I've come across in a while, and I just think they did a great job. So I am looking forward to seeing how they evolve, going further from there.
Speaker 2:All right, the last thing I want to talk about in News. You Should Know and we dive in a little bit deeper on the upcoming sound off that will air in just a couple of days, on the 29th of July. But this is Diver Labs. So they are. If you are not familiar with them, they have designed virtual worlds and free roam 4D VR arenas for a long time, and they've just recently released the first self-service free roam VR attraction and they're calling it their Insta VR Arena. Okay, that's fine If you want to brand it that. I would maybe think about branding something a little bit different if you're going to drop it into your location, but it is nice because they have a self-serve kiosk. Drop it into your location, but it is nice because they have a self-serve kiosk.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to go into a ton of this here, because we do expand further on SoundOff, into the concept and some of what we think are the benefits and negatives of this, but this is something that they are really pushing. So they've been around since 2019 and they were really a large scale free roam VR company and so they've tried to scale it down, create a smaller purposed uh and again, self-serve vr component. They actually have the like drawers that the vr headsets go into, that you pull out, you put on yourself, like I think there's some operational things you probably need to be careful with, but then you know they have their own library of games as well. So you know this haunted mansion game and this little Insiders game and Last Stand, and so they have got their own IP and content they've created and you know they've done a good job with that. So if you're looking for something that is self-service, just check out Diver Labs, because you know most VR setups are attendant required versus attendant free, which is what they're trying to go for. So, again, if you want to learn a little bit more about it and hear some more dialogue discussion, you can just hop on to SoundOff in a couple of days and we'll dig into it.
Speaker 2:All right, that is it for News, you Should Know. Coming up next, we've got Kevin Williams with the, developed and manufactured all under one roof. They introduced cashless technology to the amusement industry and have been leading the way for over 30 years. Cashless systems from Intercard increase customer spending, guest satisfaction and boost revenues by up to 30%. Intercard is so proud to be serving the amusement industry and if you aren't already part of their global family of customers, they hope you will become one soon.
Speaker 3:Hey, welcome to another open and shut, another crowded one. How are you, Brandon?
Speaker 2:Doing well, doing well. You know it's another day in the summer just working our way through it, but man, there just continues to be more and more openings. It's just another day of the summer just working our way through it, but man, there just continues to be more and more openings. It's amazing.
Speaker 3:And their positioning is changing. But we'll go into that. Obviously, the rules exist. Pause at the right moment if we zoom past something and can you spot the trend. But anyway, please, perfect, let's do it.
Speaker 3:So if we jump straight into the openings, and yeah, we've got a full load, we seem to have been seeing over the summer no lessening of the number of new openings. But they're also positioning themselves because of the summer period that this would be the best time to do casual soft openings or main openings and then to restructure the business. Our friends at andretti's boost their number up to now 11 facilities, with the opening of their latest center in oklahoma, um 84 000. I think this is one of their largest installations, if my memory serves me right. Please correct me in the comments if I am wrong, but it has over 110 amusement pieces. It has its indoor high-speed course, go-karting course, it has its F&B, it has also bowling and they've added the Sparks bowling system projection-ma mapped bowling component to them. So they're really going for the mixed use, leisure entertainment development, much more than I would say just being another carting facility yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:uh, you know, at the same time it is it did. They have seemed to have at least found their formula for now. Obviously, the carding is a big thing the name, the brand that brings people in the door but the facilities are always very nice, very beautiful, and the guest experience is always excellent too. So I think that's one thing that doesn't get a lot of focus sometimes when we talk about some of these is the level of customer service that you get when you walk into an Andretti. Level of customer service that you get when you walk into an Andretti is much a part of the overall guest experience. As the attraction mix, as the food, it really is something they try to use as a differentiator.
Speaker 3:You know from my visit to Toko Social how much I've been fixating on the guest experience from the staff and team operation. The situation here with our friends at Andretti's is that they have hired some very clever people to advise them on how best to get their team to the best standards to create what I keep on going on about repeat visitation memories Moving on. And, funny enough, a company I was just speaking to a couple of hours ago, our friends at Control V. They have gone and opened their sixth venue. Now this is a boom-bust, boom-bust kind of approach.
Speaker 3:The operation at its height had nearly 30 franchised VR arcade facilities. Then, during COVID, they were decimated. A number of those facilities had to give up their franchises due to the conditions and now the company has been pushing back, it has dusted itself off, it has re-fixated on its model and its business experience, its franchise package and this is a company that is very focused on its franchise package and they've now raised themselves up to six venues. We'll be soon talking about a seventh venue and when we get to that seventh venue I'll try and do a special discussion about Control-V in comparison to the changes in the VR arcade landscape, troll V, in comparison to the changes in the VR arcade landscape.
Speaker 2:I will hold my comments until we get to the seventh and we can have a deeper discussion then.
Speaker 3:We don't have to wait that long for the seventh. Moving on continuing the VR mantra and the latest Eclipso experience has opened, opened up their seventh facility internationally. This is part of the I'm going to butcher the name Handrian chain that was previously called Another Thing and has now rebranded as this. They own a number of facilities which we'll be touching on in a minute, but this particular experience is the, where I would say our friends that uh, control v are a vr arcade phase one kind of experience, writ large now, um, you know, in clip. So is a free roaming shared reality experience. So it's more than just four or five people, it is large groups of individuals going through a lineal experience, usually a museum or immersive experience, adventure kind of approach. And this is the kind of the new generation, third-generation application of VR, hoping to find a business model that can be profitable. That's sad.
Speaker 3:Moving on and we come to the Elvis evolutions. One of the reasons why I'm bouncing around London and other areas is to try and attend some of the new openings and brand developments that are going on with meetings and developments, and so I was lucky enough to be invited to the opening of this latest immersive entertainment experience, which I like to call an immersive theatrical experience. This is very similar in its initial idea to what the ABBA experience was achieving with their holographic theatre auditorium experience. Here we have a walkthrough experience with live music. The immersion is through projection rather than through VR. Our friends at Laird Reality were responsible for the War of the Worlds experience, as well as the Guy Fawkes experience that recently closed, and we'll touch upon this experience a little bit more in the coming SoundOff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know what for anybody listening to this show and you want to dig into Elvis Evolution a little bit more and maybe some of the struggles that they've had? You can tune into the SoundOff in just a couple of days, so I'll hold off comments there as well.
Speaker 3:I'm not doing this purposely to force you all to go off to sound off, but we have a lot to talk about. I think we need to keep opening shots to a certain size yes moving through and uh, continuing, uh, geiger, uh conversation again.
Speaker 3:I was able to have a conversation while in London with some representatives of Genda and in the sound of oh, you're finding out what the trend is. The theme is of this one. In our following sound off I'll be able to go into more detail, but this particular opening in Tokyo kind of proves the reality of the amusement business for all of those naysayers that saw the Aka Harbor facility closing down, and I saw a consumer entertainment site saying that that was the end of the arcade industry in Japan. Arcade is dead Tokyo every couple of weeks. Well, they don't really want to report on the continuing openings of the facilities and it was nice to see that this one was the latest addition to the Tokyo large conurbation of entertainment sites.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only thing I'll say here is they've been more than unready. I mean, these guys have nailed their model. They know what they're doing. They know what works, at least in the Japanese market, and I think they're experimenting through acquisition what works in the US and North American market and some of the others. But they've certainly figured it out. They figured out their formula and they're executing phenomenally well.
Speaker 3:Not at the next SoundOff, but in the future. Hopefully before the end of the year, we'll be able to talk a little bit more about something called a business model threshold, which is not just opening a facility because it's trending, not opening a facility just because it seems popular or it is a proven model, but actually having a usp and a package that can survive all kinds of conditions and grow. But again, something for a later time. Our friends at Five Irons launched their Dubai facility We've already mentioned the Dubai facility, one of their largest facility operations out there and surprise, surprise, they've suddenly started adding new secondary and tertiary entertainment there. Who would have thunk it? Who would have thought that?
Speaker 2:maybe we may have talked about that before.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we need to find a source of information that talks about this type of stuff, and they have decided to have a partnership with our friends at Immersive Esports, which is in the territory. They are a developer of esports tournament race sim setups. They do pop-ups as well as permanent enclosures, and they've just parachuted in their latest high-level simulators into the facility. Understanding that this is unique currently to the five ions in UAE, though I wouldn't be surprised if we're seeing this appear maybe in some of their other locations, especially with what's going to be happening with five ions in the next couple of months. Watch this space.
Speaker 2:It'll be interesting to see how this mix does. So. It'll be interesting to see if they repeat this mix or if they I mean they might test it in maybe two, three more locations, but it doesn't seem to me to be the perfect match. It's not as disparate, I don't think, as Toka Social and a Sandbox VR. I think those two are very much opposed at some level. But this just seems a little bit like the demographics coming in for the casual or even professional golf sim experience may not be the same people that are going to sit down at a driving sim. Maybe I'm wrong there, maybe there's some crossover, but it does seem like this is targeting two different audiences and maybe that's fine. It's going to just drive a greater level of foot traffic and then maybe there's some crossover as well. But we'll see how it plays out.
Speaker 3:When I describe it like this. Let's see if you still hold your view. Five Irons is aimed at a young-ish male audience that has just started drinking, that wants to have social, that likes golf, has a high level of disposable income and likes group entertainment. Racing simulators are aimed at individuals that, like racing, have a reasonable high income because they like to take part in tournament esports gaming. They also like the whole contraband that surrounds racing and gaming and they like to socialize. I would argue that this is quite a similar market to the golf simulation side, though I understand where you're coming from, which is not a perfect fit, but it is an audience that you want to cultivate for your simulation venues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, so that's fair, I think, from a demographic standpoint you know a household income standpoint I think you're right, these are going to be similar, maybe in also male versus female, similar in those types of interests. I think you're right, these are going to be similar, maybe in also male versus female, similar in those types of interests. I think, just generally speaking, though, people interested in golf, people interested in competitive esports are different, although they are similar in a household income demographic.
Speaker 3:If you do a Venn diagram. I have a Venn diagram I use for certain of the sectors of this market which kinds of shows there is a big that interconnect is that makes a difference and the connect between maybe talk of social and sandbox. Vr is a light touch where here is a little bit heavier, but again we can go into more detail than that Moving on and we have a flurry of what I have been forced to call sports attainment, what some people are calling batting cage 2.0. But really what we're looking at are venues run as a batting cage experience, projection map system, all-launched cage system supported by F&B and secondary entertainment darts, bowling, shuffleboard, amusement, along with a strong F&B and cocktail component. Our friends at Tarco Taroco.
Speaker 2:Taroco.
Speaker 3:Taroco Okay, we'll go with that one. Terako Sports is already a known entity in Taiwan. They are part of a group linked to a particular ball tracking projection system, ball launching ball tracking system which is incorporated in their facilities. They've had success in the Taiwanese market with over 30 facilities. They have now started a concerted effort to have a US presence with their for argument's sake batting cage 2.0 approach Interesting. They've now opened their second facility. Then, at the same time, we have Batbox, which is a company associated with a ball launching projection map ball tracking system, which is now raised some investment and has started to do their soft opening on their first facility in north america in texas, texas, texas, texas, texas, um 13 000 against Texas, texas, texas, texas, texas, 13,000 against 18,000 square foot batting cages, some amusement F&B cocktails and they have raised some money and they have also positioned themselves in the next four years to open 30 facilities. See the pattern.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, although I will say that there is a fundamental difference between Taroko Sports and BatBox. Taroko Sports really, frankly especially when you look at some of the pictures very much just a batting cage 2.0. There's no real competitive, there's no social entertainment component to it. It is just cages lined up, netting lined up. There's no seating for friends to gather around or anything like that. It is like a batting cage. I know that here you're seeing like the darts, but again, even with the darts you're coming up to throw darts. Where is everybody sitting? Where are the tables? Where are they putting their drinks and their cocktails and their food and everything else?
Speaker 3:This is not like a 501 darts scenario or a crazy dart situation or back box or a dugout or a moonshot. You know the list goes on of these companies and they have already learned the lesson of social entertainment presentation and I'm sorry that, no matter how many Taiwanese facilities you have, you may have missed the point of really what you're doing. Again, I'm willing to stand back and see how their second facility does on EBITDA and revenue generation, but the social entertainment vibe I'm not getting.
Speaker 2:No, certainly not. Yeah, we're at BatBox, obviously very much a different scenario, but with Heroku, I think, even given its location, because I'm in Phoenix Valley, mesa is part of Phoenix Valley, so I'm very familiar with its location and the Riverview shopping complex, and this is where, historically, entertainment venues have gone to die. They do not succeed in Riverview. And so I think really what's going to help, what's going to have Turoko be successful at all in this market or in this particular location at least, is if they can attract those kids, those adults who are really there just to swing a bat at a ball and have a batting cage 2.0 experience indoors in Arizona, when you can't do that outdoors, where all the outdoor batting cages are, when you can't do that outdoors, where all the outdoor batting cages are Going back to what we'll be talking about at a later sound off about the business model, the duration, the repeat visitation and the creation of the guest experience into a package that works.
Speaker 3:If they don't learn that lesson quickly, then they're going to have problems. I talked about this European brand and we touched upon their involvement with Eclipso. Well, they also have an interest in Magipark interesting name. They have just opened their latest facility. Now I am under the impression from our database that they haven't.
Speaker 3:This will be their first MagiPark opening, but the way that the press release and the information read it felt like that they had been applying a number of elements that have already proven themselves. They already run a go-karting concept, they already run a VR experience, they already run a laser tag experience separate to this, and I think what we're seeing here is a mixed-use leisure entertainment approach 13,000 square meters of such quite a large facility, so it is a mule and what we're seeing is a bit of everything and aimed at a very interesting location, not a million miles away from Disneyland Paris. So you're dealing with that captive audience of both locals and possibly individuals that are not staying on property as entertainment pickup. But anyway, 15 million euros has been invested in this development. Euros has been invested in this development and um and era are looking towards this as the beginning of a rollout of a particular kind of entertainment facility to add to their already existing entertainment retinue yeah, I mean this.
Speaker 2:This is massive. For those of you who are not making the conversion from square meters to square feet, this is is 140,000 square feet, which is pretty significant, and the mix of attractions they have in here is really interesting. Not only do they have your standard karting, laser tag, bowling, but they do have the kids' trampoline they call Code Jump, so it's a whole separate floor just for the kids' trampoline. This is a four, four story, four floor facility, and and then they have this really interesting thing called wonder woods, which is their rest. It's like a, an immersive dining, yeah.
Speaker 2:Immersive dining experience immersive dining experience and it looks really interesting and fascinating and you've done very well, done a very good job with theming, and this is the type of attraction that I think would do very well next to a Disney. This is, you know, families come in, they go to Disney, they go to a Disney park and then when they do the second day, they're going to spend half their day at a magic park playing around and burning off some of that Disney energy.
Speaker 3:The point of a mule is that it can be a vampire. It can feed very well off of a captive audience. So where you would have a large theme park or resort or tourist attraction, if you put the correct kind of mix of a mule mixed-use leisure entertainment facility into that market, then you can feed off of the audience because not everybody is going to spend all of their time at the theme park or at the tourist venue and you know. Having this as a secondary option for the entertainment mix means that you feed very successfully off of that captive income. And then, finally, the big announcement, of course, the doors being thrown open. We have a soft opening at the moment. The doors don't fully open until August, the first week of August.
Speaker 3:On Universal Horror Unleashed Don't bring your dog. The situation here is that you are looking at a considerable investment by the Universal operation into location-based entertainment, I would argue to a comparable level to the investment that our friends at Netflix has made with their Netflix house. That we're looking, you know, at 110,000 square feet of space. You know, you can see from the drone footage there that that is a vast area that is just going to comprise a horror walkthrough experience with live actors and F&B a unique dining experience. They better have got that experience right, or that could be one of the violent white elephants of our industry. If they haven't. They've already announced that they're going to be opening their Chicago facility for next year, so this is a steam train that has left the station before they've even had a chance to work out who their passengers are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and this is obviously the first opening in phase two for area 15. This is part of their their five phase expansion just on the north side of the area 15 area, and so the first opening uh, hope it's successful. For the fisher brothers, obviously they're. The phase two is almost almost completely filled out. There'll be a museum of ice cream and another big Mercer John Wick experience as well, and, and you know, I think one of the things that they've done here at least and I will see how well they execute it is they have done a little bit of a Netflix house concept here and the fact that they have four different, four different scare and haunt experiences, and so one of the things that will allow them to be able to do is again, if they're executing well is rotate out their experiences. So after the first two, three years, these four experiences start to get a little tired. They can start to swap out one of the experiences and keep them kind of moving around and keeping the overall experience fresh.
Speaker 3:So, from Universal's point of view, they're building on a proven formula. They have been running very successful Halloween scare attractions over the last few years and they have learned a package of presentation, the same way that our friends at Netflix have been running their experiences as pop-ups before they have decided on a permanent fixture. The issues are how quickly they can turn around, update and refresh and, from Unleash's point of view, it is very dependent on its live actors, their VACters, their virtual entertainment team that is rolling through these experiences and steering the audiences through and again, this is going to be an audience that is much more mature than any conventional entertainment facility and it may work in Vegas, but we're going to really need to see it work in Chicago and Texas, which I'm sure is obviously the next launch venue for them, which I'm sure is obviously the next launch venue for them. Moving to the Sharks and some good news regarding the Sharks Our friends at Highscore Arcades, who we were talking about a few sound-offs ago opens and shuts ago have managed to stay in extinction and their couple of days, or their weekend of survival and getting the local community to help them and push them into profitability seems to have worked.
Speaker 3:They're reporting in the local media that they have dodged the ax man's swipe and that they're moving forward after raising revenue and generating interest to their unique entertainment venue. It's nice to have some positive news in open and shuts and we wish them well going forwards and hopefully they've learned some lessons.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe the less. I mean, it is great, it is great news actually but maybe the lesson is that they shouldn't have specific set prices, but they should just do what they did in that weekend and have uh be open to. You know, you just pay whatever you think your time was worth. And uh, you know, they seem to have done better than they've done any other weekend by just opening up themselves to not donations, because they're not a non-profit, but to, um, you know, basically tip style, uh, tip spot. There was no set price for the visit there. So, uh, you know, maybe that's, maybe that's the model for these free play arcades is, come in and, you know, pay whatever you think your time is worth and we're not going to set any specific price point I've seen that done, uh.
Speaker 3:I was at a facility a couple of uh days ago which is not asking you to come in and pay what you think it's worth, but they do have a flexible price model. You walk in, you pay a certain amount and then you stay for the duration before your card kicks you out or the free play system kicks you out. I am looking forward to seeing if these individuals have learned the lesson of how close they came and how much they need to listen to their audience, and I'm hoping that they will call upon some saner heads that will give them a business overview perspective based upon where they need to be, rather than depending on the largest of their locality to bail them out of problems. But again, we're happy that they survived. One of the impacts going around in the current financial conditions is that if you're not prepared to be harsh and restructure your operation and cut dead wood, then you're going to go to the wall, and some of the beer and restaurant chains are now cutting dead wood. Both in're going to go to the war. Some of the beer and restaurant chains are now cutting dead wood both in their C-suites as well as in their operational.
Speaker 3:Brewdog is a well-known brewery beer maker and facility operator. They're actually one of the few of the brewery trains that has actually dabbled in competitive socializing. They developed at their Waterloo facility in London a beer experience. You know, a normal pub with a fantastic selection of flight beers and good F&B, but they also included duck pin bowling and a much more casual social component to the mix. Well, that site isB, but they also included duck pin bowling and a much more casual social component to the mix.
Speaker 3:Well, that site is surviving, but 10 other sites, including a number in London, will be going to the wall a mixture of uneconomics or difficult landlord conditions. And they are really focusing now on their 60 remaining facilities to drive forward their endeavors, and that's something we all need to be mindful of that even the bigger chains now are pivoting to try and eat our lunch. Anyway, that's really covering it from all of you listening and watching. I hope that you have subscribed to your Stinger and to your entertainment social arena. I hope you're also consuming it through both audio as well as video if you're watching this, and I hope that you're supporting us by giving us the thumbs up or commenting in the comments or just sending me an email and abusing my poor pronunciation of certain companies' names. But anyway, brandon, have I covered everything there?
Speaker 2:Well, we didn't cover everything on that list, but everything that we highlighted, so I think it's good.
Speaker 3:That is good. Well, that's it from me, wishing you well, all right.
Speaker 2:Wow, that was a great open and shut. Next up we have Arcade Corner with Adam Pratt. We're going to learn a little bit about the newest Resident Evil, number two. Let's hear it.
Speaker 4:Hey everyone. It's Adam with Arcade Heroes for the Arcade Corner here at the LBX Collective I've been absent for a week. News was a little bit slow this summer, as it often is with arcades, but then all of a sudden things get really busy. But there's been one story that's really been capturing interest out there and that's what you sort of see on my screen here. If you tilt your head you can see where it says resident evil 2, dead shot, and so this just popped up, uh, out of seemingly at random. I mean, granted, the thing is is that in the arcade industry, if you've been around for a while, you know this already. But if you're new to it, summertime is a great time for manufacturers to test out new games. And of course in the older world of arcades it was normal that tests could go unknown or they'd just become a rumor and people are like well, I heard I played this game at such and such place and it was amazing, but I never saw it again and you know that would often be a failed test. But in the age of social media it's pretty much impossible to for a test to go long unnoticed. Now I guess I shouldn't say I mean I did say have the qualifier pretty much, but I should say that there have been times where manufacturers told me they've been surprised that I didn't hear about something. But when it has a giant name attached to it, where it's a big name in the gaming world, the chances of it going unnoticed are very, very slim, if not impossible there, just because there are generally so many fans that are attached to that license that once one fan finds out about it, then they spread it amongst the different communities online. And that's exactly what's happened with Resident Evil 2 Deadshot, which is based on the Resident Evil 2 remake, which came out in 2019, 2020, somewhere around there, developed based on the Capcom series. However, the arcade version is being handled by Bandai Namco and of course, they have Bandai Namco Amusements, or I guess they're changing the name of that again. They've changed that name more than once before, but it's going to be Bandai Namco Experiences and I think that's supposed to be more encompassing for Europe, north America, japan, et cetera. That's supposed to be more encompassing for Europe, north America, japan, etc. But if I back out here so there was this video that well, let me back up really quick. So the location where this is being tested at in Europe posted about this. That's how we found out about it and they put their name on it of the location, everything. Apparently they were not supposed to do that. I was talking with the representative at bandai namco. They asked me to remove the name of the location because they were trying to get just pure raw data about this. But I think again, it's going to be very difficult, just because there's so many resident evil fans out there to to do that. And I mean this is really blown up out there. As far as going viral and such not and I'm not talking necessarily about the videos that I've done on this, but from videos that have been shot over where it's at, because since the name of the location did get out there initially, let me fire this up. And so this is where you can see.
Speaker 4:This was sent to me by Toby Nunicorn. He's a big arcade gamer, big community arcade community guy over in the UK. He went and saw this and played it. He has a video on his channel showing actual gameplay For this. He just sent us these shots as well as the inside of the cabinet, which, interestingly enough, is a stand-up cabinet. It's not very common to have an arcade environmental cabinet like this one where you're standing inside of it as opposed to sitting down, but it would have a shaker foot base that you would stand on uses pistols. So on a post on Arcade Heroes, I've embedded the memo of this.
Speaker 4:Now I should say, maybe as a disclaimer, this game is very violent. It's probably the most violent game that we will have seen in arcades in the past. I don't know, 10 years or more, 20 years maybe. So it appears to have it's going to have most likely another disclaimer if this passes testing, which seems pretty likely, it'll have five chapters. Graphics on it are phenomenal but again, very violent, very bloody.
Speaker 4:And kevin williams was asking me about the rating system. You know what's this gonna land on? I mean, to me it doesn't seem like anybody's really giving a crap about the ratings arcade rating system anymore. I mean, given this is based on a console game, console games in general are far more violent than anything that's gone out there in the arcade. Personally, I think they should keep it, you know, just make it an option. If the location wants to turn it off, they can. But I mean it does seem like with the amounts of gore and violence that are in this. It'll be kind of hard to change it, but of course you can just change the color of the blood, I guess, to brown or purple or something, but I mean it's all over the place. So again, a little bit of a surprise, just because we haven't seen that in a long time.
Speaker 4:But I used to have a carnival for Midway, which was, for its time, was extremely gory and violent blood everywhere and I never actually had a complaint. In fact it was one of my best performing games when it worked. That was. The only problem is it didn't work for very long, but it still did amazing numbers and it paid for itself several times over, which was great, but yeah. So, as I mentioned, this one became viral. Ign picked it up.
Speaker 4:Ign has almost never mentioned video arcades in many, many years. They just basically pretend that they don't exist, and the only times that they've gotten close has been in mentioning pinball machines, because Sturm Pinball for a while would reach out to them and they would become the principal source for news on a brand new pinball machine. People that read IGN, but it doesn't make sense in the fact that nobody at IGN seems to know or care that our kids exist, and so it seemed like kind of an oddball thing where it's like here we are talking about a product for an industry we think is dead and we don't know anything about. And of course that's always the problem with mainstream sources when they cover this stuff is they cover it, but they're just like, oh, my goodness, it's like, uh, where is this coming from? And uh, pretty sure arcades are dead. And of course there's the silly semantics that are gotten into is to oh, is dave and buster's an arcade? And you know, some people will say absolutely not and others say yes, it is.
Speaker 4:I mean, I myself would argue that it is. It has arcade games in it, it has a game room. Is it an arcade in the sense of what a 1982 arcade was like? No, but it still is an arcade, it still has a game room, and you know these products. The big argument that I like to push is that if the arcade industry is dead, then who are they making these products for? It's not for collectors. You don't have thousands of collectors out there that have that much money to spend on games like this that would warrant dropping millions of dollars on their game development. It's for locations, first and foremost, development. It's four locations, first and foremost.
Speaker 4:But uh, for when this is going to be hitting the arcade scene? According to bandai namco, they said very far off. I would note that with um goldstorm pirates, that started testing at the beginning of 2023 and didn't come out until about now and so about a year and a half, so it's very possible that this could still be a good year, year and a half away from July 2025. So I mean, I would say probably at the earliest. I would be amazed if it's out by next summer, if not the end of next year, and so maybe it'll show up a little sooner than that, I don't know, but still it's not coming next month. I would be a little bit surprised if it's at IAPA and I mean it still might be at IAPA 2025, just because it's somewhat far along, or, you know, it's far enough along to be tested out there. But again, sometimes game development takes a lot longer than what people plan for, and so that's where it's very, very rare for arcade manufacturers to say when something's coming along. But again, that's the big news of the week.
Speaker 4:It was nice to see some mainstream coverage, even though they didn't respect the whole thing about not saying where this was at. So I wouldn't be surprised if this won't be on test for much longer, because Namco might need to, or they're going to need to, move it out there if they want to get some different testing data, unless they decide, hey, okay, so we see this big spike because of all this media coverage and then let's see what happens after. That dies down a little bit. But also there's other communities, like Resident Evil fan groups on Reddit and other gaming forums have been talking a lot about this, and so just from that it's getting that coverage, which again is good For the industry in general. It's good to have a lot of attention being brought to us. I just wish it wasn't like once every five years, where you get something like that coming along, where people are like wow I didn't know our kids were still a thing.
Speaker 4:And where's this game coming from? They don't seem to realize it's like this thing costs millions of dollars to develop and nobody would do that again for just a handful of potential buyers. But that's the big news to end our July off on. Before too long we'll probably start seeing stuff coming up for IAPA 2025. I mean, it'll still probably be a month or two, but who knows, there always can be something else that's on test that pops up out there, I guess. With that in mind, Missile Command Recharged started shipping from Alan 1, and they still haven't announced it yet, but they're supposed to have a new variation of Soda Slam that has a license attached to it coming along soon. But either way, that's the Arcade News for this week. Thank you for watching. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your July and we'll see you in August.
Speaker 2:All right, well, thanks Adam for that. And coming up last, here we've got Promo Pro Tips with Chuck DeMonte. He's going to dive into how to do meta ads.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to Promo Pro Tips with Chuck DeMonte. That is me, and today I want to cover meta ads with you, the different objectives you could do on meta ads and what we as marketing specialists in the FEC world typically use those different objectives and meta ads for Okay. So there's different objectives. If you guys know meta and you've done ads there before, you know there's different objectives. And now there's also an area in meta where you know they try and you use the business manager and there's like a more of a slicker, easier version that meta has created for to make it easier to run ads. We like to run them in the ads manager to get as many features as humanly possible Okay. And so when you're running meta ads, you typically could choose objectives Okay Of what you want to accomplish when you're running those ads. Now, some of those objectives includes awareness, engagement, link clicks right Leads, and that even under those things there's other like sort of sub objectives, right. So for example, with awareness, you could say put up a static image and say I just want to reach as many people as possible Okay. You could also say the awareness I want to get as many video views as possible Right. And now what's going to happen is when you tell meta what the objective is, meta is going to look for people that watch videos on meta, people that link, click links on meta, people that you know engage with posts on meta right, it'll start there. It'll then continue to narrow it down based on your audience and who you are. Right, if you are a Mexican restaurant, it's going to hopefully find people that watch videos and like Mexican food right? So that's what the meta AI algorithm is going to do. Right, it's going to choose your objective and hopefully find the right people for you, especially if you're using an advantage audience plus. Now I'm not going to go too much into the details about targeting and stuff, but I'm going to give you the objectives we typically use and the scenarios and strategies we use them for.
Speaker 1:Now let's start with the lowest one, sort of the easiest one awareness. Now, we use a tool called Placer AI to help us understand the foot traffic and where our clients are getting their visitors from, literally what zip codes and where they're coming from. Now, this allows us to place our targeting in certain areas, which makes our awareness campaigns very effective. Now, you don't need it, but it helps, because awareness there's no way to track it to an ROI, a return on investment. Now, some people find that extremely important and while it is important, right, awareness if you've watched me on this, you know, give me, give do these segments before awareness is the top of any marketing funnel. Okay, so it is super important that people know about you before they do their business with you, right? So, even if you don't have a target or you don't have a tool like place or AI to understand where to place these ads geographically, and if it's actually bringing people in from those places you're targeting, getting awareness out at its very simplest form is still extremely, extremely, extremely valuable, right? So how do you use awareness?
Speaker 1:So, again, like I said, you can create a static image. Typically, what we'll do is we'll have three different like ad types. You have a carousel which is you could swipe through, we like that. Okay, we create a video and we have a static image and we run all three of those ads at the same time and we tell Meta reach it get it in front of as many people in these zip codes or in this mile radius around your location, and we just put up a pretty much a caption that represents who you are as a brand, what you offer, right, as a location, okay, and make it look as fun and as engaging as possible. That's going to make people want to come in, share with them, tell people oh, I saw this cool place, we should check that out. Or just even just remarketing and make people remember that they've been to your location or that they even wanted to go there. Right, so, to stay in front of people. So that's typically how we use awareness ads. Now, again, if it's not a reach, or if we're putting up, if it's not a static image and we're not saying, get reach, it could be a video and we say get more video views on this. Right, it's all great ways to get in front of people and drive awareness for your brand. So that is huge. Again, pro tip if you can, you know, if you have a tool like Placer or can you know, use that to track your ROI even better. Right, but not a necessity. People just knowing about you, local people, knowing about you, is more important.
Speaker 1:Ok, the next thing we do is engagement, right. So what does that mean? That's basically literally telling Meta I want people to like my Facebook post. Post like my Facebook post. Like my Instagram post, right, share it, comment on it. Ok, now, why is this good? So Meta is a pay to play platform? Ok, you know, they're a public company, they need to make money. Now, why is this good? So Meta is a pay-to-play platform? Okay, you know, they're a public company, they need to make money. So they've learned many years ago that businesses will pay to get in front of more people, right, which is the case. That's marketing.
Speaker 1:So if you want to do engagement ads, in my opinion it accomplishes two objectives when you're doing organic content. If you do engagement ads, it's going to get more reach on that organic content, right? So you're not sort of just posting into the void, right. If you have 100 followers, you could do some content engagement for very little money, right, fifty, one hundred dollars a month and you will reach tens of thousands more local people, right, so that's great. Just again, that's sort of the awareness piece on the engagement ads, ok. The second piece is it's going to get people to like, like I said, like, comment, share. If you're scrolling through Instagram and you see you know, billy's trampoline park has a thousand likes on a post you're gonna say, oh my God, this place must be really popular, people must really like this place, right, so it's social validation, okay. So the engagement is reach, but it's also social validation because it's putting it in front of people who typically engage with posts like comment, share, right, and you'll get more of those. It'll create more reach and it'll create more social validation for your place and your brand. People are going to think everybody likes this place, okay.
Speaker 1:Next is the lead ads. Now, admittedly, we don't do these as much anymore, but lead ads mean you could literally create a form on meta Okay, with, that pairs with your, and you could do that, let's say, for online. You could do that for event bookings, right, and say, hey, get $50 off this event, fill out this form right Now. There requires some sort of sales outreach for that. It's not a true online booking, right, but you can collect data and collect people that are going to sign up, that are going to be interested in for an event okay, now, this is really easy because it's it's in platform. So when somebody says, yeah, learn more, or yes, you know, get $50 off my next birthday booking, right, a form will pop up that's auto-populated with the information that Facebook already has name, email, phone number and then they just have to maybe submit some other information. Now we do like adding some custom questions, because it will increase the barrier to entry on this form, which will get you better quality, right. So with this meta lead form, you're going to get a lot of quantity right, and a little bit of a lower quality, okay, but the quantity is valuable, right. So you could retarget those people, you could email them, you know, remarket to them and obviously you're going to have salespeople call them, hopefully pretty quickly after they fill out that form. So that's one way.
Speaker 1:If you don't necessarily have an online booking platform or you want to increase your data, you could do lead ads. Now, again, we don't do a ton of that, but that's a very cool way. Now, the very final way that we typically use is conversion ads, and we use this in two ways. So when we mean conversion ads, you're literally telling what meta a conversion is to you. It could be anything right. Click on this button right. Booking an event online through my online booking system, right. Whatever that is. Now, not every system will allow you to set up conversion tracking, right. We highly suggest you find one that does allow for implementing meta conversion tracking. It is an absolute game changer. It's putting your lights on in your car at night. You can see what's going on.
Speaker 1:If you have an online booking platform, that's a great place to use conversion ads. You're going to send people to your website. When somebody books online via and comes from the ad, your online platform is going to tell Meta hey, somebody hit the link that you want me to, or somebody hit that conversion you asked for, that's what we want. And your ad is going to say Meta, look, somebody just did this action. I want more of those. Find me more people that will take this action. Okay.
Speaker 1:And then Meta can get better because you're telling it what success is okay. That's how you get online bookings, tickets, events, all that other stuff right, it is huge. Thatstakes, okay. And so we give away a free event per month and we connect conversion tracking. When somebody lands on that landing page that we're giving away the event on, they submit the form. I tell them that's conversion. This form submission is conversion. I want more of those, right.
Speaker 1:And then it allows us to increase our email opt-ins, our SMS opt-ins, our social media followers. We run a sweepstakes for all this and again I can tell what cost? Am I getting people to enter the sweepstakes for right? How many people are entering the sweepstakes? So there's so many things we can do with those conversion ads. So, again, meta can range from the pretty simple to pretty complex. Okay, simplest being being awareness, right. Complex being conversion ads Uh, if you can do all of them, great. Minimal. Do awareness ads, right? Uh, and so, again, just to recap, you got awareness we lean into those for reach and video views. You got engagement we lean into those who get organic uh, engagement on our organic posting and reach in our organic posting. You have lead ads. You could do that to generate leads for events and other things right, but you're going to need a sales team for that. And then you have conversion ads. A lot of times we're using that for online bookings and sweepstakes to get more people to you know, more people's contact information.
Speaker 2:So go out, try and get some meta ads done, if you ever have a question you can always reach out to me at radiusco have been leading the way for over 30 years. Catch the system from Intercard, increase customer spending, guest satisfaction and boost revenues by up to 30%. Intercard is so proud to be serving the amusement industry and if you aren't already part of their global family of customers, they hope you will become one soon. All right, well, that winds down the show for today. We have a cool show for you next week.
Speaker 2:So Kevin Williams, adam Pratt and myself we're going to be doing a deep dive into the state of the industry, and so that'll be the whole show pretty much. So I'll come in, I'll do a little introduction or whatever, but that will be the whole show. It's going to be that deep dive. It's good, we've already recorded it, we're very excited about it, and so that will run on August 3rd instead of the normal LBX show, and then the following week, august 10th, we'll pick back up with the standard regular LBX show, although we will have the game on with Justin Michaels, so getting into some redemption and arcade floor stuff there, and so looking forward to that segment on August 10th. All right, that is a wrap for this week's LBX show. This is Brandon Wiley signing off. Stay tuned and keep kicking.
