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White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, Kansas City, MO, USA

The elephant in the room

There is a significant shift underway in Americans' out-of-home entertainment culture. We've previously written about how live entertainment is capturing a growing share of attendance and spending (click here (www.whitehutchinson.com/ news/ lenews/ 2025/ june/ article102.shtml#article) ) and the decline in location-based entertainment's (LBE) repeat appeal (click here (www.whitehutchinson.com/ news/ lenews/ 2025/ may/ article105.shtml#article) ). One national LBE's performance indicates that a standard community LBE formula is losing appeal.

Starting in the first fiscal quarter of 2023, Dave & Buster's comparable store sales* have steadily declined every quarter.

The Q1 2025 comparable store sales are now down 7.9% compared to pre-pandemic Q1 2019. However, when you adjust current sales for inflation since 2019, their comparable store sales have declined by over one-quarter (-27%).

That's a damn significant decline indicating there must be some root-cause reasons.

We believe the root cause is two-fold. First, the traditional game room is losing appeal. Why? Most games are solo experiences, not social ones. When people go out today, they are looking for highly social experiences driven by the post-lockdown desire for in-person social interaction. Game rooms no longer cut the mustard, especially as a major anchor attraction to an LBE.

Second, Dave & Buster's old eatertainment formula of separate dining and bar areas with eating and drinking experienced sequentially with the entertainment has lost its appeal. Today, as evidenced by the success and expansion of social gaming venues, people want to experience the 'social' of the game play combined with the 'social' of eating and drinking for a much more fulfilling quality social experience.

* Since Dave & Buster's purchased Main Event in 2022, some of Main Event'scomparable store sales are included in the data, while most of the sales datais from Dave & Buster's stores. If Main Event's comparable store sales are also consistently declining, this could indicate that the standard family entertainment center (FEC) model is also losing its relevance to today's out-of-home culture.

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