PAGE TEN: LOCATION BASED ENTERTAINMENT
The out-of-home leisure and entertainment industry includes several defined businesses including: motion pictures and exhibitions, participatory and spectator sports, theme parks and family entertainment centres as well as traditional arcades. According to data provided by the U.S. Commerce Department, consumers spent over US $380 billion on out-of-home leisure and recreation in 1994. Up from US $341 billion in 1993. Since 1991, consumer spending on out-of-home entertainment and leisure has increased approximately 13% per year, adjusted for inflation.
In recent times, the traditional arcade business generally has included relatively simple video games. Recent increases in computer processing power and speed, together with improvements in graphic texture mapping, has created an opportunity to produce, on a cost-effective basis, technologies which will provide interactive entertainment experiences that are much more intricate and sophisticated than have previously been available in the traditional arcade.
Entertainment developers have focused on combining traditional family entertainment activities with interactive, high-tech entertainment, superior food and beverage operations and high quality retailing in a combined concept. These combined entertainment centres have come to be know in the industry as Location Based Entertainment Centres of LBE's
Several key trends are impacting the leisure industry which are creating enormous growth opportunities. These trends are as follows:
*** A long term trend towards more available leisure time.
*** Baby Boomers, the most significant and influential segment in our population, have become parents and are spending more time and money on family leisure and recreational activities.
*** Technology is rapidly advancing.
*** A niche exists in many markets throughout North America to provide low cost family leisure and amusement facilities that can deliver the same high-quality experiences as the large theme parks.
*** There is a new environment for real estate, where the "highest and best use" for a real estate asset in the 1980's is no longer applicable in the 1990's. Many landlords have realized that intensive development will no occur until the next century. Alternative uses are being considered in order to inventory these excess lands for the next 15 to 25 years.
*** The leisure industry is expected to experience strong growth throughout the 1990's. There are certain sectors within the industry, such as sport simulation and the family leisure and amusement industries, that represent enormous opportunities.
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