In case anyone’s in any doubt, I’m absolutely thrilled with the job that Ken is doing with Exit Games UK since I handed it over to him. He’s definitely doing a better job of it than I could right now and may very well do a better job of it than I could do at my best. Certainly some of the changes he’s made to the administration of it are very smart, far better than I knew how to do. I’m thrilled that he’s brought the map up to date and also done a wonderful job revamping and improving the list of games, after a point at which I waved the white flag. His articles have also been top-notch, too. All that and it’s not even his first site!
I’m particularly glad that he’s brought the list of games up to date because it means I can catch up with this post. Every six-ish-ish months or so, this site looks at a snapshot of the UK market for exit games and analyses where the gaps are at that time. (See the older versions from September 2015, March 2015, September 2014 and March 2014.)
It’s possible that some of the first exit game room proprietors might have started business in the closest big city to where they happened to already live. However, if you had a choice as to where to set up business, where are the most obvious gaps in the market? Alternatively, where might people expect to see exit rooms coming soon? In mid-2016, now that some of the most successful operations have started two or more locations in different towns, where remains up for grabs?
The Brookings Institution analysed 300 of the largest metropolitan economies in late 2012 and identified 15 of them as being in the UK. Because it’s the same list I’ve been using previously, here are the 15 largest metropolitan economies in the UK, alongside the number of exit rooms featured in each one. If there’s a large metropolitan economy without an exit room, there’s arguably a gap in the market there. You can find details of which sites are in which locations on the Exit Game details page.
Metropolitan economy | Sites operating | Also consider |
---|---|---|
1. London | ~27 | 2 under construction, Gravesend (1) is close |
2. Birmingham | 3 | Nuneaton (1) is close |
3. Manchester | 6 | Macclesfield (1), Warrington (2), Stockport (1), Atherton (1) all close |
4. Leeds-Bradford | 3 | 1 under construction |
5. Liverpool | 5 | Warrington (1) is close |
6. Glasgow | 6 | 1 under construction |
7. Nottingham-Derby | 4 | 1 under construction, Mansfield (1) is close |
8. Portsmouth-Southampton | 2 | Bournemouth (1) and Salisbury (1) are close |
9. Bristol | 4 | Bath (1) is close |
10. Newcastle | 4 | Sunderland (1) is close |
11. Sheffield | 3 | |
12. Cardiff-Newport | 4 | 1 under construction |
13. Edinburgh | 7 | Livingston (1) is close |
14. Leicester | 1 | 2 under construction |
15. Brighton | 2 | 1 under construction |
For comparison, the Dublin metro area with 3 sites open would come just below number three in the above list.
So where are the gaps in the market? Er, there aren’t really any, any more. Too late! OK, that’s unduly flippant. I’ve linked to this before, even recently, but I really like Puzzle Break‘s Nate Martin’s take on competition between escape rooms.
Let’s use a different list, along the same lines: list of UK cities by their Gross Value Added. A more recently updated version of the data is available from the ONS, but that breaks it down almost too much. That list on Wikipedia does display some editorial judgment by amalgamating some sections together, but does so in what I consider to be a helpful fashion. Don’t read too much into the ordering as there’s a great deal of “well, it depends on what you count” – how great (for instance) Greater Manchester might be, and so on. Is it wrong to count Leeds and Bradford as distinct? How about Coventry and Nuneaton? How about Newcastle and Whitley Bay? How about Manchester, Altrincham and Bury? …and so on.
Metropolitan economy | Sites operating | Also consider |
---|---|---|
1. London | ~27 | 2 under construction, Gravesend (1) is close |
2. Manchester | 6 | Macclesfield (1), Warrington (2), Stockport (1), Atherton (1) all close |
3. Birmingham | 3 | Nuneaton (1) is close |
4. Leeds | 3 | 1 under construction |
5. Glasgow | 6 | 1 under construction |
6. Edinburgh | 7 | Livingston (1) is close |
7. Tyneside | 4 | Sunderland (1) is close |
8. Bristol | 4 | Bath (1) is close |
9. Sheffield | 3 | |
10. Cardiff | 4 | 1 under construction |
11. Liverpool | 5 | Warrington (1) is close |
12. Belfast | 2 | 1 under construction |
13. Bradford | 0 | Leeds (2) and Huddersfield (1) are nearby |
14. Nottingham | 3 | 1 under construction, Mansfield (1) is close |
15. Derby | 1 | |
16. Leicester | 1 | 2 under construction |
17. Coventry | 0 | Nuneaton (1) is close |
18. Wakefield | 0 | Leeds (2) and Huddersfield (1) are nearby |
19. Brighton | 2 | 1 under construction |
20. Southampton | 0 | Portsmouth (2) is close |
21. Portsmouth | 2 | Bournemouth (1) and Salisbury (1) are close |
22. Plymouth | 1 | |
23. Peterborough | 1 | 1 under construction |
24. Wolverhampton | 0 | Birmingham (3) is close |
25. Hull | 0 | 1 under construction |
26. York | 2 | |
27. Stoke | 1 | |
28. Swansea | 2 |
Very roughly, this points to West Yorkshire and the West Midlands being underserved. Bradford is definitely a pretty plausible-seeming place, Wakefield somehow less so. Coventry and Wolverhampton have potential and Birmingham still has room to grow. Southampton and Hull look very plausible. The Home Counties still also look promising: moderately-sized mid-distance commuter towns like Reading, Watford, Luton, Dartford, where getting into London (or up to Oxford or Milton Keynes, or down to the Guildford area) may still be annoyingly far. This site remains positive about seaside resorts: Margate, Whitby (or Scarborough), Great Yarmouth and so on.
I would say that I was much more cautious about the market than I was last year, but the number of sites continuing to open just goes to show how little I really know!