Amusement arcades
This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in operating amusement arcades and parlours. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A
- Establishments · CanadaA
- 282
- Under 10 employeesA
- 53%
- Establishments · USA
- 3,392
- Employment · USA
- 61,452
- Payroll · USA
- $1.5B
Size and shape
How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.
Canadian establishments by number of employeesA
Of 282 Canadian establishments with employees, 53% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Where they areA
Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
How businesses here compete
The structural profile of subsector 713, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.
Facility businesses — gyms, golf, ski, marinas, entertainment centres — with high fixed cost and revenue that follows weather, seasons and discretionary income. Gambling is a licensed exception.
- Who sets the price
- The operator, within what a local catchment will pay.
- The software it runs on
- Membership and class booking, tee sheets, point of sale, gaming management.
Market screens and studies
Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.
Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 7131 Amusement parks and arcades covers it.
Axe throwing, trampoline parks, indoor golf and arcades share one arc: a novelty period with strong margins, then a plateau as the format is copied locally and the equipment ages. The build cost is front-loaded into a lease that outlasts the novelty. The formats that survive add food and beverage, which turns the business into hospitality with an attraction attached.
The large-park end is held by a listed specialist that is shrinking, and the venue-sized end has already been taken by a well-funded cloud challenger. Filed under 713110 (amusement and theme parks); the same software serves 713120 (amusement arcades) and 713990 (other amusement and recreation: trampoline, climbing, bowling-adjacent and play centres). This is not the event-ticketing market on the 7113 record. There, Ticketmaster earns consumer fees against venue-exclusivity contracts and the venue barely pays for software. An amusement park, water park, trampoline park or family entertainment centre (FEC) sells admissions that are timed, dated, repeat and often bundled into season passes and memberships. It then earns as much again inside the gate: food and drink, game cards, birthday parties, lockers, photos. The software runs the whole operating day, from the online store and timed-entry capacity through waivers, turnstiles, POS, party booking and the arcade's cashless card readers. Nobody sells this venue's demand back to it, so the operator owns the customer and pays the vendor per ticket, per transaction or by subscription. accesso (AIM: ACSO) is the incumbent for large parks. 2025 revenue was $155.1M (+1.8%). 84.6% of it was 'repeatable', defined as a fixed amount per ticket sold or a percentage of the venue's revenue [A]. It claims 1,100+ destinations and venues in 31 countries [C]. The business is not growing. The Board guides FY2026 to about $146M, and H1 2026 Guest Experience (virtual queuing) revenue fell 41.7% after one major customer discontinued LoQueue and another stayed only on revised terms [A]. Customer concentration is visible, but no entrant can attack it from below: a 42-park operator like the merged Six Flags/Cedar Fair [B] buys on integration and scale. Gateway Ticketing (Galaxy, founded 1988, 500+ clients claimed [C]) is the on-premise alternative at this tier. The venue-sized end belongs to ROLLER. The Melbourne cloud platform for FECs, trampoline and climbing parks, bowling and play centres claims 3,500+ venues [C]. It raised US$50m led by Insight Partners in November 2023 [B], on top of a $7M Series B led by Acadian Software in 2018 [B]. CenterEdge (US FECs, own payments since 2019), Semnox (Parafait, 2,800+ sites claimed) and the cashless-card specialists Embed and Intercard surround it, and Convious ($20M Series A in equity and debt [B]) and Clorian are taking European e-commerce and cultural ticketing. Lock-in is physical as well as digital. Card readers sit on every arcade game, outstanding card balances and season-pass holders live in the system, turnstiles and gates are wired to it, and payments are now being bundled in (accessoPay with Adyen live in 2026 [A]; CenterEdge Payments [C]). Every vendor is moving to earn on card volume, so the software price trends toward the payments take. Incumbent vulnerability decides it. accesso's weakness is real, but it sits with the largest operators, who buy on scale. The cloud-native, all-in-one wedge for smaller venues was ROLLER's, and Insight's money has already been spent defending it.
Software serving this industry
The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.
No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Membership and class booking, tee sheets, point of sale, gaming management.
And what every business buys · 25 generic categories
Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.
Who works here
The occupations employed in Arts, entertainment and recreation, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.
Concentrated in this sectorA
These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.
And the jobs every business has
Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.