A 40,000-square-foot street food, drinks and miniature golf venue from Swingers will open in MGM’s Mandalay Bay next year.
(Bloomberg) — Get ready to tee off. Swingers, the miniature golf, drinks and street food experience that began as a pop-up in East London, has raised $52 million to fund a global expansion, with locations opening soon in Las Vegas and Dubai. The investment is funded in part by Cain International Advisers Ltd.
A 40,000-square-foot flagship location is set to to open in 2024 at the Mandalay Bay resort. It will consist of five courses over three floors, complete with cocktails and street food in partnership with Vegas-area restaurateurs. Soul, funk and disco tunes will blast from DJ booths.
“Vegas is the home of entertainment globally, so we’ve always had one eye on it,” says Matt Grech-Smith, co-founder and co-chief executive officer, who says MGM Resorts International approached Swingers about bringing crazy golf to the Mandalay Bay space.
“Our concept usually revolves around the English country golf club, so even though venues are indoors, they feel like they’re outside and are covered in plants and trees,” he says. “For Vegas, we wanted to go bigger and better, and said: Instead of the English country golf club, let’s make it an English country house and make it the best house party that people have ever been to.”
Expect Bridgerton vibes. “One minute you’ll be on the hot desert of the Vegas strip, and the next, you’ll be walking up this driveway towards a massive country house,” says Grech-Smith.
In Dubai, the location is set to open on Bluewaters Island in 2024 and is expected to have both an alcohol license and a large non-alcoholic menu for people who don’t drink. It will cater both to locals and Dubai’s large expatriate population; all three of the Swingers locations in the US admit only people 21 and over.
Swingers has been expanding rapidly over the past few years. In 2022, it opened its first New York location in NoMad under the Virgin Hotel and now has a second location in Washington, D.C.
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The New York Swingers has welcomed as many as 8,000 people per week, according to Grech-Smith. The clientele has been a mix of dates, groups and an increasing business in corporate events whereby “crazy golfers” sip on $17 frozen palomas between holes. A round of golf costs around $24 in New York; the pricing for Las Vegas has yet to be determined.
It’s all a part of booming interest in golf. The National Golf Federation says that rounds of golf were up 5.5% in June compared with the same month a year earlier, marking the third consecutive month of gains. In October, Chicago-based mini golf company Puttshack raised $150 million to fuel an expansion.
The tech-driven Puttshack currently has nine US locations and four in the UK. Swingers currently has five locations, three in the US and two in London, and intends to expand beyond Dubai and Las Vegas to have 15 venues by the end of 2026.
Still, there are concerns about cooling demand. In May, Topgolf Callaway Brands Corp. known for its high-tech Topgolf driving ranges, cut its profit forecast for the year, a sign that interest in golf could be decreasing.
Grech-Smith attributes any pull back to a steadying market. “There was this huge bounce on the back of the pandemic, where people had money saved up, which they then spent on lots of events like holiday parties,” he says. “If we keep getting our real estate strategy right, and go to cities where there are dense populations with lots of corporate offices and a big market for us to draw from, we hopefully shouldn’t see any kind of wild fluctuations.”
Eric Wold at B. Riley Securities says the golf boom is not over: “The numbers of golfers, both traditional and off-course, on places like Topgolf, continue to grow,” he says. “Eighty percent of the people who go to Top Golf venues aren’t traditional golfers, but are going for the entertainment aspect of it, but that also encourages them to try out the sport.”
Of the few players in the indoor mini-golf space, Wold highlights Puttshack’s patents for its automatic scoring technology, which cannot be replicated.
“There are options for consumers who just want to have a cocktail and enjoy themselves,” says Wold. “In terms of who ends up winning—who ends up getting the outside investments, who ends up showing the most growth and most opportunity to move into new cities—it tends to be a technology leader that can make the experience just that much more enjoyable and easier for consumers.”
For its part, privately held Swingers expects $60 million in annual revenue this year and $150 million in annual revenue by 2026—which would result in a valuation of approximately $500 million.
“We’re obviously feeling bullish about the future, and the fact that our investors have put a whole load more cash into the business shows that they are, too,” says Grech-Smith.
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