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Do you want a pinball club in Blackpool?

How often would you want to play pinball at a Blackpool club

  • Weekly

    Votes: 3 4.6%

  • Monthly

    Votes: 11 16.9%

  • Every 2 Months

    Votes: 5 7.7%

  • Every 3 months

    Votes: 3 4.6%

  • Every 6 months

    Votes: 7 10.8%

  • Annually

    Votes: 18 27.7%

  • Less / Never

    Votes: 18 27.7%
  • Total voters
    65
lukewells

lukewells

Site Supporter
10 Years
Joined
May 1, 2012
Messages
2,725
Location
Blackpool, UK
Hi all,

I am looking at the feasibility of opening a private pinball club in Blackpool within 5 minutes of the M55 motorway.

I have been viewing properties for a few weeks now and have found one that is a reasonable mix of location / price / parking.

Before I commit to a 2 year + lease, I need to know if this is something people actually want.


There wold be around 30 machines setup at a time - mainly classic Bally / Stern / Williams up to System 11, plus a few WPC generation

There will be other games from my collection that will be rotated in from time to time to keep things more interesting.


Common answers to questions :-
1) The venue will be outskirts of Blackpool, near the motorway, not in town.
2) There will be free parking on site, plus overflow parking on the roadside + more on the residentially streets within 5 mins walk
3) No onsite food (maybe a vending machine?) but there are all the common fast food places within walking distance (McDonalds, Subway, Dominos etc)
4) For day trip visitors, yes, if there is interest (it seems there is) I would do full day events on weekends to make it worth your while. There are nice chain brand hotels nearby (or the £12 a night crack-den hotels are in town if that's your thing🤣)



Rough plan :-

1 competition / event per month
Once per week opening for general play (rotating between weekday evening and weekend daytime) 3-4 hours per session
Potentially full day / weekend events on occasion if there is demand from people travelling to the area
Pricing approx. £15 evening / half day weekend or £25 for full day events
Option to pay a monthly fee for unlimited use when open (which would work out cheaper if wanting to visit more than once per month)
Donations welcome from anyone who wants to help this exist


It doesn't need to make a profit, but it does need to come close to breaking even


Please vote and feel free to give me your opinions/advice as well
 
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Deffo could do with a proper pinball club in the NW 🥰
Parking important hopefully not too expensive.
Only thing I'm thinking is with AC being in Blackpool and the price being £17 for the day would that put anyone off? I know they have a few newer games too... but on the other hand yours would be setup properly and repaired ASAP
 
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FinalFight said:
Deffo could do with a proper pinball club in the NW 🥰
Parking important hopefully not too expensive.
Only thing I'm thinking is with AC being in Blackpool and the price being £17 for the day would that put anyone off? I know they have a few newer games too... but on the other hand yours would be setup properly and repaired ASAP
Click to expand...

So parking was an important consideration.

(Based on my current favourite unit) there will be some parking spaces allocated to my unit, plus most of the surrounding businesses are not open evenings or weekends. The landlord basically said "park wherever, but don't p**s off any other businesses" so basically don't take up ALL the spaces outside someone else's business.
There is also an abundance of free parking on the roadside, or in the residential streets within 5 minutes walk.
In summary - plenty of free parking nearby

I'm not competing with AC, I am offering something entirely different.
This will be open to you guys, not the general public, so it will be entirely less busy, and hopefully offering a different quality of pinball machines
 
lukewells said:
So parking was an important consideration.

(Based on my current favourite unit) there will be some parking spaces allocated to my unit, plus most of the surrounding businesses are not open evenings or weekends. The landlord basically said "park wherever, but don't p**s off any other businesses" so basically don't take up ALL the spaces outside someone else's business.
There is also an abundance of free parking on the roadside, or in the residential streets within 5 minutes walk.
In summary - plenty of free parking nearby

I'm not competing with AC, I am offering something entirely different.
This will be open to you guys, not the general public, so it will be entirely less busy, and hopefully offering a different quality of pinball machines
Click to expand...

Sounds perfect! Sorry I missed the private club bit .. I had in my head public that's why I mentioned AC
 
FinalFight said:
Only thing I'm thinking is with AC being in Blackpool and the price being £17 for the day would that put anyone off? I know they have a few newer games too... but on the other hand yours would be setup properly and repaired ASAP
Click to expand...
The pinballs at AC Blackpool are a joke.

Pretty sure this would be on the outskirts of Blackpool too, away from the 'nightlife'..... to put polite speak on it. .
 
Mozie said:
What bellend voted never ..🤔🤣🤣 seriously negative vibes there. Well done on trying to get something off the ground
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The option is LESS/NEVER. This is what I voted also, due to the sheer distance. This option will always be chosen by a number of people. It doesn't have anything at all with wanting the potential club to succeed. I guess everyone that voted annually is also a bellend as they will only be going ONCE in twelve months. We all love this hobby so I'm sure everyone within, say, a twenty five mile radius would happily frequent the joint. I hope it all works out for you @lukewells
 
Do it and good luck, Luke! :clap: The country needs more pinball clubs, just don't expect to make a living or break even from it.

Re: the LESS/NEVER option... There's many well known people on the pinball scene (that are on here) that have never visited Special When Lit... we've only been open 2 months shy of 15 years...!
 
Yup. I’m one of those people who have never made it to “special when lit”.

Also despite having been a paying member of Pinball Republic for the whole of the time it was at its original location I probably went less than half a dozen times. I’ve only visited Chief coffee once and have yet to make it to the Pinball Office or Tilt

There’s a lot of people who are relatively “time poor”. Taking a whole day out to travel to a venue has a big impact on family life. If I end up doing 6 league meets I’m already doing a selfish thing every other month.
If the venue was literally 10 mins away and I could go for an hour it’s not so bad but taking 4-6 hours + out of a day is a big thing.

This is the same reason I haven’t been to Daventry for 5 or so years.

I also struggle to mix prep for work on a Sunday and doing anything which utterly sucks.

Combine this with walking the dog, going to gigs and commitments with the kids and something inevitably ends up giving. I like Pinball but I’m not going to prioritise it if it then starts to cause problems in my relationship. I don’t like any form of sport and I’m amazed that people can find the time to go to matches once (twice?) a week.

I haven’t voted in Luke’s poll but if I did it would be a “never”. This doesn’t mean I don’t hope it will be a roaring success but myself and Blackpool haven’t ever been in the same location in 53 years and I can’t imagine that is likely to change.
 
Good luck, I would love to visit but my location puts it in the less never category. I would try and go once to see if I happened to be near it 😄
 
Would probably be between nearly 2hrs drive for me, so wouldn't be a casual attendee, but would definitely make the effort for comps - especially if they took up a whole weekend.

Hope you can make it work.
 
Fantastic news! Blackpool is quite far for us but I'm sure we'd try and visit every 2-3 months.

From helping out with The Pinball Office, it's unlikely to make money or cover rent. Chris does lots of ads on Facebook to get non-pinball people in, as while there's a solid base of 15-20 regulars who come twice a month for the league (and I run comps every 2 months or so), it's not enough to cover costs.
 
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Sounds like a great idea! Although would prefer Liverpool or Chester personally in terms of travel time
 
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Voted Annually purely because Blackpool is a big trek from Essex but I would happily support the venue from afar in any way possible though. More venues = more exposure and that can only be a good thing. Hearing from others the north is crying out for a pinball venue!
 
I don't know your financial position Luke, but unless this would give you some real personal satisfaction and you have the flexibility to write the money off- I would not bother.

Pinball club after pinball club opens and then closes, not many have stuck around in the same place for [five] years ?. So the odds are automatically stacked against you.

I love these 80s and 90s machines but there is a whole generation of folk who only want modern Sterns and TV screen games. At the shows you always get the scrums around the latest releases whereas it's the saddos like me who migrate to the older games without the queues. At Daventry there were a few games on pay per play - all were modern TV backglass titles.

By being coastal Blackpool loses "half" of its natural catchment area as no pinheads live in the Irish Sea. Road links to coastal locations (other than sole the main road in) are often crap. Sorry if obvious, but this is one reason why coastal towns without oil/ active fishing/ active ferries are often deprived. You'd do far better inland with a 360 degree client base.

I went to Blackpool as a kid. I have been there on business. I've been there for pinball events. At one stage it had the only casino craps table outside of London so I would visit with a mate. But being objective Blackpool is not a "draw' for most people.

I rent out small buildings for a living. Rent is a killer. There are so many businesses that could be sustained if they own their property but that struggle with covering rents/ mortgages as well.
In rural Nottinghamshire I see pub after pub struggle with rent/ change hands/ close, whereas the freehold/ owner occupiers are stable. Village butcher after village butcher with flat above close down when the elderley owner occupiers retire. Noone can make that shop pay if they have a mortgage so one by one they get converted to houses.

Once converted to housing the planning rules make it virtually impossible for anyone to open a village home/ shop downstairs scenario ever again. The need for offroad parking for example when for decades this was never a requirement.

It amazes me how many folk commit to rental arrangements, business rates bills, insurance costs, utility bills, refurb costs ...... on really thin business margins and/ or businesses with an obvious achilles heel. I want folk to succeed and really hate to see people running to stand still or struggle financially or bite off more than they can chew.

If you run a legit operation there are masses of health and safety, local authority rules and regulations to deal with. I am volunteer Chair of a Village Hall - we can't put raw sausages in our oven to cook them unless folk are trained and certificated but we can warm up pre cooked hot dogs for example. I have just had an email .....

"CSR Survey​

The Nottinghamshire Community Foundation, has a new initiative that we are looking to implement in the next 12 months, to help local businesses and organisations adopt a Corporate Social Responsibility Policy."

Stuff like the above just drains volunteers' willingness to help out. When we apply for grants we need to supply an Equal Opportunities Policy - someone, unpaid, has to deal with all this.

Booze is a major component, indeed often fundamental to many leisure businesses' profitability - absent booze its really hard to make money in rented property. Having to drive to your site could eliminate booze income.

I run a once a month cinema club in the Village Hall - I have to cover £120 a show minimum licence costs to project a single blu ray film and half of our profits come from booze sales. Even selling Magnum ice creams at the half time interval is critical to our financial viability.

I personally think that with very few exceptions, pre TV backglass pinball in the UK needs to be mutually owned/ volunteer led/ share the load between many individuals like a form of co-op. ie the pinball league, NERG, Daventry, open house events where the community effectively supplies the machines and unpaid volunteers maintain them on the day etc etc
 
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Think you're bang on there David. Sad reality.... but still, the lack of support and interest from fairly local Northerners that could reach this venue has been staggering. Luke has an amazing collection of rare games and classics plus DMD titles that can be rotated. With Level in Preston offering the modern Sterns on pay per play, you'd have hoped this would nicely complement it as access to machines never seen or played before. 🤷‍♂️
 
johnwhitfield said:
Yup. I’m one of those people who have never made it to “special when lit”.

Also despite having been a paying member of Pinball Republic for the whole of the time it was at its original location I probably went less than half a dozen times. I’ve only visited Chief coffee once and have yet to make it to the Pinball Office or Tilt

There’s a lot of people who are relatively “time poor”. Taking a whole day out to travel to a venue has a big impact on family life. If I end up doing 6 league meets I’m already doing a selfish thing every other month.
If the venue was literally 10 mins away and I could go for an hour it’s not so bad but taking 4-6 hours + out of a day is a big thing.

This is the same reason I haven’t been to Daventry for 5 or so years.

I also struggle to mix prep for work on a Sunday and doing anything which utterly sucks.

Combine this with walking the dog, going to gigs and commitments with the kids and something inevitably ends up giving. I like Pinball but I’m not going to prioritise it if it then starts to cause problems in my relationship. I don’t like any form of sport and I’m amazed that people can find the time to go to matches once (twice?) a week.

I haven’t voted in Luke’s poll but if I did it would be a “never”. This doesn’t mean I don’t hope it will be a roaring success but myself and Blackpool haven’t ever been in the same location in 53 years and I can’t imagine that is likely to change.
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💯 @johnwhitfield.

I haven’t been to Special When Lit either. I’d love to, but it’d have to be done as a long weekend, and it hasn’t - as yet - felt practical to do that. We got to Electric Circus, at huge effort, the weekend before it shut :(

Both @MadMonzer and I play pinball, which does mean we can get to Pinball Republic for Thursday night league if we hire a regular babysitter. It ends up as a somewhat unconventional ‘date night’ and many was the wild winter evening we enjoyed a romantic dinner of paratha rolls sat on the steps outside Croydon BoxPark 💜

Otherwise, our free time is a whirlwind of play dates, family trips, boring-but-necessary admin, active hobbies (hiking, cycling), and dealing with my current health problems. We can get to weekend events, again, if we pay a babysitter, but normally rely on grandparents because it’s cheaper. There are PBR tournaments we simply can’t do because one set of grandparents insist on dropping the kids back at our house at precisely 6pm.

We got to Pinfest from Saturday lunchtime to Sunday lunchtime this year because my elderly mum agreed to look after our boys (plus the dog!) overnight. Both boys are autistic (the youngest also has suspected ADHD).

Most families where everyone plays bring their kids with them (I noticed lots of kids on the Super Mario homebrew/arcade cab 🥰). We’ve tried that, but neither boy can stand the noise of 50+ pins in play. My eldest is now a keen player at home, who fancies competing against other kids (and adults), so we’re experimenting this week with ear loops plus headphones to see if he can manage the PBR members’ opening high score competition.

Short version, I can’t imagine how difficult participating in *anything* pinball would be if your partner didn’t play… 🫂 It’s hard enough even when they do!
 
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