The Future of Play Might Look Surprisingly Familiar

The next big thing in play involves running, rowing, carrying heavy objects and doing a deeply unreasonable number of burpees.

None of those activities needed inventing. Yet HYROX has built a global business around putting them in a consistent order and giving people a reason to do them together.

According to Infront, the 2025/26 season attracted more than 1.4 million participants across over 100 events. In September, a consortium led by L Catterton, alongside the founders, acquired Infront’s majority stake.

Meanwhile, parts of the competitive-socializing industry are wrestling with a different question: how do you persuade someone who enjoyed themselves to come back?

The usual answers involve more technology, more content and more novelty. HYROX suggests we should also look somewhere else.

A better product is not necessarily a bigger market

I understand the appeal of tech-enabled leisure. Nobody particularly enjoys an argument about whose turn it is or discovering that someone has been keeping score creatively. Good technology can make an experience smoother, more accessible and more enjoyable.

But there is a leap between improving an activity and expanding its market.

Digital scoring might make mini golf better. Better hospitality might increase spending. A beautifully designed venue might take business from the less attractive one across town. Those are legitimate commercial achievements. They are not the same as convincing more people to play more often.

The financial results make that distinction difficult to ignore.

In 2025, Golf Entertainment Group’s entertainment division, comprising Drive Shack and Puttery, saw revenue fall from $79.9 million to $67.6 million. Segment adjusted EBITDA dropped from $10.4 million to $3.3 million. Within the same company, traditional golf revenue increased from $263.7 million to $276.3 million, while segment adjusted EBITDA rose from $43.7 million to $51.1 million. Management cited softer consumer demand, competition, reduced event spending and lower foot traffic in entertainment golf.

That is not proof that technology failed. It is evidence that technology did not exempt these businesses from some very familiar problems.

Topgolf’s same-venue sales fell 9% in 2024 and another 6% year over year in the second quarter of 2025. New venues partially offset the latter decline in total revenue.

That distinction matters. Opening more locations tells us that a business is expanding its supply. It does not necessarily tell us that demand at existing locations is strengthening.

Lou’s map and the question underneath it

In his Blooloop article, “Don’t hate the player, rethink the game,” Lou Pizante offers a useful framework for understanding play.

One axis runs from competitive to cooperative. The other runs from intense to relaxed. Together, they explain why a high-pressure team challenge, a casual game of darts and an exploratory storyworld can satisfy very different needs.

His broader point is important: not everybody wants to win, and an industry overly fixated on leaderboards risks overlooking people who want to connect, discover or unwind.

I would add another question beneath that framework: why does someone want this particular activity in their life?

The quadrants help us design the experience. They do not, by themselves, establish the size of the audience or the frequency of participation.

A venue can offer several different styles of play and still be somewhere you visit once a year. Another can focus on a relatively narrow format and become a recurring commitment.

Understanding how someone likes to play is valuable. Understanding what makes them care enough to keep playing is where the commercial argument gets interesting.

The game stays the same. You get better.

HYROX connects competition to a much broader aspiration: being fitter and healthier.

You can compete to win. You can also compete to finish, beat your previous time, maintain a training routine or accomplish something with a friend. Finishing nowhere near the podium does not mean you failed to get what you came for.

The format is deliberately consistent: eight one-kilometre runs, each followed by a functional workout station. That consistency supports comparison and rankings across events. Participants can enter individually, in doubles or as a relay team.

The innovation is not a new way to pick something heavy up. It is a shared competitive system around an activity people already do: common rules, understandable benchmarks and opportunities to test yourself against others.

Crucially, it gives the weeks between events a purpose. Training becomes preparation for something specific. The race is an occasion but the pursuit can become a habit.

That changes how we should think about repeatability. The experience does not have to be fundamentally different every time. Your ability, ambition, teammates and competitors can provide the variation.

Billiards also offers skill, friendship and rivalry. It can become a lifelong interest. But adding a digital layer does not automatically broaden the underlying motivation. The audience for “I want to get healthier” is different from the audience for “I want to play billiards.”

This is not an argument that every leisure activity needs to improve us. Sometimes a good night out is enough. It is an argument for being honest about how broad the appeal is, how often people will act on it and what economics that can support.

Remove the wrong kind of difficulty

Amazon is a useful analogy here—not because shopping and play are the same, but because removing effort around an activity can change its place in everyday life.

Finding a product, ordering it and receiving it are all separate from wanting the product. Reduce those obstacles and an occasional behavior can become a default.

Play has its own obstacles: organizing a group, finding someone at your level, understanding the rules, knowing where you fit or making the cost and time commitment work. This is where technology can create meaningful value.

It can connect players who would otherwise never meet. It can make progress visible, simplify bookings or help a beginner find an appropriate challenge. Standardization can do some of the same work without being especially technological.

HYROX is not frictionless. It requires considerable effort. But its format makes the objective and the terms of participation clear.

The distinction is between difficulty that obstructs participation and difficulty that makes participation rewarding. Make it easier to find an opponent. You don’t necessarily need to make that opponent easier to beat.

A reason to return

Topgolf’s more recent results provide a useful qualification to the decline story.

Same-venue sales returned to growth in the third quarter of 2025, rising 1%. Management attributed the improvement primarily to traffic gains from new value initiatives. Making the proposition more attractive financially helped.

And in June 2026, new CEO David McKillips offered a revealing assessment: “I think the brand leaned too heavily into the social experience.” His plans included better equipment, leagues and memberships aimed in part at golfers who want to visit regularly. He also reported improving traffic but falling average checks.

The answer, in other words, includes making the experience more relevant to an enduring interest.

HYROX and Topgolf are not directly comparable businesses. A traveling competition has different economics from a permanent entertainment venue, and HYROX’s growth does not make it immune to overexpansion or changing tastes.

But the contrast gives operators and investors better questions to ask.

What desire are we serving? What prevents people from participating now? What develops between visits: skill, relationships, confidence, progress? And does the technology strengthen any of that enough to justify its cost?

Lou’s framework helps us understand the variety of experiences people might enjoy. The next step is understanding which of those experiences they will make room for repeatedly.

The future of play will certainly involve technology. But a new feature is not a new motivation, and a new venue is not proof of a bigger market.

Sometimes the game doesn’t need to change.

People just need a compelling reason to keep playing.

Daniel Hettwer

Chief Strategy Officer, Solomon Group