No more birthday parties at Sports Connection?
With the doors closed since March due to the pandemic, owner in no hurry to reopen fully; He doubts people will 'come play in moon bounces anytime soon'
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Once the ‘Walmart of birthday parties,’ Sports Connection faces an uncertain future
For more than a dozen years, Allan Haseley had a $0 marketing budget for his Sports Connection family entertainment centers in Ballantyne and Northlake — every party he hosted was a marketing tool in and of itself, and it worked like a charm.
Huge buildings with bowling alleys, bounce house rooms, arcades and laser tag arenas hosted hundreds of parties every month. Rainy weekends or sweltering summer days meant throngs of families walking in to let the kids burn off some steam.
The doors have been closed at the two family fun centers since March 13, and it’s unlikely that when they do open, the original business model will ever return, Haseley told The Ledger.
More likely, he said, is that they’ll get out of the mass birthday party business and morph into special event facilities, which can be rented out for family reunions, church lock-ins, graduation parties or company off-sites.
Sports Connection family entertainment centers in Ballantyne and Northlake were popular for children’s birthday parties featuring laser tag, bowling, bounce houses and arcade games (shown here). The centers have been closed since March due to Covid and it’s unlikely they’ll reopen for large numbers of birthday parties like in the past. (Photo courtesy of Sports Connection)
“To open up partially doesn’t make sense. Until we can open at full capacity and have four parties at a time, it’s not worth turning the HVAC back on and restocking the coolers with the pizzas,” Haseley said. In North Carolina, bowling alleys can now operate at 30% capacity, but entertainment venues remain closed and mass gatherings are limited to 25 people indoors.
“Right now there’s two sides of the equation: What we’re legally allowed to do, and what makes smart business sense,” Haseley said.
“I just don’t think that even if the governor says we can open up at full capacity that people are going to be flocking to come play in moon bounces anytime soon. They’ll straggle in,” he said. “We aren’t prepared to go through setting up the Plexiglas and doing all the safety protocols … it would not be worth it, because people are not going to come in large amounts.”
‘Walmart of birthday parties’: Haseley designed the centers to be like “the Walmart of birthday parties” — high volume, reasonable prices — and let parents do the marketing.
“All we needed to make sure was that when you or your child left, you left with a smile on your face,” Haseley said. “And if you did that, you would tell somebody, and we wouldn’t have to do anything.”
All that stopped when Haseley was forced to close his doors because of Covid. He laid off 250 employees at his two family entertainment centers as well as the Sports Connection volleyball and pickleball facilities he owns and the two Inner Peaks climbing gyms he owns.
He gave back $1.3M in refunds for the 500-some birthday parties and other big events that had already been booked for the spring and summer. He said he ran out of money for refunds and in mid-April started giving credits in the hopes that he can eventually give more money back.
He’s reopened the volleyball and pickleball operations and the climbing gyms have reopened. He’s hired 21 staff back.
Business trajectory: Haseley opened the Ballantyne family entertainment center 13 years ago in the midst of a deep recession, and saw instant success.
“People didn’t go to Disney World and Myrtle Beach; they came and spent $200 and had a family outing,” he said. “We benefitted during the recession. We’re not benefitting during the pandemic.”
As Charlotte’s entertainment options have grown in the last few years with everything from new Dave & Buster’s locations to Top Golf and trampoline parks, Haseley says his party business had slowed down. Several years ago, the family fun centers hosted upwards of 400 parties a month; prior to the pandemic, the number was closer to 200.
“You’ve got so many things competing now for every entertainment dollar,” he said.
‘Hurry up and wait’: Haseley, 58, and his wife, Kelly, were volleyball enthusiasts who started what became the Sports Connection business 25 years ago as a volleyball facility and club.
They expanded into the gym arena (they no longer own gyms, but lease building space to the national Fitness Connection chain), then purchased two Inner Peaks climbing gyms and opened the family fun centers in Ballantyne and Northlake.
The pickleball and volleyball sides of the business are picking back up. He owns the buildings his family entertainment centers occupy, so he’s taking some time to figure out their future. These days, he says, he feels like “we’re right back where we started, running a volleyball club.”
“I feel like I’m on the entrance ramp to a busy highway and I’m just not ready to merge into traffic yet,” he said. “I just want to wait to see where to merge in. We are hoping to figure out where is a market niche we can slide into now,” he said.
“We’ve had a good run,” he said. “We provided a lot of birthday parties for a lot of people and made a lot of good memories.”
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