Hollywood Bowl Group delivers record first half revenue of £119.2m

Hollywood Bowl said its strong balance sheet and cash generative business model was supporting investment across the UK and Canada.

Stephen Burns, Chief Executive Officer, commented: “We are pleased to have welcomed so many families, friends and colleagues to our centres in the first half, demonstrating the continued demand for high-quality, family-friendly leisure experiences at affordable prices, particularly against the backdrop of higher living expenses.

"I am extremely grateful to our excellent team members whose hard work has resulted in even longer customer dwell times and higher satisfaction score. We are proud to invest in our team and to once again be recognised as a top company to work for.

“We continue to expect further, modest like-for-like growth, even with the very strong prior year comparative, as a result of our customer-led innovation and investment in our profitable growth strategy.

"We are confident in the outlook for Hollywood Bowl and in our ability to capture the longer-term opportunity to grow our estate to over 130 centres in the next ten years.”

In his statement, Mr Burns said: “The group made further progress with investment in growing the estate in UK and Canada while our overall refurbishment programme remains on track and is delivering returns.

"These refurbishments continue to evolve our customer proposition, resulting in an increase in the number of games played and spend per game alongside growing customer service scores.”

In the UK, Hollywood Bowl had 71 centres at the end of March.

Over the half year, Hollywood Bowl completed the refurbishments of its centres in Watford Woodside, Stockton and Cardiff.

It also acquired, re-branded and refurbished a centre in Lincoln, with “encouraging trading” reported since this work was completed.

In Canada, where Hollywood Bowl has 11 centres, the business was trading in line with management’s expectations. Two centres were acquired over the half year in Guelph, Ontario and Vancouver, British Columbia.

The statement added: “Since the start of the second half of the year, we have opened a new Hollywood Bowl in Dundee, a key market in Scotland at a quality leisure park, co-located with the number one cinema in town and a restaurant offering.

"This centre opened in late May 2024 and the early trading performance has been encouraging.

“Our new centre pipeline is strong with six already signed and more in heads of terms and legals stages.

“We remain confident in our ability to continue to deliver on our plan of an average of at least three new UK openings a year.”