Entering the Escape Room Game

The popularity of location-based escape room games—where several friends are locked in a room for an hour and must solve clues and puzzles in order to free themselves—has been on a steep rise since 2012 in the U.S. and since at least 2010 abroad. (The first such game launched in Japan in 2007.) From 2010 to 2015, the number of permanent escape room games globally expanded from very few to at least 2,800, according to a MarketWatch analysis of escape-room directories.

In recent months, this segment has also been of growing interest as a relatively new opportunity within the world of experiential licensing:

• In June, The Pokémon Company partnered with Scrap Entertainment, inventor of Real Escape Game, to create Pokémon escape rooms in eight Japanese cities. The launch is tied to the release of the next Pokémon feature film, I Choose You.
• In May, Universal Brand Development licensed The Mummy for escape room experiences, similarly with Scrap, which debuted in the U.S. before entering the Japanese market.
• Also in May, Nintendo paired with Scrap to expand its Legend of Zelda touring escape room game into the European market, after introducing it in the U.S. and Canada in a deal announced last November.
• This past January, The Smiley Company authorized Paragon Entertainment to develop escape rooms under the Rubik’s Challenge Rooms banner, with locations at entertainment centers and theme parks around the world.
• In November 2016, Shaftesbury/Smokebomb signed Company & Co. for an escape game tied to Murdoch Mysteries, a Canadian TV detective series.

Scrap Entertainment was the original escape room marketer back in 2007, and remains a key licensee today, as these examples show.

Gaming properties and mystery-themed entertainment are the two most common types of properties to forge agreements with escape room producers. Going forward, as licensors continue to look for new opportunities in the realm of experiential licensing, and as escape room producers look for ways to differentiate themselves, more deals with these themes (and others that make sense) are likely to arise.