Breaking the mould: Breakscape Entertainment takes aim at new revenue streams

David Sali

October 17, 2024

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Noah Jackson would be the first to admit that Breakscape Entertainment’s business projections haven’t always hit the bull’s-eye since the company opened its first “combat archery” facility in a Bank Street warehouse nearly a decade ago. The managing director of the Ottawa-based firm points to an expansion site in Calgary that went bust during the COVID-19 crisis and a soccer dome here in the nation’s capital that was also a victim of the pandemic as moves that didn’t work out the way the founders had hoped. But the enterprise that ex-Nortel engineer Qi Hu launched in the summer of 2015 with business partners Ramsay Jackson and Brain Seto managed to survive the pandemic and the on-again, off-again shutdowns that went along with it – thanks to some savvy moves that included a momentous decision to convert half of its Ottawa facility from a restaurant to a meeting space. “Through it all, we’re still around,” says Noah Jackson, who is Ramsay’s brother, adding that business is “probably better than it was pre-COVID, which is really great.” Breakscape Entertainment’s resilience has earned it a spot on California-based e-commerce giant Square’s annual list of 50 businesses from around the world “that are changing the entrepreneurial game.” The Ottawa firm was one of two Canadian companies to be recognized in the Experience category for businesses that “change the game in customer experiences and level up their operations to entice new and existing patrons,” Square said in a news release this week. While the escape room concept has spread like wildfire across North America over the past two decades, Breakscape has carved out a niche of its own by offering fun-seekers something a little different. Escape rooms – six of them, with another slated to open at the end of October – are indeed there for the solving in Breakscape’s 15,000-square-foot space at the corner of Bank Street and Walkley Avenue. And while they generate the bulk of the company’s overall sales, Jackson says Breakscape gets nearly a third of its revenues from its “combat archery” room, called Archery Games. As the company describes it, combat archery is essentially dodgeball, with bows and foam-tipped arrows swapped in for balls. The concept took hold in the United States about a decade ago and has since spread worldwide. After hearing about combat archery’s success south of the border, Breakscape’s founders tested the idea in Toronto in 2015. “It kind of blew our socks off,” Jackson says. “We knew we could bring it here (to Ottawa) and bring our own flavour to it.” Since then, the company has taken the concept to other markets. While Calgary didn’t pan out, Breakscape has established a solid foothold in the U.S. Six years ago, Seto relocated to Boston, where he set up a combat archery facility, escape room and children’s play area in a suburb of the Massachusetts capital. Jackson says the founders chose Boston because it’s a relatively affluent city with a large post-secondary student population – one of Breakscape’s biggest target markets. “We wanted to get our foot in the door in the States,” he explains. “It seemed like a nice fit. There wasn’t anything like our facility there, so it felt like a good opportunity.”

Franchise locations

While Breakscape owns the Boston location, the company has licensed its combat archery concept to franchise owners who operate facilities under the Archery Games banner in Denver, Omaha and Providence, R.I. Asked if the company plans to enter other markets in Canada or the U.S., Jackson didn’t rule it out. At the same time, he notes that Breakscape “tried to expand quite aggressively pre-COVID” with mixed results. “We’re being a bit more cautious than we once were,” he adds. “But we’re always open to opportunities. It’s a really interesting time (in the entertainment business) and the new products that people are coming up with.” Still, it was the founders’ decision in 2023 to embrace a very traditional business opportunity that created a promising new source of revenue for Breakscape. The company had been operating a restaurant and bar featuring indoor games such as shuffleboard and bocce ball in part of its Bank Street facility since the year before COVID struck. The business, called the Playback Games Bar, took a significant hit during the pandemic, forcing the owners to rethink their long-term plans for the 7,000-square-foot space. Last year, they converted Playback from a full-service restaurant and games room into a meeting space complete with a stage, projectors and audio-visual equipment that now hosts events such as weddings and corporate get-togethers. “That’s become a new revenue stream for us,” says Jackson, who estimates the meeting space now accounts for about 10 per cent of Breakscape’s total income. Jackson says demand for meeting space has surged in the wake of the pandemic as weddings, birthday parties and corporate gatherings resumed with a vengeance. He expects the volume of bookings to keep rising as more groups discover the site’s unique value proposition that allows users to hold meetings, engage in some fun team-bonding in the escape rooms or Archery Games facility and relax in a bar – all under one roof. “It kind of makes for a one-stop shop, which is really cool,” he says.