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Flight_Club darts

Flight Club & Electric Shuffle: growing the competitive socialising trend

We take a look at what makes these concepts unique and how the two brands have expanded rapidly

Paul Barham Red Engine

Launched in 2015, Flight Club is a unique social darts experience, where groups can enjoy an updated version of the classic game alongside quality food and drink. Flight Club venues can now be found in a number of cities around the UK and the brand has also expanded to both the US and Australia. Its sister brand, Electric Shuffle, gives the same modern treatment to the traditional game of shuffleboard, adding technology to the mix for a fun competitive socialising experience.

Paul Barham is co-founder and director at Red Engine Team, the team behind Flight Club and Electric Shuffle. He spoke to blooloop about the concepts, their impressive growth, and the expansion to the US and elsewhere.

The origins of Flight Club

Outlining the background, he explains:

Steve Moore [co-founder of Red Engine] and I loved eating, drinking and playing. At the time, we felt that the usual combinations of activities with food and drink were very much led by the activity; the food and drink aspect was secondary. To take bowling as an example, you’d go there five minutes before your allotted time, you’d play, and then you’d leave. You wouldn’t necessarily hang around and use the bar or the restaurants, or play in the arcade. It was very much geared as a family entertainment centre.”

Flight Club_darts

They were more interested when All Star Lanes opened in London in 2008:

 “It was more boutique. With all the real estate required with the bowling lane, though, it was still a bit disjointed from the overall experience. The activity itself, too, had stayed the same; it hadn’t been innovated.

“Then we were impressed with Bounce PingPong, which launched in London in 2011. Again, it wasn’t innovative in terms of the game, but, my goodness, it was innovative in terms of pushing table tennis tables into a bar. Before that, you’d have to go on holiday in France, or to a gym or your mate’s garage to play. For me, that really opened up the possibilities.”

Finding inspiration

The pair stumbled across darts by chance:

“We weren’t regular players. We were on a trip in the West Country, a place called Croyde in North Devon. It happened to be a wet cold day so we went to the pub, and there was a dartboard. There was a mix of people in the bar – locals, people like us, families. Around the dartboard were just a group of ten to twelve boys and girls in their twenties, and thirties, playing a game called ‘Killer’.

“What had been a gloomy atmosphere in that pub because everyone wanted to be on the beach, became transformed by the atmosphere and enthusiasm coming off that dartboard. It was quite something. It was captivating that entire bar environment. Everyone was watching, vested in that game, and wanting to be in that game. It was like theatre.”

Friends at Flight Club

“We started thinking about how we could capture what had just experienced and put it into a fantastic, food and drink-led venue. So that’s really where it kicked off.”

The next step was the gameplay:

“Where the bowling and table tennis had remained the same, we deconstructed the darts entirely in order to innovate.”

Doing the research

Over two three-year periods, they put together over 500 focus groups, with friends, and friends of friends. He says,

“We broke it all down, trying to understand what worked and what didn’t, from a group of six up to 30, trying different types of games. We re-engineered games, we approached changing the gameplay, and we made everything very simple – we called it the ‘four drink’ rule.”

Most people play when they have had a few drinks, and are in no state to follow complex instructions:

“When I was young, you’d get a microwave oven or a video recorder, and there would be a great thick instruction manual. You get iPhone games now, and they’re intuitive; it’s obvious what you need to do. There’s no need for any instructions. That’s what we had to set up.”

The tech behind Flight Club

They went around several universities, searching for someone to work on the dartboard:

“We eventually got connected to a camera manufacturer and distributor and stumbled across a guy called Dr Jason Dale, who is now technical director. He had been working for NASA and other companies. We gave him the problem of solving the dartboard.”

Dale, an astrophysicist with a computer vision PhD, had previously worked on projects for NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). His aerospace background made him uniquely suited to working out how to track arrows or darts.

Flight Club_

This was a formidable mathematical challenge:

“The dart doesn’t just go in,” Barham points out. “It goes in at an angle, falls out, three of them go in. We were led to a camera manufacturer because of the Hawk-Eye computer vision system used in numerous sports such as cricket, tennis, and so on. We were pretty sure it was a machine vision solution.”

The most complex challenge was working out the tracking for the automatic scoring. While the Hawk-Eye system is ideal for tracking the trajectory of a ball, darts are a different matter, coming at the board at a variety of angles on overlapping flight paths, often with the shots clustered in such quick succession they are pretty much on top of each other.

The final product Dale came up with relies on three high-performance cameras mounted above an iconic Unicorn dartboard. There is a simple touchscreen interface, automatic scoring,  and video screens.

Unique branding

In terms of the overall brand piece, the team’s research told them that the game of darts came to the UK through Victorian fairgrounds, and it is now synonymous with the British pub.

“Hence our branding is Victoriana meets British pub,” says Barham. “Depending on the environment, depending on the site, we can flex that brand more towards one or the other. We’ve got some wonderful things in our venues, from fairground horses and ornate wooden panelling all the way to a helter-skelter that you have to climb up through.”

Group at Flight Club

In 2019, the Flight Club founders added a second experiential concept, Electric Shuffle, based on the old pub game of Shuffleboard or Shove Ha’penny, to their offering.

“We came across shuffleboard early in the day, when we were still exploring Flight Club,” Barham explains. “It dates back to the time of Henry the Eighth, I believe. There were a few places in the UK that did it. It has now exploded, a bit like darts has.”

Electric Shuffle was three years in development:

“We went through the same process as for Flight Club. We did focus groups researching the brand, and we launched the first Electric Shuffle in Canary Wharf in late 2019.”

Red Engine Group

The pair also created a parent company in 2019, called Red Engine. Revealing the origins of the company name, Barham says:

“Stephen led a fire engine expedition back in 2010, in memory of his father.”

Electric Shuffle

The expedition, which began on 18 July 2010 in Greenwich and ended in the same place on 10 April 2011, was the longest journey by a fire engine on record:

“He’s in the Guinness Book of Records. A few of us in the business supported him. I’m named in connection with the middle four months of that journey.”

Red Engine is a creative tech business:

“Everything we do is entirely in-house, from the interior design of the venues to putting up the items on the wall, doing the website. We’ve got this big warehouse full of Victoriana: we’ve got china dogs as far as I can see; mirrors, pictures. It’s a treasure trove.”

Flight Club expands

The company is now expanding into the US, in partnership with State of Play hospitality as operator. This move stateside means the team are having to be mindful with the characteristically British Victorian pub branding. Barham explains:

“We were keen not to come across as a Disney castle. We want to be seen, first and foremost, as a credible bar on the high street, irrespective of anything else, where you’d come for a first date, or after work. It has to have great music, atmosphere, lighting, service, toilets and innovative food and drink, and to compete on that basis.”

Toasting at Flight Club

“When we first entered the US market, we worked with a partner there to understand what we needed to do to retain global brand consistency in a way that allowed enough flex to that local market.”

Meeting the market’s needs

One thing the team has had to overcome is a reluctance to put up TVs in bars:

“We’ve got enough screens, anyway, by the dartboards. When we introduce our tournament technology, which is really quite market-leading and enables you to get one winner from 500 people, taking you through a tournament effortlessly so the event organiser can just sit back, we have screens everywhere. We do our best to cover them when we’re not using them. But obviously, in the US, you have to show the football and the baseball.”

Flight Club

The approach is three-pronged:

“The first priority is a great bar, first and foremost. The second is the integrated nature of it. We want it to be like theatre, as it was in that pub in Croyde. The third is the innovation side of things. We think we’ve got two fantastic concepts; both work within a great buyer environment.”

Innovation is key

The innovation journey, particularly in terms of Flight Club, has been incredible:

“We launched with three games; we’ve now got six, and we’ve instituted action replays. We’ve got something called Flight Club Stories where, the day after your booking, you get emailed your pictures and your action replays. When you do something special in the game, it is get emailed to you for free the next day.

“Then there is the tournament technology. This effortlessly takes large groups of people through an experience over a two two-to-four-hour period. Innovation is key.”

Friends at Electric Shuffle

The same is true of Electric Shuffle:

“We launched with three games; now we have four. We’ve got action replay coming there, too. When you play on Electric Shuffle, you get put into teams, and it takes a picture. At the end of your booking, you get your photos – for free – in a little folder.”

People will always, he says, want to spend time in a really nice environment:

“For us, it seemed crazy not to have the activity with a fantastic bar environment. That is what we sell ourselves on first. The darts and shuffleboard are our USP, not our value proposition. That is a great bar, great food, great drinks – come for lunch, come after work. That is key for us.”

A premium experience

The marketing is predominantly aimed at women:

“They tend, according to our market research, to be more discerning. Then, whether you are 5 or 75, people love to eat, drink, and play.”

Fun at Flight Club

“And I think, post-COVID and with the cost of living going through the roof, people are looking for a premium experience. People are working from home, and maybe only being in town one or two days a week. When they go out, they really want to make sure they have the best possible experience. We position ourselves as an accessible premium experience. It is a combination of a great bar integrated with the activity, and we are innovating continuously.”

Flight Club & Electric Shuffle connect people

Additionally, Barham says:

“With Flight Club and Electric Shuffle, we’ve spent so much time with the structure and the way we’ve created the gameplay that the unexpected can happen. Most people, probably nine out of ten, can hit a dartboard with a dart. So, there is an element of instant gratification. People surprise themselves.

“Up to six people can play individually; any more than that, and we put them into doubles. If you have a player there who has played a little bit, they’ll get coupled with someone who hasn’t played so much.

“We get people moving around. Everyone’s name is up on the screen. So, if you’ve got 12 strangers who haven’t met, within an hour and a half, they’ve all played with each other in doubles; they’ve shared joy, despair, all the human emotions. People are mixing up and bonding in a way that, unlike a dinner party or a conference, doesn’t feel forced.

“It makes you feel alive, and there aren’t many things that do that, day-to-day.”

The company’s rise has been meteoric, with more to come:

“We opened up in Australia last year in partnership with Australia Capitol Corp. We’ve got a partner in Ireland, and will hopefully open there early next year. We have two big sites coming this year; Cardiff in September, and in October we’re opening in Las Vegas. That one will be our biggest.”

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Lalla Merlin

Lalla Merlin

Lead features writer Lalla studied English at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford University, and Law with the Open University. A writer, film-maker, and aspiring lawyer, she lives in rural Devon with an assortment of badly behaved animals, including a friendly wolf

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