Getting guests off the sofa is harder than it was five years ago, says Neil Dolan, Managing Director of Little Lion Entertainment. In a crowded immersive entertainment market, operators need to create experiences people will pay to leave home for.
For the team behind The Crystal Maze LIVE Experience and real-life PAC-MAN, that means developing new ways to play while putting the operational foundations in place to grow.
In this episode of the accesso Podcast, Neil joins David Jungmann, Director of Business Development at accesso, to discuss what makes an experience worth visiting and why the right technology partners matter as a business expands.
Little Lion’s next chapter depends on imaginative games and the foundations that support them. Watch the full conversation to hear Neil’s take on changing guest expectations, creating experiences worth leaving home for and choosing partners that can keep pace with growth.
How has Little Lion Entertainment evolved?
Neil: We started with The Crystal Maze LIVE Experience in Angel, London, before moving into Shaftesbury Avenue and expanding into Manchester. The success of that experience has also taken us into international franchising.
In 2024, we acquired The Ents Inc., which brings video games into the real world. It takes those childhood memories of playing games like PAC-MAN and puts you inside an experience you can physically play.
That has opened up a lot of possibilities for us, from augmented reality karting to real-life PAC-MAN, with more to come.
What does it take to turn a familiar brand into an experience people want to visit?
Neil: You need to take a strong intellectual property, develop an experience people want to play and bring the technology and storytelling together into something people want to pay for.
We have a strong track record of operating businesses, but a lot of the work is in research and development. We take things that shouldn’t work, put them into real life and make them commercially successful.
Alien Invasion at Arcade Arena London is a good example. It brings together drone technology, laser technology, digital arenas and live storytelling. We couldn’t just buy that technology off the shelf. We had to develop it in-house and work with partners to bring the components together.
People want to be together and play in the real world. They want something that makes them say, “Wow, that is cool.”
How do you stand out in a crowded immersive entertainment market?
Neil: There is significant oversaturation in the market. You get a gold rush of ideas that look good on paper, but after one, two or three years of operating, the financials don’t stack up and those experiences fall away.
My prediction is that the market will naturally consolidate over the next few years. The stronger operators will keep going and grow.
Those will be the operators that can innovate and push guest expectations far enough to persuade someone to pay for an experience and leave the house. That is harder than it was five years ago.
What have you learned as the business has grown?
Neil: Adaptation is absolutely key. One of my bugbears is the phrase, “We’ve always done it this way.”
If you’re determined to operate the way you did 10 years ago, you will fail. Costs are higher and guest expectations have gone up. As an operator, you have to adapt.
Sometimes that means investing more heavily in technology. Sometimes it means spending less on the nice-to-haves and focusing on what really adds value.
You have to keep asking what adds value, what gives you more visibility in the market and what keeps you relevant. The businesses that focus on those questions are the ones that will be around for the long term.
Why was choosing the right ticketing partner important to your growth plans?
Neil: When you’re looking to scale a business, you need to get your foundations right. As you move beyond the startup stage, you need processes and partners that enable growth.
If you’re trying to work out where the next 10% of growth is coming from, but you’ve got a problem with your ticketing company, that pulls your attention away from looking forward.
I’d worked with accesso during my time at Merlin. For Little Lion, we wanted a partner we could trust, who could handle scale and move quickly when we needed to change direction.
That’s where a trusted partnership comes into its own: shared goals for the future, knowing where we want to get to and being accountable for what each of us needs to deliver.
Why put those foundations in place before expanding?
Neil: When you’re focused on growth, you want to do the shiny things. Entrepreneurs are always thinking about what’s next.
But you need to grow your business on solid foundations. As the business gets bigger, if those foundations aren’t there, it falls down at some point.
Then you have to invest even more to fix it retrospectively so you can move forward properly. It’s more expensive and it slows you down.
What role does ticketing play in the next stage of Little Lion’s growth?
Neil: We want to have multiple venues in a city and multiple games within our venues.
Having the ability to cross-sell and upsell tickets, and for guests to do that themselves, is where we need to be. That’s where I see the future approach.
It’s about adding the things that guests see value in and that give them a reason to leave the house.
Listen to the accesso Podcast
For more conversations with the people shaping the attractions industry, tune in to the accesso Podcast.