Liverpool’s Boom Battle Bar slows down expansion plans due to challenging market

Boom Battle Bar owner XP Factory has warned it will miss sales and profit targets and plans to slow down its new opening plans in the face of “challenging” market conditions.

Boom Battle Bar saw shares slide in early trading on Monday as a result.

Bosses said the group’s Boom Battle Bar brand has been particularly impacted with market pressures, driving weak consumer spending in recent months.

The company said like-for-like sales across the Boom Battle Bar brand, which offers games such as augmented reality darts, Bavarian axe throwing and “crazier golf” dropped over the festive period and into 2026, although these were offset by new openings.

Overall sales across its owned and operated Boom sites grew 2.5%, despite 7.2% like-for-like sales decline in the 13 weeks to December 28, compared with a year earlier.

It added that “strong corporate bookings were unable to compensate for declines in consumer sales”.

XP Factory’s Escape Hunt chain of escape room venues saw total sales grow by 10% over the period, with 6.4% like-for-like growth and a boost from new openings.

The brand benefited from new openings in Canterbury, Kent and Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

However, the group said it is “moderating” the pace of its new site openings due to uncertainty caused by market conditions.

It said it still believes it can grow the Escape Hunt business to around 100 venues across the UK despite slowing down openings.

XP Factory said weaker consumer confidence means it expects revenues and earnings to miss targets for the current financial year, with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation set to be between £5 million and £6 million.

It added that it has been impacted by increases to the national living wage and national insurance contributions last year but has not been able to “fully mitigate” the impact of higher costs due to consumer weakness.

Richard Harpham, chief executive of XP Factory, said:

“Against a backdrop of well-documented industry challenges, we have continued to outperform the wider experiential leisure market and make progress against our strategic objectives.

“While near-term trading within Boom Battle Bar has been impacted by market pressures, with strong market positions and a compelling UK growth runway, we remain well positioned to emerge as a long-term winner as the sector continues to consolidate.”

Shares were down 16.6% to 11.68p on Monday morning.

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