Trampoline Park Franchise Costs: Three FDDs Compared (2025)
Urban Air lists a total initial investment of $3,111,409 to $5,791,969 in Item 7 of its 2025 Franchise Disclosure Document. On the same pages, the initial franchise fee is $100,000. The gap between those two numbers is the entire story of this article.
Most summaries of trampoline park franchise costs stop at the ranges. A range without a breakdown cannot support a decision, because it hides the question that matters: of all that money, how much buys assets you keep, and how much buys obligations that repeat every year?
This article puts the 2025 FDDs of three of the largest trampoline park franchises in the United States, Urban Air Adventure Park, Sky Zone, and Altitude Trampoline Park, side by side, and recomputes their Item 5, Item 6, and Item 7 disclosures on one basis. The basis is simple: what share of the money goes where, and what the recurring fees cost over a ten-year agreement.
One expectation to set before the numbers: the franchise fee is almost never the expensive part. Across all three brands it lands between 2.0 and 2.3 percent of the midpoint investment. The expensive parts are the building and a fee stack that repeats annually for a decade.
If you are still at the stage of estimating a full budget for an independent build, our earlier breakdown of trampoline park investment costs covers the four-part cost structure that applies whether or not you sign with a brand.
1. The Short Answer: A Franchise Build Runs $2.1M to $5.8M
Item 7 of each FDD estimates what it takes to open one park. The three brands overlap, but their typical formats do not: Urban Air’s current build standard is a 20,000 to 25,000 sq ft (1,858 to 2,323 m²) adventure park, Sky Zone parks run from 16,000 to 50,000 sq ft (1,486 to 4,645 m²), and Altitude’s disclosure assumes a larger 35,000 to 45,000 sq ft (3,252 to 4,181 m²) box.
| Brand | FDD year | Total initial investment (Item 7) | Franchise fee (Item 5) | Royalty (Item 6) | Typical park size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Urban Air Adventure Park | 2025 | $3,111,409 – $5,791,969 | $100,000 | 7% | 20,000–25,000 sq ft (1,858–2,323 m²) |
| Sky Zone | 2025 | $2,330,960 – $5,175,460 | $75,000 | 6% | 16,000–50,000 sq ft (1,486–4,645 m²) |
| Altitude Trampoline Park | 2025 | $2,105,000 – $3,477,500 | $65,000 | 6% | 35,000–45,000 sq ft (3,252–4,181 m²) |
Three observations follow directly from the table. First, no version of a franchised trampoline park in these systems opens for under $2.1 million. Second, the fee ranges are wide, in Sky Zone’s case more than a factor of two, because park size and local construction costs move the total far more than brand choice does. Third, the royalty differences between brands are small, one percentage point between 6 and 7 percent, which means the fee headline you see in advertising is not where brands differ most.
Where these numbers come from: all figures are quoted from the brands’ 2025 FDDs as summarized by independent FDD archives and franchise research sites, cross-checked against at least two sources per brand. FDDs are public documents under US franchise law, but they are long; each figure below can be verified against the franchisor’s own current FDD before you sign anything.
2. Where These Numbers Come From: FDDs and the FTC Franchise Rule
A Franchise Disclosure Document is the legal file every US franchisor must give a prospective franchisee at least 14 days before any agreement is signed or any money changes hands. The requirement comes from the FTC Franchise Rule, codified at 16 CFR Part 436. This timing rule is what makes FDD data usable for planning: the franchisor cannot wait until after you are emotionally committed to reveal the real numbers.
Three items inside the FDD carry most of the financial weight. Item 5 states the initial franchise fee. Item 6 lists every recurring payment: royalties, brand fund contributions, local marketing minimums, technology fees, and transfer or renewal charges. Item 7 builds the total initial investment estimate line by line, from leasehold improvements to working capital, and discloses which portions are payable to the franchisor or its affiliates rather than to third parties.
One honesty note before the analysis. We read these figures through third-party FDD summaries that quote the filings directly, and we cross-checked each brand against two independent summaries. Where a summary computed a derived line, such as equipment cost as a remainder of the total, we say so in the text. If you are a prospective franchisee, the correct move is to request the current FDD from the franchisor itself and confirm every number against the original document, because each brand reissues its FDD annually and figures change.
3. What Item 7 Actually Buys: Buildings First, Trampolines Second
Franchisors publish ranges, not midpoints, so every share below is our computation. The method is the same for each line: take the midpoint of the disclosed range, which is the low end plus the high end divided by two, and divide it by the midpoint of the total investment.
Midpoint = (low + high) ÷ 2 Share = line-item midpoint ÷ total midpoint
For Urban Air, leasehold improvements run $1,057,269 to $2,695,469, a midpoint of $1,876,369. Against a total investment midpoint of $4,451,689, that is 42 percent of the entire check. The base attraction equipment package, listed at $1,193,640 to $1,618,650, has a midpoint of $1,406,145, or 32 percent.
For Sky Zone, leasehold improvements run $1,000,000 to $2,600,000, a midpoint of $1,800,000, which is 48 percent of the $3,753,210 total midpoint. Attractions run $700,000 to $1,400,000, a midpoint of $1,050,000, or 28 percent.
For Altitude, the build-out line dominates even more: $1,400,000 to $2,200,000 against a total midpoint of $2,791,250, roughly 64 percent, with trampoline and attraction equipment at $400,000 to $700,000, a midpoint of $550,000 or 20 percent. One caution applies here: the line-item split for Altitude comes from a secondary breakdown of its 2025 FDD rather than from a table the franchisor prints in full, so treat those two shares as indicative rather than exact.
Read together, the three filings tell the same story in different proportions: the building absorbs somewhere between two fifths and two thirds of the money, and the play equipment, the part visitors actually touch, absorbs roughly a fifth to a third. This is why site selection decides more than equipment selection, and why the equipment layout of a 22,000 sq ft park matters mainly after the right box has been secured. It also explains a common failure mode: buyers who spend months comparing trampoline packages and sign a lease in a week.
4. The Fee Stack: What You Pay Every Year, for Ten Years
Item 6 fees are where franchise economics diverge from the headline royalty. Each brand quotes one royalty number, but the enforceable obligations stack several percentages on top of it.
| Ongoing fee | Urban Air (2025) | Sky Zone (2025) | Altitude (2025) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Royalty | 7% | 6% | 6% |
| Brand / national ad fund | up to 5%, currently 0% | 2%, ceiling 2.5% | 2% |
| Local marketing minimum | up to 6%, currently 5% | 4% | 2–3% |
| Technology fee | 0.25% if implemented | $1,480 per month | approved POS required |
| Insurance program | arranged independently | master program, 2–10% of gross sales | arranged independently |
| Current total fee stack | ~12% | ~12% plus tech fee | 10–11% |
Now run the stack against a park doing $2,000,000 a year in gross sales, which sits close to the disclosed system medians for these brands. The arithmetic is one line:
Annual fee cost ≈ gross sales × (royalty + brand fund + local marketing) $2,000,000 × 12% = $240,000 per year $240,000 × 10 years = $2,400,000
Over the ten-year initial term that most of these agreements run, the fee stack on a $2 million park costs about $2.4 million. That is roughly the entire midpoint build cost of an Altitude park ($2,791,250) and more than the low end of Sky Zone’s total investment range ($2,330,960). Set beside the franchise fee, the recurring stack is not a multiple but an order of magnitude: $2.4 million against $65,000 to $100,000 is a factor of 24 to 37.
Two line items deserve a second look. Sky Zone’s master insurance program, disclosed at 2 to 10 percent of gross sales, would add an illustrative $40,000 to $200,000 per year on that same $2 million park; the percentage adjusts with claims history and risk classification, so the range is wide by design. And several percentages carry contractual ceilings that sit well above current rates: Urban Air’s combined brand fund and local marketing minimum is currently 5 percent but can rise to 11 percent, which is how a 7 percent royalty becomes an 18 percent total obligation without any new signature.
5. The Franchise Fee Is About 2 Percent of the Decision
Divide each franchise fee by the midpoint of its own brand’s total investment and the same answer appears three times:
Urban Air: $100,000 ÷ $4,451,689 = 2.2% Sky Zone: $75,000 ÷ $3,753,210 = 2.0% Altitude: $65,000 ÷ $2,791,250 = 2.3%
The fee that gets negotiated, discounted for veterans, and argued about in forums governs about one fiftieth of the money. The other 98 percent is governed by the lease and the building, decisions that have no franchisor discount code.
Sky Zone’s Item 7 makes the point uncomfortable enough to be useful: it discloses that $811,460 to $1,609,960 of the total investment is payable to the franchisor or its affiliates. That is 31 to 35 percent of the entire check, gone to brand-side pockets before opening day, mostly through attraction equipment purchased through the franchisor and its approved vendors. The franchise fee is the visible tip of a much larger brand-side revenue stream, and the real comparison between franchising and independence is not $75,000 versus zero. It is roughly a third of the build, plus 12 percent of every year’s sales, against an independent build where the same equipment is bought on the open market.
This reframes negotiation. If a prospective franchisee spends 40 hours haggling over a $10,000 fee discount and one afternoon on a lease that runs $600,000 a year, the effort ratio is inverted by two orders of magnitude. Negotiate the lease as if it were 40 times the franchise fee, because at these totals it is.
6. What the Data Does and Does Not Show
Every computation above inherits the limits of its source. Stating those limits plainly is more useful than quietly ignoring them.
Midpoints are ours, not the franchisors’. Item 7 publishes ranges only. Any midpoint or percentage share in this article is a derived calculation, and a range that is skewed toward its high end would shift every share we computed.
Item 7 is an estimate, not a quote. The FTC’s own guidance describes these figures as reasonable estimates. They exclude land purchase, financing costs, and pre-opening owner compensation, and they assume the franchisor’s standard format in an average US construction market. A coastal market or a structural retrofit can move leasehold improvements by hundreds of thousands of dollars in either direction.
The disclosure covers the United States only. FDDs exist because of US regulation. In the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe, trampoline park projects are usually structured as direct equipment purchases, area development agreements, or master licenses, and none of those carry an equivalent standardized disclosure. Comparing an FDD range to a project budget in Dubai or Jakarta is a category error, even though equipment line items transfer reasonably well.
Revenue data is unaudited and incomplete. Altitude’s 2026 FDD reports 2025 gross sales for 64 of its 71 franchised parks: an average of $2,045,001, a median of $1,884,486, with top-quartile parks averaging $3,007,318 and fourth-quartile parks $1,288,575. Its EBITDA percentages come from a smaller subset of 29 parks, and the franchisor states that franchisee submissions were not audited. More important is what the spread means: the gap between the best and worst quartile inside one brand is wider than any cost difference between the three brands compared here.
Correlation is not causation. Parks under a known brand do not outperform because of the brand alone. Site quality, lease terms, and operating discipline move outcomes by quartiles; the logo does not. Nothing in an FDD identifies which quartile a new park will land in, and we decline to pretend otherwise.
7. Decision Rules, Not Predictions
The numbers support a few conditional rules, each of which you can check against your own situation rather than against a forecast.
| If your situation is… | Then the numbers point to… | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Equity near $2.5M, no site secured, no family-entertainment operating record | An independent build, or waiting | A franchised build consumes the full range midpoint before opening; a marginal site lands in the bottom quartile under any logo |
| Strong site, but no experience in family entertainment operations | A franchise, bought knowingly | You are paying roughly a third of the build and 10–12% of sales for process: site review, training, and opening support |
| Project outside the United States | Direct equipment purchase, independent build | FDD structures do not transfer; equivalent equipment is available on the open market without the fee stack |
| A resale park with documented financials is available | Buying the existing park | Trailing records beat any Item 7 estimate; verify the remaining term and required remodel before pricing |
One rule sits above the others. If your equity cannot fund the midpoint of the range with a cushion, the fee structure is not your problem yet; the site and the building are. And if the building pencils, compare the ten-year fee total from Section 4 against what an equivalent indoor playground and trampoline package costs on the open market. That single subtraction, fee stack versus equipment markup, answers the franchise question more honestly than any brand comparison video.
8. Three Things You Can Do Today
1. Request the current FDD from each brand you are considering. Every figure in this article came from the 2025 editions; brands reissue annually. Read Items 5, 6, 7, and 19 yourself, and note which percentages are “currently” versus “up to.” The FTC Franchise Rule obliges the franchisor to deliver the document 14 days before you sign or pay.
2. Recompute the fee stack at your own projected sales. Use the formula in Section 4 with your own revenue assumption, multiply by ten, and set that number next to your build budget. If the sequence of decisions from launch planning to opening day is unfamiliar, that guide walks the full path.
3. Price the building before the brand. Get real leasehold improvement quotes for your target box size, because Sections 3 and 5 show the building, not the franchise fee, is where the money actually goes. When you are ready to compare equipment directly, our guide to choosing trampoline park equipment suppliers lists the verification steps, and you can request a design and quote for your own floor plan through our design-to-delivery process.
FAQ
How much does a trampoline park franchise cost in the United States?
Per Item 7 of the 2025 FDDs, total initial investment runs $2,105,000 to $3,477,500 for Altitude, $2,330,960 to $5,175,460 for Sky Zone, and $3,111,409 to $5,791,969 for Urban Air. These are estimates before financing; actual costs vary with park size, market, and lease terms.
What percentage of revenue do trampoline park franchises take?
The royalty alone is 6 to 7 percent of gross sales, but the enforceable stack is larger: royalty plus brand fund plus a mandatory local marketing minimum comes to roughly 10 to 12 percent at current rates, with contractual ceilings above that. On a $2 million park, 12 percent equals $240,000 a year.
Is a franchise cheaper than building an independent trampoline park?
No. The build cost is essentially the same, because the expensive lines, leasehold improvements and equipment, exist in both routes. The franchise fee adds $65,000 to $100,000 upfront, plus 10 to 12 percent of gross sales every year. The honest comparison is whether the franchisor’s site review, training, and brand recognition are worth that recurring amount in your market.
Do FDD investment ranges include working capital and financing?
Working capital is included, typically $120,000 to $400,000 depending on the brand. Financing costs, land purchase, and pre-opening owner compensation are not included, and the figures assume a standard format in an average US construction market. Treat Item 7 as a planning estimate, not a quotation.
Are these FDD numbers valid outside the United States?
No. FDDs are a product of US franchise regulation and only US franchisees receive them. Projects in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe are typically structured as direct equipment purchases or development agreements with no equivalent standardized disclosure, so the build-cost logic transfers but the fee structures do not.
Sources
- Franchise Chatter, “Urban Air Adventure Park Franchise Review: Costs, Fees, Average Revenues” (2025 FDD, Items 5–7) — franchisechatter.com
- FranchiseVerdict, “Urban Air Adventure Park Franchise Review (2026)” (2025 FDD fee and fee-load data) — franchiseverdict.com
- FDD Exchange, “Sky Zone Franchise FDD (2025)” (Items 5–7, ongoing fees, park size) — fddexchange.com
- Frandera, “Sky Zone Franchise Disclosure Document: Key Facts & Financials” (FDD issued April 22, 2025) — frandera.com
- Pulse, “Altitude Trampoline Park: 2025 FDD Analysis” (Item 7 line items, fee stack) — pulserevops.com
- Franchise Champs, “Altitude Trampoline Park Franchise: Cost, Fees & Facts” (2026 FDD, Item 19 2025 gross sales data) — franchisechamps.com
- Frandb, “Urban Air Adventure Park Franchise Research (2025)” (system size, comparison basis) — frandb.com
- US Federal Trade Commission, Franchise Rule, 16 CFR Part 436 (disclosure timing and required items) — ecfr.gov