Active Gaming at 958%: What the Activate Fast 50 Rank Shows
On October 28, 2026, Deloitte Canada published the winners of its 2026 Technology Fast 50, and Activate, the Winnipeg-founded active gaming operator, appeared at No. 26 with 958% revenue growth from 2022 to 2025. The company operates more than 85 locations worldwide and counts more than 14 million players.
If you run or plan a trampoline park, that 958% figure will probably reach you the way these numbers always do: in a supplier deck, a franchisor one-pager, or a trade headline, presented as proof that a format is booming and that the window is closing.
The interesting thing about this particular number is that it is one of the few in the indoor entertainment industry that comes with audited or reviewed financial statements attached, because Deloitte requires them. That makes it a rare case study in what a growth percentage can and cannot tell you.
This article breaks down what the ranking certifies, what it leaves out, the arithmetic behind the headline figure, and a five-step checklist you can apply the next time a growth number lands in a format pitch.
1. What Was Announced on October 28
Deloitte Canada has run the Technology Fast 50 program for 29 years. The 2026 class of winners achieved an average revenue growth of 3,079%, the first time the cohort average passed 3,000%, and a Toronto-based health technology company called Finni Health took first place with 46,574% growth over four years. Activate ranked No. 26.
The table below lists every figure the announcement put on the record, with the source for each one.
| Item | Published figure | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|
| Ranking | No. 26, Deloitte 2026 Technology Fast 50 | Deloitte press room |
| Revenue growth | 958% from 2022 to 2025 | Company release |
| Locations | More than 85 worldwide | Company release |
| Cumulative players | More than 14 million | Company release |
| First park | Winnipeg, Canada, 2019 | Company release |
| Cohort average | 3,079% across 2026 winners | Deloitte press room |
Two details matter for how much trust the number deserves. First, Deloitte states that winner selection is based on revenue growth measured from financial statements that participating companies must submit in audited or reviewed form. Second, the program is a ranking, not an endorsement: Deloitte scores applicants on growth, not on unit profitability, customer satisfaction, or franchisee outcomes.
The trade press picked the story up two days later. Amusements & Attractions ran its write-up on October 30, and GamesBeat followed with a longer piece on what location-based gaming scaling on proprietary technology means for the wider games industry. Both are consistent with the release on every number we checked. One small discrepancy: the A&A article dates the first Winnipeg location to 2018, while the company release says 2019. We use the company figure throughout, since it is the primary source.
2. What the Ranking Actually Certifies
Most growth claims in the family entertainment center world are self-published. A chain says it “grew 300% year over year” with no base year, no currency, and no statements attached. The Deloitte program is stricter, and the eligibility rules are public.
| Requirement | Detail | What it filters out |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Must be in Canada | Foreign-domiciled chains |
| Operating history | At least four years in business | Concept-stage pitches |
| 2022 revenue floor | At least $50,000 | Pre-revenue startups |
| 2025 revenue floor | At least $5 million | Very small operators |
| Technology | Proprietary, with at least 5% of gross revenue spent on R&D conducted in Canada | Licensees and resellers |
| Financial statements | Audited or reviewed, submitted to qualify | Unaudited claims |
The R&D clause deserves a note for equipment buyers. A company that must spend at least 5% of gross revenue on research and development inside Canada is structurally a technology company first. Its game mechanics, scoring software, and wristband systems are the product; the rooms are the delivery mechanism. That is a different cost structure from a conventional trampoline park operator, where the building and the equipment are the product and software is bought in.
For due diligence purposes, the two clauses that do the most work are the 2025 floor of $5 million and the audited-or-reviewed requirement. Together they mean the 958% figure describes a business that had passed $5 million in annual revenue by the final year, on statements an accountant has at least reviewed. Most vendor growth claims cannot clear even that low bar.
3. The Arithmetic Behind 958%
A growth percentage is a shape, not a size. Here is the arithmetic that turns 958% into the few facts it actually encodes.
Growth of 958% means the 2025 figure is 10.58 times the 2022 figure. If the growth is measured across the three year-over-year steps from 2022 to 2025, the compound annual rate follows from the standard formula:
Final = Base × (1 + 9.58) = Base × 10.58 CAGR = 10.58^(1/3) − 1 ≈ 1.195 → about 120% per year 2022 revenue ≥ 5,000,000 ÷ 10.58 ≈ $472,600 (derived)
Three lines, three distinct facts, each with a different level of certainty.
What it is A compound rate of roughly 120% a year, if and only if the 958% spans three annual periods. Deloitte does not publish its exact calculation window, so this is our reconstruction, not their stated method.
What it proves The 2025 floor and the growth rate together pin down a minimum base year. If 2025 revenue was at least $5 million and equals 10.58 times 2022, then 2022 revenue was at least about $472,600. That is derived from the published rules, not released by either company.
What it hides Everything above the floor. A 958% growth rate is equally consistent with 2025 revenue of $5.3 million or $53 million. The percentage says nothing about which one you are looking at, and the release discloses no dollar figures for either year.
Where this model came from: the 10.58 multiplier, the 120% reconstruction, and the $472,600 floor are all derived from two published inputs: the 958% growth figure in the company release and the $5 million eligibility floor in the Deloitte program rules. Neither figure is an official disclosure from Activate or Deloitte.
This is why the number feels more informative than it is. A 958% headline invites you to imagine a large company growing fast. The arithmetic says only: a company of unknown current size, at least $5 million, roughly doubling every year for three years. Both halves of that sentence matter when the number shows up in a pitch.
4. What the Release Says Drove the Growth
The announcement attributes the expansion to proprietary gaming technology: interactive game rooms where players compete against the room or against each other, real-time scoring, and RFID wristbands that log each player’s achievements and performance as they move through the games.
Two recent product layers get named as retention mechanics. Team Mode lets larger groups, described as parties bigger than six players, compete against one another. Activate Global League connects teams at different locations through competitive play, an esports-style league structure running across physical rooms rather than consoles.
Geographically, the chain has spread from its 2019 Winnipeg start to more than 85 locations across, per GamesBeat, Canada, the United States, Denmark, Germany, France, Finland, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates.
Two derived ratios put those totals in perspective. More than 14 million players across more than 85 locations implies roughly 165,000 players per location over the entire operating history, a lifetime figure, not an annual one. And 85-plus locations across roughly seven years of operation implies an average of about a dozen openings a year. Both numbers are derived from the published totals, not disclosed by the company, and both are ceilings rather than precise counts because the true denominators are higher than 85 and 14 million.
For an operator, the transferable part is the wristband architecture, not the brand. An RFID wristband does three things a paper ticket cannot: it ties every play to an identity, it accumulates a session history the operator can analyze, and it makes re-engagement campaigns possible because the operator knows which games a specific player has already beaten. The 5% R&D obligation in the Deloitte rules is a reminder of what that infrastructure costs to keep alive; the software needs continuous content updates, and the hardware needs consumables and maintenance.
5. What the Announcement Does Not Publish
A ranking this clean still leaves out every number an investor in a single building actually needs. The following figures appear in none of the three source documents.
| Missing figure | Why an operator would want it |
|---|---|
| Revenue in dollars, either year | Separates a $6 million chain from a $60 million one |
| Per-location revenue | The only basis for projecting a single-site build |
| Corporate versus franchised split | Growth by franchise sales and growth by owned sites behave differently in a downturn |
| Capital cost per location | Decides whether the format scales as cheaply as it markets |
| Unit margins and payback | Deloitte scores growth, not profitability |
| Openings per year by market | Shows whether new sites pull visitors from existing ones |
Activate has not published its revenue totals, its unit economics, or its expansion cost per site, and we are not going to invent substitutes. The same disclosure gap exists at nearly every operator that headlines a growth percentage, which is exactly why the next section matters more than the number itself.
6. How to Pressure-Test Any Growth Number in a Format Pitch
The checklist below works on the Activate announcement, and it works on the next one you receive, whatever the format. Five questions, in order.
1. Base year and currency. A percentage without a base year and a currency is decoration. The Activate figure means 2022 in Canadian dollars to 2025, per the program rules. When a deck says “grew 300% year over year”, ask: from what, to what, in which currency, and were the statements audited, reviewed, or pulled from a POS report?
2. Number of periods. The same percentage means very different compound rates depending on the span. Rebuild the arithmetic yourself: 958% over three annual steps is about 120% a year. Over four steps it is about 80%. Over two steps it is about 225%. If a pitch quotes a multiple without a span, the writer either does not know or prefers that you not know.
3. Floors and denominators. Eligibility thresholds shape the story. The Deloitte rules guarantee a base of at least $50,000 and a final of at least $5 million, which is why the floor derivation in Section 3 works. When a franchisor quotes growth, ask what the smallest and largest franchisees contributed, because one new market entering the denominator can produce a number that no individual site ever experienced. Our breakdown of what a franchise fee actually buys covers the other half of that conversation.
4. Like-for-like versus openings. Revenue growth across a system that adds sites is not the same as revenue growth at existing sites. The first flatters expansion; the second predicts your payback. Ask for the comparable-store series. If it does not exist, the headline growth number cannot support a single-site projection, whatever its size.
5. What the metric does not score. Deloitte scores revenue growth and nothing else. A company can rank No. 26 while individual locations lose money, because the metric never looks below the consolidated top line. The same is true of every growth ranking, award, and “fastest-growing” badge in the industry.
Run the Activate release through this filter and it passes steps 1, 2, and 3 with unusual transparency, then fails steps 4 and 5, not through deception but because the program, by design, does not measure those things. That two-line verdict is worth more than the headline.
7. What This Means for a Park Adding Interactive Rooms
For a trampoline park owner, the practical question is never “is Activate big”. It is whether one or two interactive rooms pay for themselves inside your box, next to your court.
The recent park-level evidence says the interactive layer has become standard. Big Air standardized game rooms across seven parks, as we covered when the game room rollout was announced, and our count of five 2026 parks showed the trampoline court taking up a shrinking share of the floor as slides, climbing, and interactive elements take the rest. The mixed-box pattern is now the default procurement unit, and the court is one line in it.
Only a formula can be given honestly, because no operator in this segment publishes per-room revenue:
Incremental room revenue per month ≈ plays per day × price per play × 30 Room payback (months) ≈ installed cost ÷ (incremental monthly revenue − room operating cost)
Each variable is measurable in your own building before you commit: plays per day from a wristband or counter system, price per play from local tests, operating cost from the extra staffing and the electricity the room consumes. The break-even frame is the same one that decides whether a park as a whole survives: fixed costs divided by contribution per visit.
Three cost lines deserve a line item in your budget because vendors rarely volunteer them. The wristband system itself, including readers, tags, and the software license behind the scoring. Content, meaning the games must keep changing or the repeat visits fade, which is the R&D obligation we saw in Section 2 showing up in miniature on your P&L. And space, because an interactive room earns nothing if it displaces the party rooms or the toddler zone that carry your weekend load. Our attraction-density piece has the zone-by-zone numbers to test that trade.
Equipment choice sits inside that decision. The interactive layer spans everything from wall-mounted reaction games to full room builds, and the hardware side is standard indoor playground and interactive equipment rather than anything proprietary to one brand. What you are actually buying is the scoring software and its update pipeline, so scrutinize that contract as hard as the steel. Our overview of equipment materials and quality control applies unchanged.
8. Summary
The verifiable core: on October 28, 2026, Deloitte Canada ranked Activate No. 26 in its 2026 Technology Fast 50, with 958% revenue growth from 2022 to 2025 on audited or reviewed statements, alongside 85-plus locations and more than 14 million players since the first Winnipeg park opened in 2019.
The decoded core: 958% means a 10.58× multiple, roughly 120% a year across three annual steps, and a base year of at least about $472,600 once the $5 million floor is applied. It does not mean large, profitable, or replicable at single-site level, and the announcement publishes no dollar figure, no per-location revenue, and no unit economics.
The practical core for active gaming investors: treat every growth percentage as a shape, not a size. Extract the base year, the span, the floors, and the missing metrics, then decide from your own site’s plays-per-day data whether the format earns its floor space. The operators who grew into this ranking did it by making wristbands and rooms work together; the investors who profit from copying them will be the ones who ran the arithmetic before signing.
9. Three Things You Can Do Today
1. Rebuild the last growth number you were shown. Take whatever percentage is sitting in a deck or a trade headline, find the base year and the span, and compute the compound rate yourself. If the pitch cannot answer, that is the finding.
2. Test the interactive layer with your own data. Before budgeting a room, measure plays per day and price per play in your market, then apply the payback formula above. Our getting-started guide walks through the full sequence from measurement to layout, and the indoor playground equipment range shows the hardware side of the interactive layer.
3. Compare your box against the current standard. Our zone-by-zone breakdown of a 22,000 sq ft (about 2,044 m²) park shows how much floor the interactive layer takes in a full-size build, and where it should not take floor from.
Planning an interactive room or a full park and want the numbers before the commitment? Send us your floor dimensions and market, and we will return a zone allocation and an equipment quote.
FAQ
What is the Deloitte Technology Fast 50?
A Deloitte Canada program, now in its 29th year, that ranks the fastest-growing Canadian technology companies by revenue growth. To qualify, a company must be headquartered in Canada, have operated at least four years, own proprietary technology, spend at least 5% of gross revenue on R&D conducted in Canada, and submit audited or reviewed financial statements showing at least $50,000 in 2022 revenue and at least $5 million in 2025. In the 2026 cohort, the average growth across winners was 3,079%.
What does 958% revenue growth mean per year?
A 958% total increase means the final figure is 10.58 times the base. Spread across the three year-over-year steps from 2022 to 2025, that is a compound annual growth rate of about 120%. Deloitte does not publish its exact calculation window, so the 120% is a reconstruction from the published totals, not an official figure.
How many Activate locations are there in 2026?
More than 85, according to the company’s October 28, 2026 release, across Canada, the United States, Denmark, Germany, France, Finland, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. The company also reports more than 14 million cumulative players since its first park opened in Winnipeg in 2019.
How much does it cost to add interactive game rooms to a trampoline park?
No operator in this segment publishes per-room pricing, so any specific number you are quoted should be treated as a sales figure until it is broken down. The cost splits into the room hardware, the RFID wristband and scoring system including its software license, the content pipeline that keeps games current, and the floor space the room takes from other zones. The payback formula in Section 7 lets you test the investment against your own plays-per-day and price-per-play data before committing.
Is active gaming a growth market worth entering?
The verified facts are narrow but real: one Canadian operator with proprietary technology grew 958% on audited or reviewed statements while scaling to 85-plus locations, and a mainstream park chain like Big Air has standardized game rooms across its sites. Those facts establish that the format has scaled, not that any specific site will clear its payback. Entry decisions should rest on your own market’s plays-per-day potential and the payback formula, not on a growth ranking.
Sources
- Newswire via CEO.ca, “Activate ranks No. 26 on Deloitte’s 2026 Technology Fast 50 list with 958% revenue growth”, October 28, 2026 — new.ceo.ca
- Deloitte Canada, “Deloitte Canada unveils the 2026 Technology Fast 50 program winners”, October 28, 2026 — deloitte.com
- Amusements & Attractions, “Activate named on Deloitte’s Fast 50 list”, October 30, 2026 — amusementsandattractions.com
- GamesBeat, “Activate, the fastest-growing gaming company on Deloitte’s Fast 50 list doesn’t make video games for screens”, November 2026 — gamesbeat.com
- Deloitte Canada, Technology Fast 50 program site — fast50.ca