Trampoline Park Game Rooms: Big Air Standardizes Seven Parks

On 28 October 2026, CenterEdge Software announced from Roxboro, North Carolina that Big Air USA has selected CenterEdge Play as the game room management platform for its new parks. The trade press picked the story up the next day. InterGame reported it on 29 October under a headline about an extended partnership.

The commercial facts behind the announcement are easy to state. Big Air was founded in 2012 and operates more than half a million square feet (over 46,000 m²) of indoor trampoline and adventure parks across twelve states, from Arizona to Washington. Seven new parks are on the way in Plano, Texas; Edgewater, Maryland; Alexandria, Virginia; Greenwood, Mount Pleasant, and Bluffton, South Carolina; and Manteca, California.

The substance of the decision is smaller than the press release, and more useful. A franchise that already runs its jump sessions, waivers, and memberships on one platform has decided that its trampoline park game room should live on the same platform too. One card, one report, one support line.

For an independent owner or a franchisee preparing a build-out, that decision is worth taking apart. This article sorts the verifiable facts from the vendor language, explains what a connected game room actually changes operationally, and gives the formulas you need before you commit floor space and capital to an arcade. Where Big Air has not disclosed a number, we say so instead of guessing.

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1. The Announcement, Sorted Into What Is Checkable

The primary source is CenterEdge’s own press release, dated 28 October 2026 and published in its newsroom. InterGame, the trade magazine, carried a summary on 29 October that adds nothing new but confirms the release circulated to the industry. Everything in the table below traces to one of those two documents, and both quote the same named executives.

Two cautions apply before anyone reuses that table. First, both sources describe a commercial relationship in the language of the parties involved, so phrases like “another significant period of growth” are positioning, not reporting. Second, the release is silent on several details a buyer would actually price: system cost per park, the number of games each room will carry, contract length, and whether CenterEdge Play replaces an existing arcade system at Big Air’s established locations. None of those numbers has been published, and we will not invent them.

Where this article comes from: the CenterEdge press release of 28 October 2026 and InterGame’s 29 October report. Every derived calculation in the sections below is labeled as derived. Nothing here comes from the operators’ internal books, which are not public.

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2. Why a Game Room Is an Architecture Decision, Not a Vending Machine

Many owners treat the arcade as a corner of the floor plan: buy cabinets, plug them in, collect cash. That model still exists, but it fails quietly in three places, usually within the first quarter of operation.

The first failure point is reconciliation. A coin- or bill-operated room produces its own paper trail, separate from the ticketing system at the front desk. At the end of the month, someone matches two ledgers by hand, and every discrepancy becomes an argument between the front desk, the arcade attendant, and the books. A cashless game card system that shares a database with admissions removes that reconciliation step, because the sale and the swipe are the same record.

The second is the guest’s wallet. In a split system, a family pays at the desk for jump time, then queues again at an arcade kiosk to buy a separate game card. In a connected one, the same band or card carries both. That is precisely what Big Air’s operations lead described when the partnership was announced: guests, in Erin Davis’s words, “move easily between attractions and the game room,” and operators get “a clearer picture of what’s happening across their businesses.”

The third is reporting. If the game room runs on its own stack, its revenue arrives at head office as a monthly lump. Connected to the park system, it reports by machine, by hour, and by package. That granularity is what lets an operator decide, from data, whether the room needs four more machines or whether the problem is the prize counter, not the cabinets.

None of this is unique to CenterEdge. Competing platforms in the family entertainment space sell the same architecture. What the Big Air decision shows is the direction of travel: a multi-site operator reaching half a million square feet no longer treats the arcade as a separate business inside the building.

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3. What CenterEdge Play Actually Adds

The press release names three components. Each one changes a different part of the operating day, and each one carries a verification task before you sign anything.

3.1 Cashless gameplay

What it is Guests load value onto a card or band and swipe it at each machine. Coins and bill validators disappear from the floor.

What it decides Labor on the arcade floor, the guest’s willingness to spend a remainder balance, and the shape of your revenue data. A swipe record per machine replaces a bucket of coins.

What to verify What happens when the network drops. A cashless floor that cannot run offline stops earning the moment a router restarts. Ask the vendor to demonstrate the offline mode, not describe it. Our earlier analysis of card processing costs shows why payment mechanics deserve the same scrutiny as ticket pricing.

3.2 Self-service kiosks

What it is Unattended terminals that sell and reload value, and, in this deployment, can also sell attraction access, timed play, and packages.

What it decides Queue length at the front desk during peak hours. A kiosk that can sell a jump session absorbs the Saturday surge that would otherwise need a second cashier.

What to verify Which products the kiosk can actually sell in your configuration, and what a failed transaction looks like to the guest. A kiosk that takes payment and cannot print or reload creates a service desk problem at the worst possible moment.

3.3 Game room reporting

What it is Machine-level and package-level revenue data inside the same suite that reports admissions, parties, and memberships.

What it decides Whether the arcade section of your business plan is a guess or a managed line item. Reporting is the difference between “the arcade does well” and “machine twelve earns four times the floor average, so the layout is wrong.”

What to verify The export. Ask to see a real report with real fields before signing. A dashboard that cannot export to your accountant’s format is a demo, not a system.

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4. The Seven-Park Map, and What Standardization Buys a Franchisee

The release names the six cities where the seven new parks will open. Big Air has not published addresses, sizes, or opening dates for any of them, so the table below is a map of the decision, not a development schedule.

Three of the seven parks sit in South Carolina, which tells you something about where the brand sees room to grow. More relevant for any buyer is the timing. Big Air made this call before the first of the seven parks opened, not after a year of local experimentation. For a franchisee, the practical meaning is that the game room stack arrives as a decided item in the build budget, in the same way the mezzanine steel or the foam pit does. The franchise fee conversation rarely covers technology in detail, so it is worth asking, in writing, exactly what the mandated stack costs per park and what it constrains.

Standardization has a second-order benefit that the release does not spell out. When every park reports the same machine-level data in the same format, the franchisor can compare a game room in Manteca against one in Alexandria and know whether a weak number is a local problem or a layout problem. Independent owners get the same benefit only if they choose, from day one, a system whose reporting they will actually read.

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5. Game Room Economics: The Formulas, Not the Fantasies

Here is the part where most arcade advice goes wrong: someone quotes a revenue-per-square-foot figure lifted from another operator’s best quarter, and the buyer underwrites the business plan on it. Big Air has not published game room revenue for any of its parks, and neither has CenterEdge. What follows is the arithmetic you can do with your own numbers once the room is running, and the three variables that actually move the result.

Game room revenue (monthly) = active cards × average load × loads per card-month
Contribution = game room revenue − prize cost − machine lease − payment fees
Revenue per machine = game room revenue ÷ machine count
Floor efficiency = game room revenue ÷ game room area

Three variables dominate every version of that arithmetic.

Prize cost ratio. Redemption games pay out tickets, and tickets convert into prizes from a wall. The ratio of prize cost to game revenue is the single largest controllable cost in the room, and it is set by your procurement, not by the machines. Operators who negotiate prize supply like a retailer, rather than buying from a catalog, change this ratio materially. The machines are leased or bought once; the prizes are bought every week, forever.

Remainder balances. A cashless card that leaves $1.70 unspent at the end of a visit has, in effect, collected revenue without delivering product. Breakage accounting varies by jurisdiction, and some regulators treat unspent balances as liabilities with rules attached. That is a legal question for your accountant and your state, not a design question, so we give the variable and stop there. It also connects to a wider shift we tracked in prepaid passes: the more value guests carry on your credential before playing, the more your liability and fee structure — not your ticket price — decide the margin.

Mix between video and redemption. Video cabinets earn from skilled players who stay longer per dollar. Redemption cabinets earn from families converting value into tickets. The two need different floor positions, different prize walls, and different maintenance rhythms. A room that is all one type plateaus faster than a mixed one, because the second-visit motive is weaker.

One more caution belongs here. You will find industry folklore claiming a game room lifts overall dwell time, and that dwell time lifts secondary spend. The direction is plausible; the size, in your building, with your mix, is unknowable until your own swipe data exists. Treat any specific multiplier quoted by a vendor as marketing until it is measured on your floor.

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6. What the Announcement Does Not Tell You

Buying decisions get worse when gaps in the public record get filled with plausible assumptions, so the gaps deserve their own section.

Big Air has not disclosed what CenterEdge Play costs per park, whether pricing runs per terminal, per location, or as a share of processing volume, or how long the commitment lasts. CenterEdge has not disclosed how many machines a typical Big Air game room carries, or what share of Big Air’s revenue the arcades represent. The seven new parks have no published sizes, capital budgets, or opening dates. The release does not say whether established Big Air parks will migrate to CenterEdge Play or stay on whatever system they run today.

That silence is normal for a vendor announcement, and none of it is a reason to distrust the parts that are on the record. It is, however, a reason to distrust any third-party article that converts this news into a revenue forecast. If you are budgeting a game room, the numbers that matter — machine count, prize cost ratio, lease terms — come from your supplier quotes and your own pilot data, not from a press release about someone else’s franchise.

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7. A Buyer’s Checklist for a Cashless Game Room

Whether or not a Big Air-style platform is right for your venue, the questions below are the ones worth asking any provider before signing. They are drawn from the failure points described in section two and the economics in section five.

• One wallet or two? Confirm the game card and the admission band are the same credential in your configuration, and what a guest experiences when the balance runs out mid-session.
• Offline behavior. Ask for a live demonstration of the room earning with the network down, including which machines degrade and how sales re-sync.
• Per-machine reporting. Request a sample report showing revenue by machine, by hour, and by package. If the demo cannot produce it, neither will the installed system.
• Kiosk product scope. List exactly which products the kiosk sells: game value, jump sessions, party deposits, memberships. Ambiguity here becomes a cashier problem on opening weekend.
• Payment fee stack. Every load, swipe, and refund crosses a payment rail. Get the full fee schedule in writing and model it against your expected transaction size; small loads on percentage fees erode fast, as our earlier breakdown of card processing costs illustrates.
• Prize accounting. Confirm the system tracks ticket issuance and redemption separately, so the prize cost ratio is measurable from day one.
• Hardware ownership. Who owns the card readers, kiosks, and depot equipment if you leave the platform in year two? Exit terms are cheapest to negotiate before the deposit.
• Support model. A Saturday outage needs Saturday support. Ask what the response commitment is for peak trading hours, in hours, not adjectives.

Two of those items deserve emphasis for first-time builders. The offline question sounds paranoid until the first router firmware update lands on a Saturday. And the exit-terms question sounds adversarial until a supplier is acquired and the pricing model changes under a signed multi-year agreement.

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8. Summary

Big Air’s decision, announced 28 October 2026, is narrow on its face: a growing twelve-state franchise will run its arcade on the same platform as its admissions in seven upcoming parks. Read as a procurement signal, it is broader. The game room has moved from cash box to data source, the same credential now covers the whole visit, and the kiosk has become a front desk that does not take breaks.

For an independent operator, nothing in this announcement obliges you to follow. What it does show is the set of questions a serious multi-site operator answered before opening a single location: where the wallet lives, what the reporting can see, and who to call when the floor goes dark. Answer those three in your own build, with your own supplier quotes, and the arcade stops being the part of the plan you apologize for.

from the trampoline courts and park accessories to the software stack, so the game room, the trampoline field, and the party rooms work as one floor plan instead of three vendor silos. Our 22,000 sq ft trampoline park layout breakdown shows how a full floor divides across attractions, and the getting started guide walks the path from measured space to installed equipment.

Get a free design and quote →

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FAQ

What is CenterEdge Play?

CenterEdge Play is a game room management product from CenterEdge Software, launched as part of the CenterEdge Advantage Suite. It combines cashless gameplay, self-service kiosks, and game room reporting, and its kiosks can also sell attraction access, timed play, and packages. In October 2026, Big Air USA selected it as the game room platform for its new parks.

Do trampoline parks make money from game rooms?

They can, but no public dataset states a reliable share, and any percentage quoted for “the average park” is unverifiable. The economics come down to four variables you can measure on your own floor: active cards, average load per card, prize cost ratio, and the lease or purchase terms on the machines. Model those with your supplier quotes rather than borrowing an industry average.

How much space does a game room need in a trampoline park?

There is no published standard, because the right allocation depends on your guest mix, your party volume, and how the room sits in the traffic flow. A practical approach is to size the arcade after the active-play zones and party rooms are fixed, then let per-machine revenue reporting justify every further square meter. Our zone-by-zone layout breakdown shows how that sequencing works in a 22,000 sq ft building.

How do cashless game cards work in an arcade?

The guest loads value onto a card or wristband at a kiosk or the front desk, then taps or swipes it at each machine, which deducts the game price from the balance. The same credential can carry jump-session access in an integrated system. Machine-level swipe records replace coin collection and give the operator per-machine revenue data.

Should a trampoline park franchise standardize on one POS and game room system?

Standardization simplifies training, reporting, comparison across locations, and support, which is why a multi-site brand like Big Air made the call before opening its next seven parks. The trade-off is reduced flexibility for individual franchisees. If you operate a single park, the same framework applies with lower stakes: choose the system whose reporting you will actually use, and negotiate exit terms before signing.

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Sources

1. CenterEdge Software, “Big Air Expands CenterEdge Partnership with CenterEdge Play”, press release, 28 October 2026 — https://centeredgesoftware.com/news/big-air-press-release/
2. InterGame (Amusements & Attractions), “Big Air extends partnership with CenterEdge”, 29 October 2026 — https://www.amusementsandattractions.com/amusements/news/big-air-extends-partnership-with-centreedge
3. CenterEdge Software, “CenterEdge Launches CenterEdge Play”, product announcement — https://www.centeredgesoftware.com/news/centeredge-launches-centeredge-play/
4. CenterEdge Software, “CenterEdge to Showcase CenterEdge Play at Bowl Expo in Nashville”, July 2026 — https://www.centeredgesoftware.com/news/centeredge-to-showcase-centeredge-play-at-bowl-expo-in-nashville/
5. Big Air USA, official company site (brand overview, locations) — https://www.bigairusa.com/
6. InterGame, “Payment systems: a crucial part of the amusement centre”, industry insight — https://www.amusementsandattractions.com/attractions/insights/payment-systems-a-crucial-part-of-the-amusement-centre