Sim Facility Boom #6: 24/7 Hits 4 States
24-Hour Spreads to 4 States, First Closure Tracked, and 15+ New Openings
The Short Answer
24-hour sim concepts now span four states. Back Nine keeps expanding. First facility closure tracked. Week two of our series tracking the boom.
When I wrote update #5, I thought the sim facility boom had peaked for the week. A third 24-hour facility. Back Nine expanding to five new locations at once. Fifteen-plus individual openings. That felt like the ceiling.
Then this week happened.
The 24-hour concept has spread to four states. Back Nine announced more locations. Another Nine hit a milestone that changes how we think about franchised sims. And for the first time, we tracked a facility closure — which sounds bad, but I’ll explain why it’s actually a healthy sign.
The 24-Hour Sim Concept Has Crossed a Threshold
Three weeks ago there was one 24-hour facility. Now there are facilities in four states.
The original Berlin, Connecticut proposal (which is still in the planning phase) kicked off the concept. Then Birdie Central 24/7 opened in Spring/Klein, Texas on June 20 — the first operational 24-hour facility. Then Sherman, Texas proposed a second Texas location.
Now there are two more:
Birdie Central 24/7 — Spring, TX — Still the only fully operational 24-hour sim facility we’ve tracked. Open for business, taking customers at 2 AM. We’ll be checking in on them in a few months to see how the late-night traffic is.
Sherman, TX proposal — A proposed 24-hour facility about 45 minutes north of Dallas. If this opens, Texas will have two 24-hour facilities within a 50-mile radius, which would be our first test of whether multiple 24-hour concepts can coexist in the same metro area.
Hubbard, Ohio 24-hour proposal — This is significant because it’s the first 24-hour concept outside of Texas. Hubbard is near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, about 15 minutes from Youngstown and 45 minutes from Pittsburgh. The location matters because it’s in a colder climate — the value proposition of “I can hit balls at midnight in January” is much stronger in Ohio than in Texas.
Berlin, Connecticut proposal — Still in planning. Connecticut has short winters and a suburban demographic that’s perfect for sim golf. If this opens, the 24-hour concept will have a foothold in New England.
Dublin, California proposal — This is the biggest signal yet. Dublin is in the East Bay, about 35 minutes from San Francisco. A 24-hour sim facility in the Bay Area means the concept is going national, not just spreading through the Sun Belt.
Four states. Five proposals/operational facilities. We went from “is this a real business model?” to “this is a category” in about two weeks.
See our complete golf simulator near me guide for the full picture of all facility types — 24-hour, sim lounges, training centers, and demo rooms.
Back Nine and Another Nine: The Franchise War
Two competing franchise models are expanding simultaneously, and both hit milestones this week.
Another Nine hit 50 franchises. That’s fifty locations (some open, some in development) across the country. They raised $2 million in funding and are on pace for 100 by end of year. For context, we wrote about their funding round on June 28. Less than a week later, they’re at 50. The growth rate is staggering.
What makes Another Nine different from Back Nine: they target smaller markets. Back Nine goes for the suburbs of major metros. Another Nine goes for cities like Covington, Kentucky (pop. 40K) and smaller Ohio towns. They’re betting that sim golf works better in underserved areas than saturated ones.
Back Nine confirmed Richardson, Texas — a new DFW location, adding to their growing Texas footprint. They also confirmed Midlothian, Virginia as a coming-soon location, source: WRIC.
These two franchise models are diverging nicely. Back Nine is the “premium suburban experience.” Another Nine is the “accessible small-market hub.” Both seem to be working. That’s a good sign for the industry — it means sim golf works at multiple price points.
Check our facility boom update #5 for the full Back Nine expansion list from the previous update.
The New Openings: 15+ Across 10+ States
The individual openings I’ve tracked since the last update:
Jerome Township, Ohio — A proposed indoor golf facility as part of a mixed-use development. This is the first time we’ve seen a developer build a sim lounge as an amenity driver rather than a standalone business. The developer is betting that “there’s an indoor golf place” is a selling point for apartments and retail space. Source: Columbus Dispatch.
Reston Station, Virginia — An indoor golf concept lining up a location in the DC suburbs. Reston Station is a transit-oriented development with offices, apartments, and retail. Another mixed-use play. Source: FFXnow.
Fort Worth, Texas — The Star-Telegram ran major metro coverage of a new indoor golf club. When a city’s main newspaper devotes significant coverage to a sim facility opening, the industry has crossed into the mainstream.
Pure Strike Golf Club — Lynchburg, Virginia — New indoor golf facility opening. Source: WSET.
Par Tee Golf — Tyler, Texas — A planned facility in one of the smaller Texas markets we’ve tracked (Tyler pop. 100K). Source: KLTV.
Birdie Central 24/7 — Spring/Klein, Texas — Now fully operational (covered above, but worth repeating as our only live 24-hour case study).
Rossford, Ohio — Pin Seeker — A new facility near Toledo. Ohio is quietly building a strong sim infrastructure across the state, from Cincinnati (Westside Bunker) to Columbus (Jerome Township proposal) to Toledo (Rossford).
Berlin, Connecticut — 24-hour proposal — Covered above. Connecticut would be the first Northeast state with a 24-hour concept.
New Jersey micro-boom — We have five New Jersey towns confirmed for new facilities, covered by NJ.com. This is building on the NJ micro-boom we started tracking in an earlier update. New Jersey’s density + winter + disposable income makes it an ideal sim market.
League City, Texas — New facility south of Houston.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin — Sweet Spot Golf Club — The owner’s quote is worth repeating: “golf became too expensive.” This is the other side of the sim boom — not just technology adoption, but affordability. When people get priced out of outdoor golf, they look for alternatives. Sim golf is the alternative.
Meridian, Idaho — New sim facility opening in the Boise suburbs.
Cincinnati, Ohio — West Side location — 7,000 square feet. This is a massive facility for a suburban location. When a sim lounge is building 7K sq ft, they’re betting on serious traffic.
Tee Box — Richmond, Virginia — New facility in the Virginia capital.
Barren County, Kentucky — High school indoor golf facility — This is a first for our tracking. A high school installing a dedicated indoor golf practice facility. If this catches on, it changes the pipeline entirely — kids who learn on sims will grow up treating them as normal, not novel.
The First Closure: Springfield, Illinois
We tracked our first facility closure.
A sim facility in Springfield, Illinois closed. I don’t have the specific name or operator details yet — what I know is that a location we had in our tracking list is now confirmed closed, source: State Journal-Register.
This is actually good news.
A market where nothing closes isn’t a healthy market — it’s a market where nobody’s tracking closures. The fact that we can identify a closure means the market has enough volume that individual failures are visible. Some facilities will fail. That’s normal. That’s healthy.
What matters is the ratio. If we have one closure against fifty-plus openings, that’s a 2% failure rate. Any industry would take that. If the closure rate starts climbing to 10-20%, we have a bubble signal. But one closure at this stage is just a data point.
I’ll keep tracking. If more closures appear, we’ll adjust the narrative.
What This Week Tells Us
The pattern across all 50+ trackings:
The industry is diversifying, not just growing. We have five distinct facility models now: premium franchises (Back Nine), small-market franchises (Another Nine), independent lounges (Pure Strike, Sweet Spot), 24-hour concepts (Birdie Central, Sherman, Hubbard, Berlin, Dublin), mixed-use amenities (Jerome Township, Reston Station), and high school training facilities (Barren County). That’s six models from one week of tracking.
Small markets keep proving the model. Tyler TX (pop. 100K), Lynchburg VA (pop. 80K), Hubbard OH (pop. 7,700), Covington KY (pop. 40K) — these aren’t coastal metro areas. Sim golf works in Middle America, and that’s where most of the expansion is happening.
The developer angle is new. When real estate developers start treating sim lounges as amenity drivers for mixed-use developments, the category has crossed a threshold. Developers don’t build around fads. They build around infrastructure. A sim lounge as a leasing amenity is different from a sim lounge as a standalone business.
Winter is the unspoken driver. Half of these openings are in cold-weather states (Ohio, Wisconsin, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania-adjacent). The indoor golf value proposition doubles when there’s snow on the ground. Winter is a tailwind that’s not going away.
For the full picture of all facility types, see our golf simulator near me guide, our Texas golf simulator facilities guide, and our Ohio golf simulator facilities guide — Ohio had massive expansion this week with Westside Bunker, the Hubbard 24-hour proposal, Jerome Township mixed-use, Rossford Pin Seeker, and more. The state guides are building up alongside this series.
Previous updates in this series: Update #1, Update #2, Update #3, Update #4, Update #5. Next: Update #7: xGolf Joins the Franchise War →