Sim Facility Boom #9: Canada Gets In

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I wrote Update #8 earlier today — six regional media features in a single sweep, Florida dominating, Rust Belt catching up, Cape Cod as the first seasonal-economy data point. Felt like a big update.

Then I checked the next wave of sources.

The facility boom just crossed an international border. And it’s showing up in places I didn’t expect — office buildings, small towns in British Columbia, and a Michigan city that now has more sim facilities per capita than most metros three times its size.

Three stories this week, each one pointing in a different direction.

First Canadian Facilities: The Boom Goes North

We’ve tracked fifty-plus facilities across the US since this series started. But until now, every single one was American. That just changed.

Vernon, British Columbia — population 44,000 — now has a 24-hour indoor golf experience, according to the Vernon Morning Star. This is significant for two reasons.

First, it’s our first Canadian data point. The sim facility boom is not a US-only phenomenon. Canada has the same winter-driven demand, the same suburban garages sitting empty half the year, the same community of golfers who want to keep swinging when the snow flies. The fact that a 24-hour facility — one of the highest-commitment formats — showed up in Canada before a standard sim lounge tells you the 24-hour model has genuine legs, not just American novelty appeal.

Second, Vernon is a small market. Population 44,000 in a town in the Okanagan Valley. If a 24-hour sim facility works in Vernon — not Toronto, not Vancouver, but Vernon — the model is viable in towns of any size across Canada.

Salmon Arm, British Columbia — another Okanagan town, population 20,000 — has a separate sim business story that reinforces this. The Salmon Arm Observer reported that a key business loan sparked a successful golf sim business in Vernon. A local entrepreneur got funding, built a facility, and it’s working.

This is the same pattern we’ve seen in small American markets. Tyler, Texas (population 100,000). Cedar Rapids, Iowa (135,000). Huntingburg, Indiana (6,000). The sim facility model works in small towns because the demand is concentrated — there aren’t five other sim lounges to compete with, and winter doesn’t care about population density.

Canada is now in our tracking. Expect more.

Office Sims: A New Facility Type

Most of our tracking has been about entertainment venues — sim lounges, bars, family entertainment centers. But the latest sweep turned up something different.

Denver, Colorado — KDVR reported that new offices with golf simulators are coming to Denver. This isn’t a sim bar. It’s not a standalone facility. It’s commercial real estate developers adding golf sims as tenant amenities — the same way buildings add gyms, rooftop decks, and bike storage.

This is a different category from everything we’ve tracked so far. Office sims aren’t built for the general public to book online. They’re built for employees and tenants to use on lunch breaks and after work. The equipment matters less (a single SimBay or Trackman suite is fine for an office), and the revenue model is different (it’s an amenity cost, not a profit center).

Why this matters for the home sim buyer: when office buildings start adding sims, the category has crossed a threshold. Golf simulators are no longer just a niche hobby or a sports-bar gimmick. They’re becoming baseline infrastructure — the same way a conference room or a break room is baseline infrastructure.

Holland, Michigan: Saturation Signal or Density Proof?

The Holland Sentinel reported that a third golf simulator facility is coming to the Holland, Michigan area.

Holland has a population of about 35,000. Three sim facilities in a town of that size is either:

• A saturation signal (the market can’t support three)
• A density proof (the demand is higher than anyone assumed)

I don’t know which one it is yet. But I know it’s worth tracking.

The three facilities in Holland are likely serving different niches — one might be a training center, one a social lounge, one a 24-hour self-serve model. If all three survive, the takeaway is that sim facilities can cluster the same way coffee shops or breweries do: more options create more total demand rather than cannibalizing existing business.

If one closes — like the Springfield, Illinois facility we tracked in Update #6 — then we have a genuine density data point for small-market capacity.

I’m betting on survival. The Pipestone Golf second-facility expansion in nearby Stevensville, Michigan (tracked in Update #7) suggests the southwest Michigan market has genuine sim appetite. Three facilities in Holland would mean the density is real.

What It All Adds Up To

Three stories this week, each one a different data point in the same trend:

• International expansion — the boom crossed into Canada, with a 24-hour facility in Vernon and a small-business loan story in Salmon Arm
• New facility types — office sims as commercial real estate amenities, not just entertainment venues
• Market saturation testing — Holland, Michigan gets its third facility, giving us the first real data point on how much density a small market can absorb

The facility boom series started as a curiosity — “hey, there are a lot of sim facilities opening.” Eight updates later, it’s a tracking system that spans two countries, covers at least four distinct facility types (standalone, franchise, restaurant-adjacent, and now office-adjacent), and is starting to produce the kind of market-density data that actual investors would find useful.

I have no idea how many updates this series will run. But as long as the data keeps coming, I’ll keep tracking it.

Missed an earlier update? The full series is at /blog, tagged “facility-boom.” Update #1 kicked this off with seven facilities in a single week. We’re up to seventy-plus now across two countries. Not bad for two weeks of tracking.

Browse all facility boom updates → · Read Update #10: The Boom Has Two Sides → · Find a sim facility near you →