Room Escape Artist

In this report dated December 2024, we present a data-driven look at the US escape room industry today.

The number of escape room facilities in the US has remained stable over the past 2.5 years. By this measure, the industry is healthy. Of note, there is more consolidation of ownership, which is not surprising after a decade of extreme growth, retraction, and then stability.

This report is based on 10 years of data collected and maintained through the Room Escape Artist Escape Room Directory.

2024 Year-End Industry Numbers

In December 2024, there were about 2,000 escape room facilities in the United States.

Since our last report in December 2023, the number of escape room facilities is stable. The previous report listed 1,950 escape room facilities. It has neither increased nor decreased significantly.

As with previously published reports, it is critical to note that the number of facilities does not alone indicate the size of the industry. It is one indicator, and one we have the data to measure. It does not represent revenue. At this time, no one in the escape room industry has access to a complete picture of revenue data.

Historical Industry Numbers

We’ve been covering the US escape room industry since 2014. Here’s where we’ve been:

• In 2014, there were about 2 dozen escape room facilities.
• The industry experienced huge early growth: 317% growth in 2015, followed by 800% growth in 2016.
• By 2019, pre-pandemic, growth had leveled off to just 2%.
• During the pandemic, the industry shrank: 4.3% decrease through mid 2020, followed by a 7.5% decrease over the following 6 months through early 2021.
• By mid 2022, the industry had stabilized.
• The industry has remained stable throughout 2023 and 2024.

This US escape room industry has endured for 10 years. It is not a fad. It had a boom and a bust, exacerbated by the pandemic. And it is here to stay.

While individual companies come and go, for the last 2.5 years there have continually been approximately 2,000 escape room facilities in the US.

Counting Escape Rooms

In this report, we count escape room facilities. These are permanent physical locations where you can play real-life escape rooms in person. One business owner might operate 10 locations around the country or 2 locations in the same city. These would be counted as 10 facilities and 2 facilities, respectively. A location with more than one game counts as one facility. For more details on how we count escape rooms, see the final section of the report, titled Appendix: Details on Escape Room Facility Counting.

Closures

In 2024, we had more closures than in the previous 2 years. These were offset, however, by new market entrants.

We started tracking closures and removing escape room facilities from our directory in 2017. If we look at the total facility closures over time, we see an uptick this year.

Year	Percent of Total Closed
2017	4.33%
2018	15.81%
2019	18.50%
2020	17.62%
2021	13.41%
2022	9.95%
2023	8.90%
2024	11.48%

In total, since we started this directory, 46% of the escape room facilities we’ve added have closed and been removed from the directory.

That number sounds high, but most escape room businesses are small businesses, and Chamber of Commerce reports, citing the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, that for small businesses, “50% fail after five years and approximately 65% by their tenth year in business.”

These statistics aren’t exactly analogous. Our 46% closures over 10 years includes businesses that started 10 years ago and businesses that are brand new. That said, more than half of the businesses that have started up in this industry at some point in the last 10 years continue to operate.

And while we have seen a few more closures this year than in the past two years since the pandemic, we don’t think this is cause for alarm. We’re seeing just as many new entrants into the market as closures.

New Facilities

In 2024, we added 218 new escape room facilities to our directory.

This is just a few more than in each of the past couple of years. It balances out the closures and keeps the industry stable at around 2,000 total facilities.

Mergers & Acquisitions

This year we’ve tracked more mergers and acquisitions within the industry. Although we don’t keep exact data on the number of locations that have changed names (which isn’t always a sign of acquisition, but certainly can be), anecdotally the team that maintains our directory feels that we’re seeing more name + url changes, a good indication of ownership changing.

Of note, although you can’t see it in the directory, behind the scenes, we track affiliated facilities. For example, there are 76 affiliated locations named Escapology (see below). And, for another example, the two locations of Encrypted Escape in West Reading, PA, and Bethesda, MD, are owned by the same people as the two locations of Captured LV Escape Room in Allentown, PA, and Bethlehem, PA. This data is incredibly difficult to track, but as much as we can figure it out, we track it.

By today’s count, 59% of escape room facilities in the US are single-facility businesses. This has decreased from 63% last year, and 66% the year before.

The number of companies with multiple facilities has also increased. There are now:

• 9 companies with more than 10 facilities
• 22 companies with more than 5 facilities
• 88 companies with more than 2 facilities

Of note, 88 companies with more than 2 facilities (so, at least 3 facilities) is a big jump from last year when the number was 66 companies.

In some cases the companies are opening up new facilities. In other cases, they are acquiring already operating escape room facilities.

The Largest Chains & Franchises

The companies with more than 10 facilities are:

Escape Room Company (Chain or Franchise)	Count of Facilities
Escapology	76 (⬆️ 10)
The Escape Game	47 (⬆️ 9)
Breakout Games	32 (⬇️ 1)
Activate	28 (⬆️ 19)
Escape The Room	22
All In Adventures	21 (⬇️ 2)
Red Door Escape Room	19 (⬆️ 4)
PanIQ Entertainment	19
The Great Escape Room	15 (⬆️ 2)

The top 3 companies by count of facilities are unchanged from last year. Both Escapology and The Escape Game have added locations, growing by 15% and 24%, respectively. Breakout Games lost one facility.

The new entrant to this list is Activate, who previously had only 9 facilities, and skyrocketed to 28 facilities over the last year. Activate is not a traditional escape room experience. Rather it is a Challenge Arcade. Read more about Challenge Arcades in last year’s report.

We round out the list with the same 5 companies, slightly shuffled in order since last year. All in Adventures has dropped 2 facilities. Escape The Room is unchanged. PanIQ Entertainment is unchanged in overall count, but they closed a couple of facilities and acquired others. Red Door Escape Room and The Great Escape room have each gained a few facilities. Overall, these shifts are minor.

By State

As expected, the most populous states have the most escape room facilities. California, Florida, and Texas are the 3 most populous states, in order, and they have the most escape room facilities, respectively.

The states with the fewest escape room facilities (fewer than 5) are Delaware and Wyoming.

Both the most and the least are unchanged since the last report.

Vermont has the most escape room facilities per capita, as a small state with 9 escape room facilities. Colorado, Idaho, and District of Columbia also have high numbers per capita, and more than New Hampshire, which had the most escape room facilities per capita one year ago.

Delaware has the fewest escape room facilities per capita, edging out Mississippi, which had the fewest per capita one year ago. Both Mississippi and Iowa have almost as few escape room facilities per capita as Delaware.

2024 Escape Room Bear Market?

As I said at the top, we don’t have financial data. We cannot see if sales are slowing at escape room businesses. That said, throughout the year, we heard from many escape room owners that sales had slowed down. However, when we have spoken with companies operating world-class games, they report that they have continued to see strong ticket sales. We have no scientific way of collecting and collating this data at the present time, but the anecdotal evidence of both trends seems strong.

The higher number of closures this year – up from the previous two years – supports that this has been a challenging year for the industry. While we don’t know why any given escape room facility closes its doors, we can infer that lower sales played a role in some of these closures.

In August, David addressed this in the piece 2024 Escape Room Bear Market? His analysis concluded that for the businesses experiencing a slowdown, it’s probably temporary, due to broader economic conditions. While he is not an economist, he did a lot of research, and it is certainly worth reading in its entirety. If you are an escape room owner, this piece also offers advice for how to weather this situation.

Although more escape room facilities have closed, more have also opened. Today’s new entrants have more resources available to them than ever before, and we hope they are prepared to succeed, even in the face of economic headwinds.

Overnight Escape Rooms

There is a new style of escape rooms catching on in 2024: escape rooms as overnight stays.

Almost since escape rooms first emerged, players have asked us about overnight escape rooms. If 60 minutes is fun, think what fun a whole day could be. Players imagined living in an escape room.

Over the past few years, that dream has become a reality. We first discovered an overnight escape room in 2022, and we’ve been keeping our eye on them ever since.

In 2024, we noticed many more of these popping up on Airbnb, and independently hosted. The Room Escape Artist Directory now includes 13 overnight escape rooms, labeled as [Overnight], found in 8 states. We know this list isn’t comprehensive yet.

An overnight escape room can be everything players were dreaming of when they first started asking them. We’ve played beautiful experiences that transported us to fully realized worlds with compelling characters. Here are our recommendations for overnight escape rooms.

That said, these experiences aren’t easy to build. There is more room (and more time!) for red herrings. The hint systems can’t be as responsive or flexible. More opportunity for content means more to design, build, and playtest.

We caution that along with the meticulously designed experiences will come the cash grabs. Additionally, Airbnb hasn’t caught on to this opportunity yet, as a way to categorize and market a listing, but when they do, if an escape room brings in bookings, the market will flood with low-quality overnight escape room experiences. Players, do your due diligence.

The Lower Tier

Pivoting back to the classic 60-minute escape room, and similar, that lower tier is cornered.

The lower tier of US escape rooms seems to be dominated by the longtime incumbents. In some cases this includes chains or franchises (including a couple of the ones listed above). Many of these companies got in early, during the boom of 2015-2016, and they’ve cornered the SEO for escape rooms in their areas.

10 years after escape rooms first opened in the US, it’s not easy to break into the market. It’s even harder to do with a mediocre or bad product.

Although our data on this is anecdotal, successful new entrants come in with a lot of in house skills, or business plans to support hiring the necessary talent. They produce amazing games. Or they produce really good games. And they stay.

Regionality

Quality varies between regions. We produce Regional Recommendation Guides for cities all over the world. The market standouts on some guides wouldn’t even get listed on other guides.

Escape rooms are regional businesses. With just a few exceptions, escape rooms are competing for entertainment dollars in their local area.

The best regions have multiple strong escape room facilities. Where there are more quality games, yet more are produced. Friendly competition levels up an entire region, growing the player base (or the pie, so to speak) for all the companies in the area. The stronger regions continue to grow.

Weaker regions have turned off the local player base with poor quality games and rely on tourists to keep the companies afloat.

Predictions

We’re expecting more closures in 2025, but we’re not heartbroken over it. We’re also not concerned about the health of the US escape room industry.

The bear market might be an indicator of a change in buyer behavior. If that’s the case, it’s going to impact escape rooms. However, we expect it’s going to impact the mid and bottom tiers, and we know there’s plenty of lower quality product waiting to be cleared out.

We’ve scanned the list of escape room facilities I’ve removed from our directory in 2024. The fact is we’ve never heard of most of them. Now, we haven’t heard about every company in this enormous country, and we haven’t traveled to every state, so our perception is certainly not a scientific metric. However, of the closed facilities we know, we can count on one hand those that had good games and we can count many more offering mediocre or poor games, or that had games that were good many years ago, but hadn’t updated or opened anything new.

With rare exception, the escape rooms facilities that have closed aren’t the ones who were attending conferences, inviting reviewers, posting on forums, attending meetups, or otherwise interacting with our community online or in person. We have not seen our community lamenting these closures either.

As long as the facilities with high-quality games continue to produce top notch products, closures don’t cause us to fear for the escape room industry. We predict that the weaker companies will continue to close, but as an industry, we’ll continue to create more habitual players, and create more incredible adventures for them to enjoy.

Methodology & Past Reports

Following the publication of our first piece on the US industry growth in 2016, we published more detailed information on our methodology for tracking the growth of the industry. That piece includes a bit of history about our directory and additional perspectives on the data.

This is our 10th industry report. The previous studies will remain available: 

1. US Escape Room Industry Report – December 2023
2. US Escape Room Industry Report – July 2022
3. The Impact of the Pandemic on the Escape Room Market [Survey Results] (May 2021)
4. US Escape Room Industry Report – 2020 Year End Update (February 2021)
5. 6 Year US Escape Room Industry Report (August 2020)
6. 5 Year US Escape Room Industry Report (August 2019)
7. July 2018 Escape Room Industry Growth Study
8. 2017 Escape Room Industry Growth Study
9. 2016 Escape Room Industry Growth Study

Thank You

Melissa Miller manages the Room Escape Artist Escape Room Directory. She puts in countless hours keeping this data up to date and organized. Without her dedication, we would not have this industry report. Additionally, her research and fact-checking ensure that this report is as complete and accurate as possible.

Thank you to all the readers who submit updates for your local areas. Your help is invaluable.

Learn More About Room Escape Artist

Room Escape Artist is your home for well researched, rational, and reasonably humorous immersive gaming content and events.

Website

For more industry commentary, check out our room design and business sections.

Podcast

On Reality Escape Pod, co-hosts David Spira and Peih-Gee Law (Survivor) explore immersive gaming from all angles, with guests who have incredible experience in this realm. Season 9 launches this spring.

RECON

The Reality Escape Convention, or RECON, is an escape room and immersive gaming convention for industry professionals and players. It’s for those who believe in the future of this industry and want to shape where it goes.

It alternates annually between being an in-person event and an online event. The upcoming event will be remote, August 17-18, 2025. Tickets will be on sale this spring. Subscribe here to be notified when tickets go on sale.

Tours

Our Escape Immerse Explore escape room tours take escape room players to some of the world’s best escape room markets including New Orleans, Albuquerque, San Francisco, and Orlando. You’ll experience a variety of escape room styles, go behind the scenes with creators, and make life-long friends.

This spring we’re hosting two Tours:

• The Montreal Tour visits the top escape room destination in the world. Seriously.
• The Time & Space Tour visits Chicago… with a bus ride to Champaign-Urbana for the best escape rooms nobody has ever played.

Both events originally sold out in pre-sale, but we opened up second sessions of each, so there are currently tickets available. If you’re considering one of these trips, I encourage you to buy your ticket today; most available sessions are nearly sold out.

Escape Room Recommendations

If you’re looking to find an incredible escape room near you, check out our regional recommendations guides.

Support our Work on Patreon

I’m Lisa Spira and you’re reading my 10th escape room industry report. Together with my husband David, we created Room Escape Artist in 2014 to help this industry grow into a sustainable form of entertainment that we could enjoy long into the future. We’ve been working on this tirelessly for a decade.

When I’m not deep in the industry data with Melissa, Room Escape Artist’s Directory Manager, I’m the Editor-In-Chief over here, where I empower our amazing team of 25 Contributors to bring you daily analytical, insightful, or sometimes just plain humorous content. We’ve published daily content for 8 years now, and this website has more than 3,350 blog posts to help you find your path through this industry, as a creator, operator, or consumer.

If you’ve found this industry report helpful, please support us on Patreon. Your financial support makes this research viable.

Along the winding road that has brought us here, David and I have found an incredible community. If you’re still reading this report, we invite you to join in. Our Patreon backer channel is the perfect place to continue the conversation.

And thank you to our wonderful community of Patreon supporters. Your support makes all of this possible.

Special shout out to those who joined this month: Lawrence J. Alfano, N. Sky Curie, Mayu, Cristina Palmer, Tristan Brand, Sam, and Skylar Frankina.

To those of you reading who have the means, we hope you’ll consider joining this wonderful group of supporters.

Appendix: Details on Escape Room Facility Counting

Games

This report does not count individual escape room games. While some facilities only operate a single game, many operate two or three games, and some operate far more.

Soon to Open

The Room Escape Artist directory includes some facilities that are not yet open for business, but appear to be opening in the near future. To be listed in the directory, we require a facility to have their address published on their website*, and their website to tell us a bit about the business.

We do not include escape room facilities that might open some day. A social media page that says “coming soon” is not enough to be listed in the directory or counted in this report.

*Some of the overnight escape rooms, labeled [Overnight] in our directory, do not have a publicly listed address, due to the nature of booking websites like Airbnb.

Dates

All dates in our data are when we added a company to our directory or removed it from our directory. While we try to find companies as soon as they open, and check often for closures, our dates don’t necessarily correlate exactly with when a facility opened or closed.

Permanence

Our directory only includes established entertainment facilities that continually operate physical escape rooms. We do not include escape rooms that appeared for a weekend, a week, or even a month, in a temporary structure or other facility, but will not operate continually. We include some facilities labeled [Seasonal] which are open permanently, but only at certain times of year.

Venue

Most escape room facilities are independent operations. Others operate out of larger entertainment venues such as bowling alleys, arcades, or restaurants. Many of these are labeled [Family Entertainment Center] in our directory. We include these as long as the escape room is a permanent fixture in the larger venue.

Mobile Facilities

The count of escape room facilities above does not include mobile escape room venues, which we stopped actively tracking in 2020. In past reports, mobile facilities were included within the Room Escape Artist US Escape Room Directory, and in the report. However, the current directory interface requires a full address and does not include mobile rooms, and because our mobile data is now outdated, it is not included here. The change to no longer count mobile facilities also accounts for a portion of the decrease in facilities in 2020.