Friendly Fire Is Testing a Franchise Category the U.S. Has Avoided

By Sean Goldsmith

Friendly Fire is not selling games. It is testing whether social gaming can behave like a repeatable franchise habit in the U.S.

A Croatian esports café is using Texas to prove that “third-place gaming” can be franchised at scale, not just hyped as entertainment.

Most U.S. franchise growth still clusters around a familiar trio: food, fitness, and home services. That is not because other categories lack demand. It is because most “experience” concepts fail to translate into repeatable, franchisable habits. Friendly Fire’s Texas expansion suggests someone may finally be trying to solve that equation.

The Croatia-based esports café brand plans to open at least 20 locations across Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, with at least five per market and a first Houston franchise expected by late 2026. On the surface, this looks like another entertainment rollout. In reality, it is a more unusual bet: that social gaming can behave like a daily-use retail category rather than an occasional outing.

This Is Not an Arcade. It Is a Habit Engine

Friendly Fire’s model is built around time-based gaming, recurring tournaments, and community-driven events, rather than one-off visits. Locations typically include 40 to 60 gaming stations and generate revenue through prepaid gameplay, events, merchandise, and light food and beverage. That structure matters because it pushes the concept away from the volatility of traditional entertainment venues and toward something closer to a membership-driven routine.

The critical insight here is behavioral. Gaming is already a daily habit for a large portion of Gen Z. The brand is not trying to create demand. It is trying to relocate it from bedrooms to shared spaces. That is a very different challenge and, if executed well, a far more scalable one.

Texas Is Not Random. It Is a Stress Test

Friendly Fire’s decision to concentrate early U.S. expansion in Texas is telling. The state combines population growth, business-friendly economics, and a strong culture of social consumption. Company leadership has explicitly pointed to Texas’ “social, extroverted” consumer base as a reason for entry.

But more importantly, Texas offers a wide range of real estate formats, from urban cores to suburban power centers, allowing the brand to test how portable the model really is. If Friendly Fire can make the unit economics work across four major Texas metros, it will have effectively validated the concept for national franchising.

This is why the rollout feels asymmetric. Most international brands tiptoe into the U.S. with a handful of flagship locations. Friendly Fire is effectively running a multi-market pilot at scale, compressing years of learning into a single regional push.

The Franchise Math Is the Real Story

The company’s franchise structure is designed to lower the barrier to entry relative to traditional entertainment concepts. Franchise fees reportedly start around $49,500, and units can operate in footprints as small as roughly 1,500 square feet. That is a meaningful departure from large-format entertainment builds that often require millions in upfront capital.

Equally important is the operating model. A gaming café does not carry the same labor intensity as full-service food, nor the same equipment maintenance burden as large amusement venues. Instead, it leans on software, scheduling, and community programming to drive utilization. Friendly Fire’s proprietary app and tournament structure are designed to keep players returning weekly, not just occasionally.

If those retention mechanics hold, the model begins to resemble a hybrid between a gym membership, a coworking space, and a digital platform. That is where franchising becomes viable. Recurring behavior stabilizes revenue, and standardized systems make it replicable.

The Risk: U.S. Consumers Have Seen This Before

There is a reason this category has not scaled widely in the U.S. Internet cafés, LAN centers, and arcades have all struggled to maintain relevance once in-home technology improved. Friendly Fire’s entire thesis depends on whether community can outweigh convenience.

The brand’s European data suggests it can, with over 150,000 players and millions of gameplay hours logged annually. But U.S. consumers are notoriously unforgiving when concepts feel redundant to what they already have at home. The difference between a thriving location and an empty one may come down to how well operators execute local community building, not just whether the equipment is high-end.

Why This Could Scale Faster Than It Looks

If Friendly Fire gets the unit economics right, the expansion curve could steepen quickly. Unlike food brands, it does not need to win on taste or supply chain complexity. Unlike fitness, it does not depend on long-term contracts. It is selling time, competition, and social identity, all of which are inherently sticky when they work.

More importantly, the model aligns with a broader shift in franchising toward “place-based habits” rather than pure transactions. The most valuable franchise systems increasingly create reasons for customers to return multiple times per week. Gaming, in theory, already has that frequency built in.

What We Can Learn From This

Franchise operators should pay attention to categories that convert existing digital habits into physical routines, rather than trying to invent new behaviors. A practical move is to evaluate concepts based on repeat frequency and community stickiness, not just average ticket size. Franchisors should also recognize that non-food concepts can scale if they solve for habit formation and not just experience design. Over the next cycle, some of the fastest-growing franchise systems may come from categories the industry historically dismissed as “non-essential.”