As has been noticed across the industry of late, the buzz around pinball appears to be getting stronger.
In a report in Newsweek, the International Flipper Pinball Association, which monitors the world’s tournament and competition circuit, said that there was an almost tenfold increase in the number of them from 2009 to 2017.
Attendance at these events skyrocketed from 12,527 in 2009 to 115,656 in 2017. IFPA president Josh Sharpe also told the publication this isn’t only an American phenomenon, with other countries, such as Australia, especially embracing the pinball boom. This is something that InterGame reported on last month following our trip to the Australian Gaming Expo in Sydney.
Zach Sharpe, director of marketing at Stern (and Josh’s brother), credits phones and video games with driving people towards the pastime where you can actually feel and touch. “While video games are fun, you don’t get that same tactile action that you experience with a pinball machine.” Josh said the analogue nature of pinball wasn’t special during the rise of video games in the ’90s, but it brings a wow factor in today’s digital world.
Arcade bars are cited as being one of the major drivers behind Stern’s reported 40 per cent growth from 2015 to 2017.
