Sandbox VR Counts Its Times Square VR Venue as Location 100
Sandbox VR opens its first New York City venue at 777 Seventh Avenue in Times Square in late October 2026.…
Read more...
Hero Zone: Where Social VR Meets Real-World Revenue -
Hero Zone: Where Social VR Meets Real-World Revenue -
Grant Thornton estimates that UK immersive attractions generated £7.4bn in expenditure in 2025.
The figure is from the first Experience Economy Index, published in October. Its partners are Experience UK, a trade association for British visitor attractions, and researchers at King’s College London. The formats it counts include ABBA Voyage’s digital concert and Frameless’s projection galleries.
The £7.4bn reaches past admission tickets. Grant Thornton counts what visitors spend around an immersive experience across the UK economy, including travel, food and drink, accommodation and shopping.
The same modelling puts the sector’s contribution to UK gross value added at £3.9bn. For every £1 of value created directly by immersive attractions, a further 78p is generated through supply chains and employee spending. The sector supported nearly 48,000 full-time-equivalent jobs.
Grant Thornton estimates that 17.3 million UK adults went to an immersive experience in the 12 months to August 2026. An Opinium survey of 4,000 UK adults for the report found a median spend of £210 per immersive experience. The median admission was £45, inside that £210. The same survey put the median spend at £125 for a festival and £15 for the cinema.
“People aren’t necessarily treating immersive experiences as a single transaction, but as an opportunity to spend time together and make memories,” said Matt Foulger, a tax partner at Grant Thornton UK.
The index defines immersive experiences as “paid experiences where people actively take part, rather than simply watch.” Concerts, theatre and cinema are excluded unless they have a strong immersive or interactive element.
It names four examples, and two of them, ABBA Voyage and Frameless, run on XR technology. At ABBA Voyage, digital versions of the four band members perform in the purpose-built ABBA Arena at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. Frameless runs four London galleries that show more than 40 artworks through floor-to-ceiling projection.
Sound Diplomacy put ABBA Voyage’s UK turnover at £2.06bn from May 2022 to May 2025. The show passed 4 million visitors in April 2026. In August, The VR Collective compared the arena with Soho Estates’ plans for LSX, a purpose-built immersive attraction on Leicester Square. The VR Collective also covered ABBA Voyage in an immersive cinema podcast in July.
The other two examples are physical game formats, The Crystal Maze LIVE Experience and Monopoly Lifesized. Little Lion Entertainment runs The Crystal Maze LIVE in London and Manchester and Arcade Arenas in London, with around 350,000 guests a year.
“The best immersive experiences combine the quality and replayability of a video game with the energy of a live event,” said Tom Lionetti-Maguire, Little Lion’s founder and CEO.
London accounts for £2.2bn of the £3.9bn in value added, 58% of the total. Northern Ireland is next at £510m, driven by Titanic Belfast and the Game of Thrones Studio Tour. Scotland follows at £233m and the North West at £154m.
Grant Thornton’s index measures ABBA Voyage’s digital concert and Frameless’s projection galleries alongside physical game attractions as one UK market. That market generated £7.4bn in expenditure in 2025. Its survey puts the median admission at £45 against a median total spend of £210 per visit.
How much is UK immersive attractions spending worth? Grant Thornton estimates UK immersive attractions generated £7.4bn in expenditure in 2025, counting visitors’ spending on travel, food, accommodation and shopping as well as admission. The sector added £3.9bn in gross value added.
Is the £7.4bn immersive attractions figure ticket sales? It reaches beyond tickets. The median admission in the report’s survey was £45, inside a median spend of £210 per immersive experience.
Does the Experience Economy Index count XR attractions? Two of its four named examples run on XR technology: ABBA Voyage, where digital versions of ABBA perform, and Frameless, a projection-based art experience. It also counts physical game formats such as The Crystal Maze LIVE Experience.
Which UK regions get the most value added from immersive attractions? London, with £2.2bn of the £3.9bn in value added. Northern Ireland is second at £510m.
