IRL

There's a shortage of good things to do outside London.

People are choosing real experiences away from screens with friends and at work.

Let the IRL land before saying anything. Then: everyone in this room can name the best thing they did this year, and most of them had to travel for it.
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02What people want

Somewhere between crazy golf and a trip to Florida, there's almost nothing.

Crazy golf, bowling An hour · £10 to £35 forgotten by Monday A trip to Florida A week · £1,000s remembered for years A day out you remember for years A few hours, near home · £40 to £100 almost nobody makes this
  • People want memorable experiences that fit into a day. A day trip to London is expensive.
  • With friends at the weekend, and with their team at work.
  • 17m UK adults went to an immersive attraction last year, and most of the great ones are in London or abroad.
Ask the room: what did you do with your team last time, and do you remember it? The answer is usually crazy golf or a curry. The other end is a holiday. The middle is what people actually want, and almost nobody makes it.

03What fills the middle

The best experiences in the world combine three things.

ThreeDoors is a live spy thriller you play in a private group of 3 to 6: about 90 minutes, three decisions, eight endings, real sets and real actors.

  • None of the world's top 100 escape rooms is in the UK. UK economics make it hard to combine the space, sets and live actors the best ones need using a traditional model.
Spectacle Story Agency Theme parks Immersivetheatre Escape rooms A real world Sound, light& senses Charactersyou believe An endingthat lands Surprises &physical twists Witnessedmoments Stakes thatare yours ThreeDoors

And the eighth, under all of them: tested and re-tested until it lands.

Each circle alone already exists and already makes money. Nobody in the UK holds the centre. The toggle shows the eight things the world's best rooms all deliver.

04How we win

A year studying the best in the world taught me four things. Each one works twice.

For the playerFor the business
Hidden secret locationsFinding it is part of the thrill.Upstairs space nobody else wants, so the rent is low.
A large, exciting, private experienceA big show, just your group. No strangers.Cleverly pipelined: a new group every 12 minutes, the capacity of an eight-room escape venue.
Access via a waitlistHard to get into, so you tell people when you do.We open only on the days we know we'll fill.
Tested at every stageEvery moment rebuilt until it lands.The people who have played become the marketing.
The research behind it: 121 of the world's best rooms played, several hundred more analysed, 363 industry podcasts indexed. Each of the four is something the best rooms do for the player; the trick is that each one also fixes a line in the P&L that kills most operators.

05The first build

The first one is in Reading. Walk through it.

Simplified plan, not to scale · 12,700 sq ft, Broad Street, Reading
  • The site is lined up: 12,700 sq ft on Broad Street, Reading, five minutes from the station. Good enough to be a permanent site, and cheap enough in year one to use for testing.
  • Built by someone who has done this: Tom Ball found, fitted out and ran 48,000 sq ft of themed space at DeskLodge (£4m turnover, profitable, 12 years), after founding a tech agency.
January

Build it

March

Test it

July

Run it

Thanks to the waitlist, we open only on days we know will be close to full, and adjust as we learn.

Already done: SEIS advance assurance granted · site lined up · story in its fourth draft

    This is the money shot. Click "Walk through it" and take them through the evening, one room at a time. Three decisions, eight endings, one live main character waiting at the end. Then: build it from January, test it from March, run it from July. Click the plan thumbnail to show the real floor.

    06The prize

    Creating a national chain. We've moved from films to box sets and universes.

    The same investment creates more reasons to watch. We're doing the same for experiences: each location is a new episode, and every new site sells the old ones.

    The Directorate · Episode 1 · Reading
    🔒 The next episode
    🔒 The next series · Mission to Mars?
    One format · one show system · one brand

    One full site, a year

    ~200
    groups a week, private, a new one every 12 minutes
    £3.15m
    revenue, at £50 a head for leisure and £150 for business
    49%
    site operating margin, before fit-out and central costs
    £0.8m
    to fit out, earned back in about six months at maturity

    Eleven sites by 2031: about £30m of revenue and £10m of operating profit a year.

    From today's financial model, which is being rebuilt around the first build.

    Box sets: the studio builds the world once and gets many seasons out of it. One site at maturity does £3m; the format, the show system and the brand carry to every new one. This is why the first build is worth going for.

    07The ask

    £360k to build the first site.

    £1.67
    a share (60 shares per £100)
    £1.91m
    pre-money
    15.9%
    to new investors
    • SEIS first: £250k, 50% income-tax relief (equivalent to £0.95m pre-money). Then EIS: £110k, 30% relief (equivalent to £1.33m pre-money). Same price for both.
    • Minimum £1,000. No fees, no carry.

    Open to certified high-net-worth and sophisticated investors only.

    Small, specific and staged: the cheque buys a working venue and the evidence, not a promise.

    Come and play the first version.

    Test sessions start in Reading in March 2027.

    Tom Ball · tom@threedoors.co.uk · Three Doors Experience Ltd · CRN 16748951

    Invite them. Every investor gets a slot in the March tests. (The image is a concept render of the end-game room.)