Live entertainment, fairgrounds, penny arcades and beach huts!

Trading on Nostalgia: Are ‘penny arcades’ the future of the British seaside amusement arcade?

Amusement arcades have been a fundamental component of the British seaside resort offering since the early 1900s, when the first ‘sports arcades’ began to open at the resorts’ fairgrounds. Since then almost every town that lays claim to the title of ‘seaside resort’ has at least one amusement arcade in order to entertain their visitors. Indeed, at the start of the 21st century, many smaller resorts featured few other indoor activities with which to occupy their guests (for example New Brighton or Barmouth). However, in recent years the seaside family amusement arcade has been bombarded by a range of issues, leaving these attractions struggling to survive. The arcades’ heyday of the late 1970s was fuelled by the new developments in video games, but many arcades today cannot compete with the home games consoles that provide better graphics, interactive game play, and online gaming and downloads. As the seaside arcades moved away from the videos and simulators in the 1990s they became more dependent on the gambling and gaming offers of Amusement With Prizes (‘fruit machines’), ‘penny falls’, and ‘cranes’ or ‘grabbers’ (teddy bear machines). In 2005 the Gambling Act was passed, making legislation on these gambling and gaming machines much tighter. The arcade industry claimed that The Act made their operations much less competitive as gambling establishments, meaning that the seaside arcades sought to diversify their product offering. In recent times a new type of amusement arcade began to open in Britain’s seaside resorts – the arcade that traded on nostalgia, or the ‘penny’ arcade. These arcades represented a move away from the gambling and gaming products and a return to ‘harmless’ or ‘innocent’ fun and amusement with fortune telling, test your strength, and old-style pinball games on offer – all for one old pence! This paper explores whether the penny arcades are the acceptable, gentrified and ‘heritagised’ face of the amusement arcade industry in changing times not only for the arcades, but for the resorts themselves; and asks if this is a repositioning of the seaside arcade product, or just a niche market within the arcade industry?