Las Vegas has a new way to work up a sweat that has nothing to do with the Strip's casino floors. Activate Games celebrated its grand opening Saturday at Town Square Las Vegas, a 13,000-square-foot venue packed with 15 mini-arenas where players dodge lights, scan codes, and chase high scores in games designed to turn human bodies into video game controllers.
The opening weekend doubled as a launch for National Pretzel Month, with Activate partnering with Auntie Anne's on a limited-edition “Supermarket Scan” game that challenges players to race around scanning pretzel menu items that match their wristband color, according to Globe Newswire. It marks Activate's first location in Nevada, adding Las Vegas to a map that now includes more than 75 venues worldwide and over 40 across the United States, as reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The newspaper notes the Town Square venue ranks as the second-largest Activate location in the country.
Inside the Mega-Grid and the Human Joystick Concept
Activate's signature Mega-Grid attraction challenges players to a 90-second burst of jumping and dodging across illuminated floor tiles, per the Review-Journal's reporting. Across the venue's 15 mini-arenas, each room holds anywhere from three to 10 different games, with individual challenges offering up to 10 levels of difficulty and more than 800 possible game combinations total, lit up by rainbow-colored LED displays. Players pick their games from a touchscreen posted outside each room before stepping inside.
“Player 1 is now you,” Activate general manager Clay Haton told the Review-Journal, describing how the venue's tech effectively hands visitors a controller made of their own bodies. Some rooms, like the aptly named Hide, task players with dodging five flashing eyes while punching numbered buttons before the clock runs out. Cooperative games let teams of two to five work together, while competitive formats pit players directly against one another. No goggles or special gear are required, though the paper reports regulars show up in comfortable clothes and sneakers, and Haton recommends stretching beforehand.
Wristbands, Scoring and the Business Behind the Games
Every player receives a digital wristband that tracks gaming stats in real time, letting visitors redeem points for prizes. The Review-Journal reports some customers have gotten so hooked they have ditched their gym memberships in favor of visiting Activate three times a week instead. Pricing runs $25.99 for an hour of play on weekdays and $29.99 on weekends, with an extra 30 minutes available for $5.
The competitive hook extends beyond the building itself. In late 2025, Activate launched the Activate Global League, an international eSports-style competition that lets thousands of players across different venues worldwide face off in score-tracked physical challenges, with results automatically logged via the RFID wristbands, according to Globe Newswire.
From Winnipeg Escape Rooms to a Global Franchise Push
Activate was founded in Canada, growing out of a husband-and-wife team's earlier escape-room business before they designed a format built around replayability. Adam and Megan Schmidt, a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police pilot and a physiotherapist, launched Activate in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 2019 after running The Real Escape Canada, where they identified the central flaw of escape rooms: once solved, a room loses its appeal for repeat visitors, according to Canadian Business.
Social media turbocharged that growth. Activate's official TikTok account has racked up more than 57 million likes, and a single viral video of its Grid tile game, in which players jump and dodge illuminated floor tiles based on shifting colors, topped 75 million views by July 2024, per CambridgeToday. The momentum translated into institutional recognition: Activate ranked seventh overall and first in entertainment on The Globe and Mail's list of Canada's Top Growing Companies in September 2025, after the Financial Times separately named it the fastest-growing leisure and entertainment company in the Americas based on a 209% compound annual growth rate.
That growth has been fueled in part by debt financing. Activate secured $72 million from Export Development Canada and RBC Royal Bank to fund its North American and global expansion, PitchBook financial data reported in March 2026, as detailed in Hoodline's coverage of Activate's Union Square flagship. The Las Vegas venue itself is run through Sounds Fun Entertainment, a Lexington, Kentucky-based hospitality group that signed an exclusive master agreement with Activate in October 2024 to open 50 locations across 21 states.
Retail Real Estate and the Vegas Tourism Angle
Town Square Las Vegas, where Activate has set up shop, is a 100-acre, 1.1-million-square-foot open-air shopping and entertainment complex near South Las Vegas Boulevard and Sunset Road with more than 115 stores and restaurants. The property, acquired in 2017 by TIAA and Fairbourne Partners through a $215.6 million mortgage, sits just south of the Strip and draws both locals and tourists.
The opening also fits a broader pattern of converting traditional retail space into tech-driven entertainment venues. Activate recently moved into a 15,000-square-foot former Toys “R” Us space at Manhattan's Union Square East in August 2026 and a former Rite Aid drugstore in New Jersey in mid-2025. Shopping center owners increasingly favor active leisure concepts like Activate because they generate steady foot traffic where conventional retailers once struggled.
The timing lines up with shifting spending patterns across Southern Nevada's visitor economy. Las Vegas recorded 38.5 million visitors in 2025, according to Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority data, with tourism spending tilting toward non-gaming entertainment and live events even as retail shopping and dining expenditures contracted. Whether an off-Strip, locally oriented spot like Town Square can balance tourist foot traffic with repeat local players chasing Activate Global League rankings remains an open question as the venue settles into its new home.
