There was a time in the 80s-90s when arcades were a big deal in America. What Space Invaders and Pac-Man started, Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat breathed new life into. While those glory days may be over, Dave & Busters has kept the fire burning by offering a substantive and fresh arcade experience. And you know what else has been incredibly popular lately? Gambling. So does that mean Dave & Busters is going to allow sports betting? No! That would be ridiculous.
But they ARE going to let you bet on arcade games.
Imagine if you will, a Street Fighter 6 arcade cabinet in the middle of a Dave & Busters. Two people are playing Maybe it’s a battle between Cammy and newcomer Marisa. You’re there with a friend see this battle unfolding. You turn to your friend and say, “I bet you ten bucks Cammy wins.” Your friend agrees to take this bet but proposes you actually use an online betting platform to legitimately place this wager. That’s basically what Dave & Busters is planning to implement.
Founded in 2019, company Lucra (guessing it’s a play on the word lucrative) specializes in “gamification.” They enable “cash, e-commerce, or cashless contests on partner platforms.” So a business can use them to help spice things up by adding gambling or some other competitive element to whatever they normally do.
There are a lot of questions that neither Dave & Busters or Lucra are answering. There’s no effective launch date for the program, aside from it happening in the upcoming months. Lucra also hasn’t revealed what the betting limits will be on this platform or exactly how it will tie into existing hardware and software. How is it going to mitigate against things too like people betting against themselves or throwing a game for the sake of letting other people profit?
Sometimes betting on things just seems like a, less than good idea. The WWE was looking to legalize betting on its matches in 2023. The pervasiveness of gambling has only grown in the last decade thanks in no small part to fantasy sports and organizations like DraftKings and FanDuel. How this is going to affect something like Dave & Busters is anybody’s guess.
All we know is if you’re watching a Street Fighter match, never bet on the guy who has to keep asking how to do a Hadouken.
