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MALL BALL BRINGS NBA-STYLE ACTION TO SHOPPING CENTERS

By Sascha Brodsky

Not to say Marcus Molock wasn’t crazy about going to the mall, but the 31-year-old contractor says the only time he would hit the stores was when his girlfriend dragged him there.

But that was before he discovered Mall Ball, a chain of basketball venues that offers prizes to the best shooters. Now Molock heads to the Prince Georges Mall, outside Washington, D.C., to play three times a week on average, often coaxing his friends along too. “It’s totally addictive,” said Molock. And often he even shops at the mall when he is done playing.

Molock’s experience is a slam dunk both for the owners of Mall Ball and the malls themselves. The chain opened its first unit last year and now has 14. Mall Ball recently opened units in Birmingham, Ala., Chicago, Cincinnati and Lawrenceville, Ga. Each unit contains a glass-enclosed range 16 feet high, 22 feet long and 11 feet wide. Customers pay $4 to see how many baskets they can sink in 24 seconds.

The chain awards $1,000 in cash each week to the player with the highest score. In addition, each unit awards prizes daily, and sometimes hourly. Players can win sports memorabilia and equipment, iPods, Sony PSPs and PS2s, and electronic games from EA Sports.“The focus is on creating an authentic NBA-type experience,” said Mark D’Andrea, vice president of marketing and co-founder of the King of Prussia, Pa.-based Mall Ball.

Mall Ball was founded in 2004 with money from Jim Lesser, an entrepreneur who started JDL Ventures, an arcade game design and operating company that closed in 2003; Harry Wallasea, former president of Safeguard Scientifics; and Ira Lubert, a venture capitalist. The company has spent about $15 million so far on the venture.

Each Mall Ball unit consists of a 242-square-foot enclosed glass range where two players stand side by side and shoot baskets. The units cost about $50,000 each and are custom-built by a company that manufactures games for amusement parks. Designing the Mall Ball units required finding a prefabricated setup that could be moved easily into malls.

Another challenge was commissioning custom software to allow inventory control of the prizes and show the scores from every location. The scores are displayed on electronic billboards. “Our customers love that instant feedback,” D’Andrea said.

The company says it plans to have 100 units operating by the end of the year, with a goal of 400 eventually. Management is negotiating leases at 20 more locations currently, D’Andrea says, though he declined to name any.

In real estate as in shooting baskets, location is everything. Mall Ball prefers to locate its units as close as possible to a food court or a sporting goods store. “Food courts tend to be an entertainment venue in malls,” D’Andrea said. “So they [shoppers] are already in the mood to do something different other than shop.”

The average Mall Ball customer comes to play three times a week, and that means more revenue for the mall, says D’Andrea.

Mall operators confirm it. “It’s rare that you get a business this small that actually generates traffic for the rest of the mall,” said Joseph Coradino, executive vice president of PREIT, which owns the Gallery shopping center in Philadelphia where one Mall Ball is located.

Competitive instincts notwithstanding, “the biggest draw is the prizes,” according to D’Andrea. Molock agrees. He recently won $1,000. “After the taste of that kind of money, I can’t stay away,” he said.