Think about the last time you played shuffleboard, says Dallas CEO Gene Ball. “Shuffleboard is usually the game in the back of the bar, where you set you drink.”
“Forget all that,” he says.
Electric Shuffle is a lively, two-story bar in Deep Ellum with 17 shuffleboard tables inside. Each shuffleboard has a camera pointed at one end that measures each puck as it’s slid down the smooth, wooden plank. Groups of two to 20 people can play this new-school shuffleboard game never seen before in the United States.
Ball likens the shuffleboard tables to the gambling game craps, where groups of people stand around and cheer while one person takes a turn. Ball moved to Texas a few years ago to work at Topgolf, another gamified entertainment company. He took the job as CEO of Electric Shuffle-U.S. to expand the company across the country.
Ball calls Electric Shuffle “an adult playground.” And note: Electric Shuffle is not a place to bring kids.
Games cost $15 per person for 90 minutes. The bar runs specials at brunch and happy hour.
‘It was very exotic’
The only other place where these electronic shuffleboard tables exist is in the United Kingdom, where Stephen Moore, the founder, opened the first Electric Shuffle.
It’s not like he grew up playing shuffleboard at home in England. He first came across the game in Katy, Texas, while driving a fire engine to 28 countries across five continents over 284 days to raise money for lung cancer.
“I was like holy [expletive], I love this!” he says. “It was very exotic. We had to have it.” The word “exotic” still makes him laugh, because the shuffleboard table was inside an Elk’s Lodge — not a cutting-edge gaming center.
What he saw was a game that could be better, with some tech. And though Moore doesn’t have a gaming background, he ended up founding a company named Red Engine, which created shuffleboard technology for Electric Shuffle and a similar model for the game of darts, in a separate concept named Flight Club. Those bars are in Chicago and Boston, with others coming soon in Atlanta, Las Vegas and Houston.
All of the shuffleboard technology was created in-house among a team of about 70 people.
A place to play
The Deep Ellum bar is massive: 15,000 square feet, with a hidden back room and an upstairs that can be rented out to as many as 250 people.
Moore hopes Electric Shuffle is “the perfect antidote” during the pandemic, he says: “People want to see their mates — but they also want to go to a bangin’ bar.” He believes the bar is big enough to feel spacious in the era of social distancing.
Electric Shuffle is hosting brunch at $50 per person. It includes with an entire bottle of sparkling wine for each person, a selection of food from the kitchen and one hour of shuffleboard play.
In place of happy hour, Electric Shuffle calls it Power Hour, from 3 to 6 p.m. on weekdays. For $25 per person, visitors get bottomless pizza, two drinks and an hour of shuffleboard play. Attendees are encouraged to book in advance so the kitchen can prepare enough food.
Electric Shuffle is at 2615 Elm St., Dallas. It’s expected to open Nov. 19, 2021.
