In the original Immersive Revolution report, we identified a number of pioneer companies that were spearheading the growth of the immersive experience space to provide something of a global snapshot. In this update as we move into what some have termed Immersive2.0, we deep dive into ten of the key global players who we think will continue to grow (and evolve). We take a quick look at their story to date as well as where they are heading next. They are listed in no particular order and no doubt there will be lots of views on the merits of this Top 10 (and who is missing and who should have missed out) but this is list is based on my own personal opinions of what I am seeing at the moment (and also with the knowledge that predicting the future is a fool’s errand). One thing that is common to all is that based on the experiences of some of the inclusions in the first report, the path will likely continue to have plenty of twists and turns for each of them.

teamLab

The influential Japanese art and technology collective teamLab (founded in 2001) are a true giant in the immersive experience landscape. They have balanced critical acclaim with edutainment that has seen it welcome over 35 million visitors to its art exhibitions worldwide.

The original teamLab Borderless experience opened in Tokyo in 2018 and set the Guiness World Record for the most visited museum dedicated to a single group or artist (2.2m annual visitors from over 160 countries and regions), but following the area’s redevelopment, the experience relocated to a new purpose-built home at Azabudai Hills, reopening in 2024. In 2024, teamLab Planets welcomed 2.5m visitors breaking this record demonstrating that 7-years after opening these permanent venues, teamLab continues to attract strong visitation (although this is clearly helped by Tokyo’s strong fundamentals as a tourism hotspot).

teamLab has also continued to develop new locations and installations as its brand appeal has broadened, launching two new sites, teamLab Borderless (Jeddah) and Abu Dhabi and Hamburg. These have been achieved with significant public and private investment.

The Abu Dhabi site, teamLab Phenomena is particularly noteworthy as an indication of how far the company has grown in just a few years. The building is located at Saadiyat Island, a $27 billion cultural and residential development that expects to attract 19 million annual visitors on completion. teamLab Phenomena sits among global cultural heavyweights, including the Louvre and the Guggenheim. They are not out of place when you think that their Tokyo sites (Borderless and Planets) achieved about 4 million visitors between them in 2024 which would put them at number seven in the most visited museums in the world and five times the Guggenheim’s (New York) 766,000 visitors. Although they are still only halfway to the 8.7 million that The Louvre pulled in which puts them some way ahead at number one on the list. The scale of the teamLab Phenomena development is breathtaking: a 17,000-square-metre reinforced concrete structure composed of a series of cylindrical, drum-like galleries designed to house teamLab’s immersive works. This is nearly twice the size of teamLab Borderless and one of the biggest purpose-built immersive venues in the world (likely only behind The Sphere in Las Vegas). The organisation as a whole now numbers 1,000 team members (a similar number to Meow Wolf).

• Dig Deeper – REMIX Talk – Takashi Kudo, teamLab

Punchdrunk

After becoming one of the longest-running immersive theatre productions in history, UK based Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More finally shuttered in 2025, 14 years after opening. It played to over 2 million attendees (Vogue) and compares well with the average run for a Broadway play of 131 performances.

The production continues to perform extremely well in Shanghai and has just notched up 8 years so could well beat the original production in time. Total revenue for Sleep No More Shanghai has surpassed 550 million yuan (approximately US$75.35 million), attracting more than 620,000 participants, 60.5% of whom travelled from outside the city or country.

Sleep No More has also recently opened in Seoul, South Korea in a former multiplex cinema and is the production most associated with the growth of immersive theatre.

If you add in the productions of The Burnt City (200,000+), The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable (200,000+) and Masque of the Red Death (40,000, 2007) for which Punchdrunk has published figures it would appear that the company has achieved in excess of 3 million ticket sales since the breakout performance of Faust (30,000) in 2007.

• Dig Deeper – REMIX Talk – Felix Barrett, Founder and Artistic Director, Punchdrunk
• Dig Deeper – REMIX Talk – Maxine Doyle, Associate Director and choreographer for Punchdrunk
• Dig Deeper – Lucy Whitby, Senior Producer, Punchdrunk (creators of legendary New York immersive sensation ‘Sleep No More’)

Meow Wolf

Meow Wolf has been the poster child for the new generation of immersive experience companies and the last three years for them might be characterised as growth and growing pains. Lauded for their development of original and scalable IP, they began as an arts collective with temporary works, most notably The Due Return which generated $200,000 and gave them the confidence to develop a permanent story universe and location. This began with the House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe in 2016 in a former bowling alley supported by Game of Thrones Author George R. R. Martin (who purchased the 20,000 sq. ft space). The success of this venue saw the company raised USD $158 for a major expansion in 2021; a year that included the opening of Omega Mart in Las Vegas and Convergence Station in Denver both of which were significantly larger than the original venue. The company continued opening new sites with The Real Unreal in Grapevine in 2023 and most recently opened Radio Tave in Houston in 2024 and now has five permanent locations. Meow Wolf’s sixth permanent art exhibition will be opening in 2026 in Los Angeles repurposing a cinema space within a struggling entertainment destination (most recently sold for USD $80 million in 2023, $40 million less than the previous buyer purchased it for in 2015). Their seventh location has also been recently announced as New York at Pier 17, in the city’s historic Seaport.

Total visitation to date for Meow Wolf was reported as over 10 million across all venues in 2024 and the company also stated in 2024 that it was attracting close to 3 million annual visitors (again across all sites).

Meow Wolf has achieved stratospheric growth with 962 team members (as of March 2025) with significant economic and creative benefits. While they have continued to announce new locations (although not as many as the 15 they had hoped by this point) they has also experienced growth pains and have undergone three rounds of layoffs in recent years (artnet). There is also a complex debate about the trajectory of an arts collective that became a company to help fund its creative dreams (and notably unpaid creative workforce in the early stages) that has become so successful. Meow Wolf set out to be a different type of organisation that balanced the creative and commercial. It has achieved this to some extent; it is a B Corp but is it possible to retain that original creative passion. Growth at all costs is not an uncommon mindset in the startup universe and investors have often backed the company with this expectation but should this be the goal of creative startups who seek to straddle multiple worlds.

The reality is likely somewhere in the middle, but they remain a pivotal force in the growth of the immersive sector even if the future locations have seen them play safe. Major tourism locations such as New York and Los Angeles (with large populations and catchment areas) reduce the need for repeat visitation which can be challenging to achieve without significant reinvestment or expansion of the story universe across multiple platforms. The latter is something which Meow Wolf are also exploring and helps mark them as more advanced than other players in this space. As an example, Meow Wolf recently collaborated with Mighty Coconut to create Walkabout Mini Golf: Meow Wolf, an online virtual reality course based on the Numina storyline (at the Convergence Station experience in Denver). Mighty Coconut is a highly regarded games developer and has so far has created 17 VR golf courses across multiple properties. They have also recently announced a partnership with Niantic (the company who created Pokémon Go) to use Augmented Reality for in-exhibition storytelling to further immersive visitors in their story worlds.

• Dig Deeper – REMIX Talk – Vince Kadlubek, Co-Founder, Meow Wolf
• Dig Deeper – REMIX Talk – Joanna Garner (USA), former Senior Story Creative Director, Meow Wolf

Arte Museum

Arte Museum (by D’strict)^[1], founded in South Korea remain something of an unsung success story in the immersive entertainment sector despite their impressive growth story (but this is beginning to change). Like teamLab they are known for original immersive digital art installations, perhaps most notably Wave (2020). This is the world’s largest anamorphic illusion which uses LED screens to create a 3D visualisation of a turbulent wave crashing into a glass building (helping bring this concept to the mainstream when it went viral). This experience was followed up by Whale at the iconic Times Square in 2021.

D’strict, the parent company of Arte Museum (founded in 2004) opened its first site, the huge 10,000 SQM $13 million Live Park in 2011 (this actually predates teamLab’s first permanent location). Live Park incorporated holograms, 3D stereoscopic visuals, AR, interactive media, kinetic sculpture and large-scale installation to create a fully immersive virtual and augmented reality environment, blending art and gameplay into a single, cohesive narrative experience. Ultimately this temporary concept that has been described as a ‘4D art park’ (The Observer) closed fairly quickly before D’strict later developed Arte Museum.

It was a key learning experience however and Arte Museum is opening sites at a faster rate than better known players such as Meow Wolf, teamLab or CultureSpaces reaching 7 sites in just 5 years in major markets such as the US, China and Middle East. Jeju (2020), Yeosu (2021), Gangneung (2021), Busan (2022), Las Vegas (2023), Dubai (2024) and most recently New York (2025) with more to follow. teamLab is perhaps the closest comparison in that both organisations produce high quality original digital immersive experiences and art. However, from our analysis above it would appear that teamLab is currently focused on a limited number of mega sites in a few locations rather than multiple smaller sites across the globe (outside of their touring and temporary installations).

Visitation to Arte Museum has also been significant with 11 million visitors to date. The success of Arte Museum and its growing global network of locations has seen traditional museums and galleries partner with the organisation such as Musée d’Orsay in a project that has seen their collection digitally reinterpreted by Arte Museum and exhibited across their network.

• Dig Deeper – REMIX Talk – Sean Lee (South Korea), CEO, ARTE Museum

NEON

NEON has emerged as a major global player in immersive entertainment and the experience economy. Their approach combines leading IPs such as Marvel, DC, Harry Potter, Jurassic World and Avatar with a highly scalable touring model. These experiences have drawn over 20 million visitors to date.

The success of these experiences in driving visitation has enabled them to partner with leading visitor attractions to apply these IPs in innovative ways that transform those locations. An example would be Avatar: The Experience which was installed within the Cloud Forest Dome at Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, completely changing the experience of this area. It attracted an incredible 2.63 million visitors in just over a year (419 Show Days). Gardens by the Bay has followed this up by adapting another NEON production Jurassic World: The Experience to fit this space.

Originally these experiences toured largely to third party venues such as the previous example, but NEON is also achieving growth and potentially higher margins by opening up its own spaces, the first of which is NEON at Battersea Power Station in London which opened in April 2025. The wider Battersea Power Station redevelopment is one of the largest regeneration projects in Europe, representing an investment of around £9 billion across a 42-acre riverside site with a significant retail and leisure component in one of the world’s leading tourism destinations (London received 22.7 million visitors in 2025 ranking number three globally).

NEON is a temporary building (planned for an operational period of 5 years) with 15m tall ceilings and over 3,200 sqm of floor space and provides central London with a new destination for large-scale, ticketed immersive exhibitions. The venue opened with Jurassic World: The Experience and the next exhibition is Ramses and the Pharaohs’ Gold. NEON has forecast that it will have around 750 visitors a day (around 275,000 per annum).

Fever

Fever is a global live-entertainment discovery and ticketing platform that has become a major force in the experience economy by using data, technology and audience insights to develop, market and scale experiences worldwide.

Fever might be considered the ’Netflix of Live Experiences’ as it uses data science and algorithms in a similar way to the streaming giant to understand what its community of users wants to make recommendations and identify which events to secure and create for the platform and where they should take place.

Critical to its success is the Secret Media Network, a digital media group focused on culture, leisure and city life. With 200 city editions globally (Secret Media websites (such as Secret NYC, Secret LDN etc.) it generates over 300 million interactions monthly providing rich data to feed into the Fever platform.

Beyond distribution, Fever also acts as a producer and co-creator of immersive experiences, most notably through formats such as Candlelight Concerts. We touched on the significant levels of investment into Fever in the previous section and the company is a great example of how tech startups can leverage resources to grow rapidly. Their use of data to identify new opportunities has led them to launch new formats, packaging and destitution models and the scale of Fever’s success is reshaping other parts of the creative industries. Candlelight Concerts has over a million social media followers and sells over 3 million tickets per annum in 100 plus cities making it the number one way that people experience classical music globally. Fever also has access to major IPs and other major hits include Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience, which has received over 2 million visitors to date travelling to Canada, UK, US, Australia, Singapore, and France.

Fever has come a long way since it was founded in 2011 and like NEON their pipeline of experiences is so significant that as well as using third party venues, they are leasing their own spaces to provide further channels to reach the public more directly such as the new Fever Exhibition and Experience Centre in Melbourne.

• Dig Deeper – REMIX Talk – Sean Morris, GM, Fever (APAC)
• Dig Deeper – REMIX Talk – Maria Vitoria Moura, Senior Market Strategy and Partnerships Manager UK, FEVER

Pophouse Entertainment (ABBA Voyage)

ABBA Voyage (by Pophouse) launched shortly before the publication of the original Immersive Revolution report and it was already clear that this groundbreaking concert experience developed through a high-profile collaboration with Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the special effects house behind films like Star Wars and Jurassic Park, was a hit with audiences. For the first time it showed the potential for immersive technologies to provide entirely new types of experiences. It uses advanced motion capture (160 cameras) and visual effects to create highly realistic digital avatars of the band (often described as “ABBAtars”), captured over months using a custom-built motion-capture studio. This was then combined with real-time rendering, projection and lighting within a purpose-built arena to produce the illusion of a live, three-dimensional performance without using true holographic technology.

In the intervening period it never slowed down and transformed into a phenomenon. 3.5 million visitors have attended the show since it opened in May 2022 (and nearly one in five (19%) travelled from outside the UK).

It has also produced some compelling evidence of the long-term economic impact of the investment in immersive entertainment; ABBA Voyage has so far contributed £2.06 billion ($2.74 billion) to the British economy (Sound Diplomacy). The event supports 9,739 workers across the UK, not just staff at the 3,000-seat temporary venue but ancillary workers at hotels, restaurants and pubs in London.

The enduring success of ABBA Voyage has led to discussions about new locations and the announcement of new content including a KISS show in 2027.

Area15

Developed by Fisher Brothers and Beneville Studios, Area15 is an ‘emporium of experiences’ and is an extreme and influential example of how the shopping centres and other retail locations could morph into ‘experience precincts’.

It includes 23 immersive attractions (including the anchor tenant Meow Wolf), 11 F&B outlets, and more than 60 sculptures and 30 murals.

Since opening in September 2020, Area15 has welcomed more than 15 million visitors and was the US’s most visited attraction (2022) according to Placer.ai (a leader in location analytics and foot traffic data).

A proposed second location in Florida did not materialise but the success of Area15 has seen significant further significant investment to add to its growing roster of tenants with new entertainment venues, eateries and more coming next year. Area15 has transformed from a single, 200,000 sq. ft. venue into a 35-acre entertainment, retail and dining campus. The new experiences include Universal Horror Unleashed, Felix & Paul Studios’ Interstellar Arc. Since launching, it has created more than 1,500 jobs.

The site embraces multiple forms of new technology including robotaxis through a partnership with autonomous vehicle company Zoox to provide a dedicated pickup and drop-off location at the site.

• Dig Deeper – REMIX Talk – Michael Beneville, Chief Creative Officer, Area15 (Las Vegas) & CEO, Beneville Studios (NYC)

Moment Factory

Moment Factory is a multidisciplinary multimedia entertainment company based in Canada, specialising in the creation of distinctive immersive environments and attractions. They were named “Most Innovative Live Event Company” globally by Fast Company.

The company has evolved its core model in recent years achieving significant growth. Originally specialising in the development custom experiences (bespoke, fee-for-service immersive projects developed in collaboration with clients), they have now developed a slate of Moment Factory Originals. These are proprietary attractions (permanent and temporary) that are conceived and delivered by Moment Factory (such as AURA and Lumina). Lumina, a series of large-scale, outdoor nighttime immersive light and sound trails, perhaps best highlights Moment Factory’s development of direct-to-consumer IP (the trails transform natural and heritage landscapes into story-driven, multi-sensory experiences). They have launched over 25 Lumina experiences in countries (including a number of permanent locations) including Canada, Japan, France, Australia and Singapore with an impressive 5 million plus ticket sales. AURA, an indoor immersive projection, light and sound experience that has transformed the experience of two heritage sites has met with similar success. Over 2 million people have seen the first three experiences to date in Montreal, Paris, and San Francisco and a fourth has just been launched in Quebec City.

Another major consumer experience recently launched is The Messi Experience. This unfolds across nine thematic installations, each offering a different window into the life and career of Lionel Messi. Launched in Miami, the exhibition is designed as a global touring format, with plans to reach up to 150 cities over five years.

Backed by US $50 million in investment, with a minimum of $3 million allocated to each tour stop, the experience blends video, 3D environments, AI and large-scale projection mapping within a 20,000-square-foot immersive venue. The project is a collaboration between CMN, Primo Entertainment, and Moment Factory.

• Dig Deeper – REMIX Talk – Sakchin Bessette, Co-Founder, Moment Factory
• Dig Deeper – REMIX Talk – Jean-Baptiste Hardoin, Creative Director, Moment Factory
• Dig Deeper – REMIX Talk – Jérôme de Baecque, Director (APAC), Moment Factory

COSM

COSM is a 2,000 capacity high-tech sports and entertainment venue based around a huge 87-foot diameter 8K LED curved dome screen delivering an experience they call Shared Reality. It did not feature in the original report with its first 65,000 sq ft venue only opening in June 2024 in Los Angeles at Hollywood Park (a second venue opened in Dallas shortly afterwards).

At the time another much larger LED screen-based venue that was grabbing all the headlines. The report was released just prior to the opening of the Sphere (by MSG) in Las Vegas which quickly went viral and grabbed the world’s attention as a new type of entertainment venue. The two models have similarity but differ hugely in scale. The cost of the Las Vegas Sphere was around USD$2.3 billion about 25 times more than the construction of a COSM venue on the other hand is estimated as only $80 to $90 million (Fast Company)

The Las Vegas Sphere is a 17,600-seat venue as opposed to the 2,000-capacity for COSM so they can service very different types of location. There is room for both models, but COSM could end up scaling far more quickly and already has more venues open or announced (five to two for the Sphere).

Despite the hype around the Sphere, planning permission for a second even larger version in London was refused with light pollution a factor that could likely restrict locations. Despite the success of events at the venue, the business model has not delivered consistently with periods of losses as well as profitability. Between June 2023 & June 2024 the Sphere generated nearly $500M in revenue but also incurred an operating loss of $480M (opened Sept 2023) with advertising revenue also below target. However. it has been claimed by one source that the success of Wizard of Oz at Sphere could see the venue make $500 million this financial year. Alongside the planning challenges and the uncertain business model the second location (Abu Dhabi) where significant public support could be required. This is a franchise model with Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT) funding the cost and paying MSG as a delivery agency.

It was no surprise that Sphere Entertainment announced that 5,000 capacity venues were being designed although there are no confirmed locations as of the time of writing.

Other moves

Other honourable mentions just outside our top ten include Phantom Peak in London as well as Wake the Tiger in Bristol (and soon to be in London) who have also demonstrated impressive growth potential. Other companies that are rapidly expanding include Immersive Gamebox (also from the UK). The Museum of Illusions has grown to over 70 sites in 27 countries since opening in 2015 and has just been acquired as part of a strategy for further expansion. After a landmark debut in Paris in 2022, the Balloon Museum was awarded Exhibition of the Year and drew a record 723,000 visitors, cementing its status as a global immersive phenomenon. This has seen it courted by major players in the cultural sector, recently collaborating with the Grand Palais as part of its reopening events following a $560 million redevelopment.

Puy du Fou, the immersive theme park operator also continues to go from strength to strength. Theme parks such as Puy du Fou have redefined the category by focusing exclusively on immersive storytelling rather than rides. Visitors are transported through richly staged historical worlds, with live performance and scenography at the core of the experience. Puy du Fou has twice been named the world’s best theme park and now attracts around 3 million visitors annually across its original site in France. They have announced new locations in the US and UK, but it is their SAGA City of Light project that is perhaps most interesting as they step into the immersive theatre sector which has been dominated by Punchdrunk.

In China, SAGA City of Light pushes immersion to an unprecedented scale. Spanning 46,000 square metres, it holds the Guinness World Records title for the world’s largest performance area and is projected to welcome 1.2 million visitors a year. The production features 150 resident actors, 50 large-scale scenes, and more than 26,000 retro props, many of them original, delivered through a US $92.4 million build. Visitors don red cloaks, pass through a “time portal,” and navigate 26 possible narrative routes, guided by non-player characters, following a development process which attempts historical authenticity shaped by close collaboration between the Puy Du Fou creative team and a Chinese historian.

Netflix is another player which has made its mark on the immersive scene, but it could well be a shoe in for the top ten next time around. Netflix reports that it has achieved 10 million visitors to 40 touring experiences based on its IP (that has travelled to 350 cities). The success and data from these fan experiences has fed into the recent launch of Netflix House, the first permanent immersive experience locations for the streaming giant. These are significant investments with the first site around 100,000 sq ft so they are definitely one to watch once the initial visitation figures are released. Finally, Culturespaces is worthy of an honourable mention, reaching the milestone of 5 million visitors per annum across 11 sites.

^[1] For note, the author Peter Tullin is a consultant to Arte Museum