Sky Zone franchise unit economics — square footage is the whole business model.

Scale decides the outcome.

Same brand, same playbook, same fee load — materially different businesses depending on footprint. Note that Model Parks are a screened subset (n=34), not a size tier, so they are not directly comparable to the quartile bands below.

Sky Zone gross sales and EBITDA by park size.

The franchisor breaks all 106 reporting franchised parks into four size bands. Revenue climbs with square footage, but EBITDA does not climb in a straight line — the 25,001–30,000 band posted the highest average EBITDA of the four.

Across all 106 parks, gross sales ranged from $601,841 to $7,971,315 — a 13× spread. Only 41.5% met or exceeded the aggregate average.

The Model Park detail.

The Model Park group is the franchisor’s best-case screened cohort, and even there the distribution is wide: only 35.3% of the 34 parks met or exceeded the average gross sales, and median EBITDA ($667,077) sits below the average ($710,790) — the signature of a few strong performers pulling the mean up.

A note on the margin figure. The 23.6% average EBITDA margin is the franchisor’s published number, and the filing defines it as average EBITDA divided by average gross sales. Dividing the two disclosed averages ($710,790 ÷ $2,847,069) yields 25.0% rather than 23.6%. We report the figure as disclosed and flag the discrepancy rather than silently recomputing it — if the margin is decision-relevant for you, request the written substantiation the franchisor makes available.

The fee stack: what leaves before COGS.

Three separate obligations sit on top of gross sales, and they are commonly conflated. The royalty and ad fee go to the franchisor; the local advertising requirement is money you must spend in your own market, and only becomes payable to the franchisor if you fail to spend it.

The franchisor holds the right to raise the ad fee to 4%, which would move the stack to 14%. Note also that if you underspend the local advertising requirement in any month, the franchisor may require you to pay the shortfall to them — so the 4% is a floor on spend, not a target.

Insurance is the largest uncontrolled line in the model.

This is the number most pro formas get wrong, because it is not a fixed input. The Master Insurance Program cost — the filing calls it Total Cost of Risk — runs between 2.4% and 13.0% of gross sales, is recalculated every six months, and can move in either direction. Third-party coverages are purchased separately on top of it.

What separates the top Sky Zone performers.

Working from the disclosed distributions rather than anecdote, the spread between strong and weak parks resolves into a small number of factors — and most of them are settled before opening day.

Decided before you open

• Box size, and specifically the 25,001–30,000 band. That bucket posts the highest average EBITDA of any size range ($578,290) and the highest margin (23.3%). Moving up to 30,001–58,004 adds about $66K of sales, gives back roughly $25K of EBITDA, and costs $750K–$1.6M more to build. Bigger buys revenue, not return.
• Four or more party rooms. This is the other half of the Model Park screen. Model Parks average 4.4 rooms and $2,847,069 in sales against $2,255,992 system-wide — a $591K gap. Party and event revenue is booked ahead, priced per head, and carries food attached; open-jump admissions are neither.
• The lease. Occupancy is one of the franchisor’s six named EBITDA expense categories and it is fixed for a decade. Sky Zone parks need 16,000–58,000 sq ft of clear-height space, which is thin, inflexible inventory. Every point of rent-to-sales is permanent margin.
• How you entered. Ground-up runs $3,246,160–$6,400,210 depending on size band. Rebranding an existing Rockin’ Jump or DEFY park runs $234,600–$569,600. Same brand, same royalty, same Item 19 economics, at a fraction of the capital. On identical EBITDA these are not remotely the same investment.

Live operating levers

• Total Cost of Risk. Covered above — the single largest controllable swing in the P&L.
• Group and institutional sales. Nothing in Item 19 isolates this, so treat it as inference rather than disclosure: a park reaching the top of the range is unlikely to be doing three times the walk-in traffic of the median. Field trips, camps, corporate events, and fundraisers fill weekday dayparts that open jump does not.
• Margin discipline over revenue chasing. The distributions point this way. Only 35.3% of Model Parks met the average on sales, but 52.9% met or beat it on EBITDA margin, and median margin (25.0%) runs above average margin (23.6%). Outlier revenue is rare; competent margin is broadly achievable.
• Unit count. The multi-unit structure reduces the initial fee per park after the first, and spreads a general manager, group-sales function, and back office across several P&Ls instead of one.

Context you underwrite around

• Ramp. The reporting population excludes parks that opened mid-year or transferred, so the disclosed figures describe stabilized operations. No park should be judged on year one.
• Metro density. Corporate parks average $3,240,425 against $2,255,992 for franchised, at broadly similar square footage, and the filing states corporate parks are typically in larger metros. A meaningful share of that gap is trade area, not operating skill.

The corporate-versus-franchise divergence.

Item 20 shows a pattern worth understanding before signing anything. Over three years, franchised units went 118 → 126 → 120 → 122 — essentially flat. Company-owned units went 44 → 71 → 114 → 123, close to a tripling. At the end of 2025 the system held 122 franchised and 123 corporate parks.

There are two honest readings and a prospective franchisee should hold both. Either the franchisor is concentrating capital in the strongest markets and operating them well, or it is absorbing units that struggled independently. The corporate sales premium is consistent with the first; the reacquisition activity is consistent with either. What matters practically is which territories remain available, and why.

Questions worth putting to Sky Zone.

• What has Total Cost of Risk been at each of the last six recalculations, expressed as a range across parks rather than an average?
• Corporate parks average $3,240,425 against $2,255,992 for franchised. What explains the gap beyond metro density?
• Within the 25,001–30,000 sq ft band, what distinguishes the strongest park from the weakest?
• What is the party and event revenue mix, and how does it track against the four-party-room threshold?
• For units reacquired by the franchisor, what were trailing sales and EBITDA at the time of reacquisition?
• How many signed but unopened agreements were signed more than 24 months ago?

One further note on validation calls: the filing discloses that some current and former franchisees have signed provisions restricting what they may say about the system. Weight the conversations accordingly.

Structural terms worth pricing.

These are contract terms rather than Item 19 figures, but they carry real financial weight and belong in any model.

The management fee deserves a second look. If the franchisor steps in to run your park, the fee is half of gross sales — on a park at median performance, materially more than its entire EBITDA. Understand precisely what triggers it. These are matters for franchise counsel, not for us; we raise them because they shape the financial model, not because we are advising on the contract.

What this means for your finance function.

The footprint decision is irreversible. The gap between the smallest and largest size bands is roughly $722K in annual sales and $157K in EBITDA. Unlike staffing or pricing, you cannot fix it later — which makes the underwriting model you build before signing the lease the highest-leverage financial work in the whole project.

Read the cohort definition, not just the headline. “Model Park” requires 25,000+ sq ft, four or more party rooms, and full-year operation — 34 parks out of 122 franchised. Underwriting a new location to the Model Park average means assuming you land in a screened top cohort. The 106-park aggregate is the more honest base case, and the low end of each band is your downside.

EBITDA here is not distributable cash. The franchisor states plainly that EBITDA excludes debt service, principal and interest, and it also excludes owner compensation. On a build running into the millions with periodic equipment refresh cycles, the gap between disclosed EBITDA and what an owner actually takes home is substantial. Building unit economics down to free cash flow after debt service and a refresh reserve is what turns this disclosure into a decision.

The figures are unaudited and self-reported. Sky Zone states it did not audit or verify franchisee-submitted information. Treat these as directional, and insist on actual records if you are buying an existing park.

Revenue mix and seasonality still drive the year. Parties, memberships, café, and events separate a strong park from an average one, and event deposits are deferred revenue until the event is delivered. Our entertainment franchise finance guide covers those mechanics; franchise cash flow management covers the 13-week forecast that makes peak-season cash last.

Bookkeeping for a Sky Zone franchise.

The Item 19 analysis above is only actionable if your books can produce the same lines the franchisor reports. Most trampoline park bookkeeping is set up to file a tax return, not to run a park — which is why so many operators cannot tell you their EBITDA margin without a month of cleanup work.

A Sky Zone bookkeeper needs to handle four things a general bookkeeper typically will not:

• Deferred revenue on party deposits and prepaid passes. Event deposits are a liability until the party happens; multi-visit passes and memberships are recognized as visits are used, with breakage on what expires. Booking either as income on receipt overstates the month and hides an obligation you still owe.
• Revenue separated by type. Walk-in admissions, party and event revenue, café, retail, and memberships behave differently and carry different margins. Blended into one income line, you lose the ability to see which engine is actually running — and party revenue is precisely the line the Model Park data suggests matters most.
• Chart of accounts mapped to the franchisor’s EBITDA categories. Sky Zone defines EBITDA using six specific expense buckets: cost of goods sold, occupancy, advertising, payroll, insurance, and other costs. If your books do not roll up to those same categories, you cannot benchmark against Item 19 without rebuilding the numbers by hand every time.
• Total Cost of Risk tracked as its own line. With insurance running anywhere from 2.4% to 13.0% of gross sales and resetting every six months, it needs to be visible and trended — not buried in general overhead where a rate change goes unnoticed for two quarters.

Capital Advisors provides bookkeeping, controller support, and fractional CFO services for franchise owners. We are an Intuit Elite-tier QuickBooks ProAdvisor firm, so the QuickBooks side of this — class and location tracking across units, point-of-sale and booking-system integration, deferred revenue schedules that actually reconcile — is work we do routinely rather than work we figure out on your file.

If you operate more than one park, the same setup carries into multi-unit reporting: location-level P&Ls on a consistent chart of accounts, shared costs allocated on a defensible driver, and a consolidated view that does not take three weeks to assemble.