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The Shots sports bar in Watford is not the first place one would look for global technological innovation. But in a private room at Shots last week, I played an artificial intelligence-enhanced pool game with Steve and Dave Jolliffe, the twins who pioneered an industry in this town near London.

There, 25 years ago, they opened their first Topgolf, a chain of “gamified” driving ranges where visitors can strike golf balls, drink and dine. By having big targets that were easy to hit and embedding microchips in balls to keep the scores, they made a difficult sport fun for beginners. “We came up with Topgolf because we weren’t very good golfers,” Steve Jolliffe told me.

The Jolliffes went on to found Puttshack, a mini-golf and dining chain, in 2018 and Topgolf, by then a US company, was acquired at a $2bn valuation in 2020 by the sports equipment maker Callaway. They became leaders of the “competitive socialising” sector described by the estate agency Savills as “the biggest development the leisure sector has seen in decades”.

Their signature use of technology and design to turn traditional sports into casual games has enabled their brands to reach around the world: Topgolf has 96 venues in the US and Puttshack 19. The brothers and their partner in Puttshack, Adam Breeden, founder of the darts chain Flight Club and F1 Arcade, made the UK the industry’s global innovation hub.

The 67-year-old brothers are now back with their “third and final venture”, a chain called Poolhouse, which this year raised $34mn of seed capital from investors including the Daily Mail’s investment arm and Sharp Alpha, a New York venture fund. The first outlet, a 21,000 square foot, 20-table restaurant next to Liverpool Street station in London, opens next year.

The Jolliffes have kept a low profile over three decades, rarely giving interviews, and Poolhouse’s technology has stayed under wraps apart from demonstrations for investors. But they both came to Shots to play their new pool game with the FT and discuss their story. “If we’d been born in America, I think it would have started there,” Steve said of competitive socialising.

At first glance, the Poolhouse table looked no different from any other, but it turned out to have their touch. Cameras, sensors and light projectors were hung above the table and will be concealed in chandeliers at venues. The technology lets beginners play with experts by assessing the skill of each player during the game and handicapping them.

AI software calculated the difficulty of each shot from the position of the balls. It held back better players (Dave Jolliffe) by projecting on to the table playful obstacles such as banana skins they would lose points for crossing. The low-skilled ones (me) gained extra shots, bonuses or the right to move the cue ball before shooting.

The contest thus became exciting for a mixed ability group. “[The Jolliffes] have always targeted the non-player by making games easy, welcoming and warm,” said Andrew O’Brien, Poolhouse chief executive. This widens the market and has another financial advantage: more people can play (and pay) at once on each table.

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The appeal of competitive socialising for the hospitality industry is that it adds a third revenue stream with a very high profit margin to serving food and drink. Poolhouse has invested about £12mn in the technology, and the same sum again to fit out the Liverpool Street venue. Once the tables are installed, they will cost little to run.

But Poolhouse is entering a crowded field: Savills estimated that the UK will have 800 competitive socialising outlets by 2029, with the Guinness World Records exploring one in London. Topgolf sales have fallen in the US after players were put off by its high prices, and Callaway plans to spin off the brand. Even the Jolliffes’ name and expertise no longer guarantees success.

New ventures must offer more to stand out: “People want to walk into better venues and they expect the gameplay to be more sophisticated,” O’Brien said. Poolhouse wants to license the technology and design to other operators to build branded venues around the world, rather than investing all the capital itself. It also intends to sell versions of its tables for home use.

In Watford, not far from the first Topgolf outlet, we discussed the number of countries where pool is played in halls, bars and homes. “We think they’re all there for the taking,” O’Brien said. The Jolliffes have not lost their sense of ambition.

john.gapper@ft.com