Last month, Headingley welcomed a new cricket venue. Unlike the renowned and long-standing ground down the road, this one is drier, warmer, and more appealing to younger crowds. In October, a similar venue opened in Bristol, just a few miles but a world apart from the County Ground. These are the latest additions to Sixes, a unique blend of bar, restaurant, and cricket experience. While WG Grace might struggle to recognize the game played here, it’s already more familiar to many than the traditional version requiring good weather, outdoor space, pads, patience, and a bit of sobriety.
Four years since the first Sixes opened, there are now 18 locations across the UK, with plans for another 20-30 in the country. They also have satellite venues in the Caribbean and the USA, with around 1,500 franchise requests (mostly from the US) waiting in their inbox. Notable investors include current and former England internationals like Ben Stokes, Stuart Broad, Jofra Archer, and Andrew Strauss. CEO Calum Mackinnon claims, “More people now play in Sixes in the UK than actually play the sport of cricket.” Resistance, it seems, is futile.
It’s tempting to romanticize Sixes as a product of someone’s deep love for cricket and a desire to popularize the game. Instead, it was created by two Scots who had little to no experience with cricket. The concept was fueled by the rapid growth of competitive socializing. A brief history: the bowling and cocktails bar All Star Lanes launched in London in 2006, followed by table tennis venue Bounce six years later. Entrepreneur Adam Breeden was behind both, and he continued to innovate. “I thought, if you can do it with ping pong, you can do it with other sports,” he said. This led to the darts bar Flight Club in 2018, mini golf’s Puttshack in 2018, and F1 Arcade in 2022.
Noticing this trend, Mackinnon and Andy Waugh, owners of the Scottish restaurant Mac & Wild, decided to join the fray in late 2019 with a “virtual hunting and whisky bar concept” called Smoky Barrels. However, the backlash was swift, with Peta condemning the idea as “psychopathic.” Then came Covid-19, which led to the demise of both Mac & Wild and Smoky Barrels. As Mackinnon recalls, “We were like, ‘Shit, what do we do now?’ And Andy had a great idea.”
Waugh explains, “We researched what hadn’t been done. We’d seen Flight Club with darts and Puttshack with mini golf, so the next obvious sport for a bar was fishing.” Fishing didn’t pan out, so cricket became the focus. “We found this training technology and contacted them. Andy and I had a go,” says Mackinnon. “We’d never played cricket before, but we went into the cage and thought, ‘Wow, this is really fun. Imagine doing this with five pints, a great atmosphere, and good food.’”
Last week, I had my first experience at Sixes. A bowler appears on a screen, and an orange, plastic ball emerges at the right moment. There are spinners and seamers, and the ball actually spins. The game offers three modes, including a Hundred version created with the England and Wales Cricket Board, and six difficulty levels. Runs are scored by hitting the ball into panels around a netted “cage.” Waugh, who seems to have had plenty of practice, played on the professional setting, while I struggled on amateur. The experience was fun but a bit disheartening, though a few friends, drinks, and pizza would likely have made it more enjoyable.
Sixes seems to have found a winning formula, attracting a customer base of 54% in their 20s and 35% female—exactly the demographic traditional cricket wants to engage. The question is, will anyone make the transition to real cricket? “Me and Andy are almost the perfect example,” says Mackinnon. “We’re two Scots who never played or watched cricket and ended up founding Sixes. Now we love going to cricket games. We attend a lot of matches and enjoy it. We used to go to Lord’s and not watch a minute of cricket; we were just in the bar. Now we’re big fans.”
One notable recruit has already emerged. Mackinnon’s nine-year-old son, Casper, who honed his skills at Sixes, has been invited to trial for Surrey. “He came to our head office meeting a couple of weeks ago and played the entire office, absolutely dominating everyone,” Mackinnon says. “He’s lucky to have had thousands of hours in these nets.”
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