If you've got a few evenings and weekends free and some savings you're willing to risk, you've probably already run into the franchise vs starting your own business question. It comes up in every side hustle forum, every small business podcast, every conversation with someone who's already done it. There isn't a universal right answer, but there is a clear set of trade-offs, and once you see them laid out, the decision usually makes itself.
This post looks at what actually changes between the two paths, not in theory, but in terms of your time, your money, and how much of the guesswork gets done for you before you start.
Franchise vs starting your own business: what actually changes
Starting your own business from nothing means you decide everything. The idea, the branding, the pricing, the marketing, the systems for taking bookings and handling customers. That's appealing if you have a genuinely original idea and the time to test it. It's much less appealing if what you actually want is a proven concept you can run alongside a full-time job.
A franchise or licence swaps that freedom for a head start. Someone else has already worked out what the product is, what it costs to deliver, how to market it, and what mistakes to avoid. You're not inventing a business; you're operating one that already exists, in your own area.
For a side hustle specifically, that head start matters more than it does for a full-time venture. You don't have forty hours a week to spend on trial and error. You have evenings. The fewer unknowns you're solving from scratch, the more likely the thing survives past month three.
Which one costs less to get started?
This depends entirely on the business, but the honest answer is: starting from scratch usually looks cheaper on paper and often costs more in practice. You save on franchise or licence fees, but you pay in other ways: building a website, designing branding, working out pricing through trial and error, and the months of low or no income while you figure out what actually sells.
A licensed model has an upfront cost, but it also removes a lot of the spending that goes into working things out. You're not paying to learn what doesn't work, because someone already found that out before you joined.
What about ongoing costs?
Franchises and licences typically involve some ongoing fee or share of revenue. In exchange, you keep getting the training, the systems, and the brand recognition, rather than having to rebuild all of that yourself every time something changes.
Which one takes less time to run?
Time is usually the deciding factor for a side hustle, more than money. Building your own business means building your own operations: how bookings come in, how you deliver the product, how you handle a customer complaint, how you find new customers when the first batch dries up. All of that takes hours you don't have if you're doing this around another job.
With a licensed business, most of that is already built. You're following a system rather than inventing one. That's not a criticism of your abilities; it's simply a more realistic fit for someone with ten or fifteen hours a week to give it, rather than fifty.
Which one is riskier?
Starting entirely from scratch carries more risk because you don't know, until you try it, whether people actually want to buy what you're planning to sell. You're testing the whole business model at once: the product, the pricing, the marketing, and the operations, all at the same time, all with your own money.
A licensed model reduces that risk because the core question, does this thing sell, has already been answered somewhere else. Your risk narrows down to execution in your specific area, which is a smaller and more manageable problem than proving a concept from zero.
Is a licence the same as a franchise?
Not exactly, though they solve the same problem. A licence typically gives you a product, training, a brand, and a booking system to run in your own territory, while you supply the venue and the audience. It's usually a lighter commitment than a full franchise, with less red tape and a shorter path to actually running your first event.
That's the model we use. Our licensee program hands you the games, the training, and the booking system, so you're not building any of that from nothing. You bring the venue and the people who want to play.
What kind of side hustle suits a licence best?
A licence suits you if you already have access to an audience or a venue, even a small one, and you'd rather spend your limited hours running events than building a business model. If you enjoy hosting people, organising a room, and running something on a schedule, that's a better fit than spending your evenings on branding and website copy.
You can see what running these games actually looks like on the ground by checking public events by city already running under this model, or by looking at how private event pricing and availability works for venues that book directly.
How do you decide which path is right for you?
Ask yourself three questions. How many hours a week do you actually have? How much of that time do you want to spend learning things versus doing things? And how much of the risk are you willing to carry alone?
If your honest answers point toward wanting a working system rather than a blank page, a licence is the more sensible route for a side hustle. If you've got a genuinely new idea and the time to test it properly, building from scratch might be worth the extra risk.
Either way, it's worth talking it through before committing money. You can reach us through the contact us page with any questions specific to your situation, and if the licence route sounds like the better fit, the licensee application is the next practical step.