Operator
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Lucky Strike Entertainment Q4 2026 earnings conference call.
After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand.
To withdraw your question, please press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Bobby Lavan, Chief Financial Officer.
Bobby, please go ahead.
Bobby Lavan
Good morning to everyone on the call. This is Bobby Lavan, Lucky Strike's President and Chief Financial Officer.
Welcome to our conference call to discuss Lucky Strike's fourth quarter 2026 earnings. Today, we issued a press release announcing our financial results for the period ending June 29th, 2026.
A copy of the press release is available in the Investor Relations section of our website. Joining me on the call today is Thomas Shannon, our Founder and Chief Executive.
I would like to remind you that during today's conference call, we may make certain forward-looking statements about the company's performance. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and, therefore, one should not place undue reliance on them.
Forward-looking statements are also subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed in our forward-looking statements, you should refer to the cautionary statements contained in our press release as well as the risk factors contained in the company's filings with the SEC.
Lucky Strike Entertainment undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after today's call. Also, during today's call, the company may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G.
The GAAP financial measures most directly comparable to each non-GAAP financial measure discussed and the reconciliation of the differences between each non-GAAP financial measure and the comparable GAAP financial measure can be found on the company's website. I will now turn the call over to Tom.
Thomas Shannon
Thanks, everyone, for joining today's call. Despite a weak consumer at the lower end of the K and general macro uncertainty, we finished fiscal 2026 with a same-store sales comp of minus 0.2%, a 3.5-point improvement over the prior year and our best comp performance since fiscal 2023.
Total revenue grew 4% to $1.245 billion and adjusted EBITDA was $333 million, reflecting a year of deliberate investment in marketing, in our water park platform, and in the technology and leadership that position us for fiscal 2027. Had it not been for the World Cup and its record-breaking viewership and the conflict in the Middle East that drove consumer confidence to its lowest level in 70 years, our full-year comp would almost certainly have been positive.
There are green shoots across the business and they are broadening. Ex-California, the company comped up plus 0.9% for the year.
Retail bowling and shoe revenue comped plus 2.9%. Leagues grew plus 3.6% and accelerated in each of the last 4 months.
Food comped plus 8%, and events, one of our most important product lines, turned positive in May and June for the first time since 2024 and remained positive in July and August, its best stretch in years. The fourth quarter started well.
April was roughly flat, May swung to plus 2%, and we entered June with strong momentum. That momentum was disrupted by an extraordinary stretch of at-home sports viewership.
On June 11th, the most-watched World Cup in American television history kicked off on home soil for the first time in a generation. The July 19th World Cup final drew roughly 66 million viewers across platforms, the largest American television audience since the Super Bowl.
Layered on top of that, the Knicks won their first NBA title in 53 years in the most-watched Finals in 28 years, averaging more than 20 million viewers a night in our largest market, with 33 million people watching the final game. For 5 straight weeks, millions of consumers who would ordinarily be bowling on a Friday or Saturday night were watching sports from home.
June comped minus 7% and pulled an otherwise positive quarter and year slightly into the negative. I want to be precise about what that was and what it was not.
It was not a weakening consumer. As we have seen through every exogenous shock since I started this company, the consumer has a short memory and adjusts to new realities quickly.
That is exactly what happened here. Our trends inflected the week after the final, and August is rebounding.
It was a 1-time, 5-week programming event on home soil, and it does not repeat next summer. California remains our weakest market, but it is trending better.
We made meaningful upgrades to the operating team there, including replacing leadership, and we are overhauling our corporate sales organization in the state. As I outlined on our last call, the full earnings benefit of the cost actions we took beginning in mid-January would land in the fourth quarter, and that is exactly what happened.
The second quarter's $6 million payroll overrun became a payroll tailwind in the fourth quarter and remained one in July. We made significant advancements this year in analytics, pricing, leagues, and capital efficiency, and with AI, our data and insights into the business are accelerating, and our ability to optimize key functions like labor management.
We reduced capital expenditures by 19% to $114 million from $141 million last year and $194 million 2 years ago. This is a reduction of $80 million in 2 years.
On marketing, not all of our spending delivered the ROI we expected. We doubled working media and gained significant awareness, but the creative did not generate enough intent.
Going forward, our investments will be more targeted, more measurable, and held to a higher return threshold. In fiscal 2027, every marketing dollar needs to generate a return; otherwise, we will consider reducing marketing as a percentage of revenue.
Water parks represented the largest operational change of our summer. A year ago, we directly managed two water parks; this summer, we directly managed five, including Raging Waters Los Angeles, which we closed on in January for $45 million.
We are in five really good markets with very strong positions: the largest water parks in North Carolina, Illinois, and California, and two very good parks in the Florida Panhandle. That is a step-change in operating complexity, and the organization rose to it.
Strategically, the season was about striking the right balance between price, attendance, and labor. Across the water park portfolio, per capita spending is up double digits and payroll is down mid-single digits as we staff to demand.
Price and cost discipline held what weather took, and it is the same pattern the large regional park operators described in their calls this month: attendance pressured by weather, per capita spending up, and the economics protected through revenue management. The weather impact was real and concentrated.
Raging Waves, our 54-acre water park outside Chicago, saw attendance fall significantly against a June that ran cooler than normal with rainfall well above normal. As I've said before, in this business, pricing has a lot less to do with demand than weather, and a water park cannot comp through a cold, wet summer month.
We remain very bullish here. I've described the water parks as a coiled spring.
On a trailing 12-month basis through July, the water parks produced $56 million of revenue and $22 million of EBITDA, up from $23 million of revenue and $11 million of EBITDA in fiscal 2025. Roughly 80% of summer water park earnings land in our September quarter, which is in fiscal 2027.
The business is highly countercyclical and will only get better as we become more experienced operators in this business. The fixes for next season are simple: sell season passes earlier to hedge out weather, and further optimize price and admissions.
We're very happy with our Boomers parks, which are counter-seasonal, high-margin, and EBITDA positive in every period, delivering $11 million of EBITDA this year, nearly double the prior year. Turning to guidance: For fiscal 2027, we expect adjusted EBITDA of $340 to $360 million.
We run a short-cycle business, and we do not give guidance blindly or optimistically, we are deliberately guiding conservatively as we work through the year. Importantly, this range reflects prudence around the environment, not the trajectory of our plan.
The consumer has already told us in August that they want what we sell, and the keys to this year will be events booking for December and a clean second half after more disturbances than we have ever seen historically. Thank you.
With that, let's turn it over to Q&A.
Operator
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, please press star one again.
We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality, and if you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.
Your first question comes from the line of Steven Wieczynski from Stifel. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Steven Wieczynski
Hey guys. Good morning.
Tom or Bobby, if we think about your guidance for this year, if we kind of look at where the assumptions around margins, you guys are kind of forecasting margin somewhere I think it's a 20 27% number versus the 30% long-term target you laid out in the presentation. As we think about fiscal year '27, wondering what might be weighing a little bit there on that margin versus your long-term goal.
I know you kind of called out maybe some marketing initiatives and some other things in there as well. Any kind of color around the margin target for this year versus the long-term target would be helpful.
Thanks.
Bobby Lavan
Yes. We spent a lot of time on this topic, and we added a slide to our investor deck that will show you that $900 million of revenue of the portfolio runs at a 42% four-wall EBITDA margin.
All of that's the pre-2022 properties. Then there is $300 million that runs at 30%, and that's everything that we've invested in, built, or acquired post-COVID.
When you look at the math there, when we get that $300 million up, you get back to the 30%. I think the 32% is a little bit harder to achieve in a world where we've taken marketing from 1% to 2.5% to 3% of revenue.
That's just an automatic reduction in margin. We're still very confident in the long-term 30% to 32%.
We just want to be prudent with our guide this year as we invest in marketing, as we invest in systems, as we continue to ramp the water parks, making sure that the organizational structure is there. Ultimately, this continues to be an investment year, but we're pretty happy with the trajectory we're on.
Steven Wieczynski
Gotcha. Then, Bobby, probably one for you as well, wondering how we should think about cadence, same-store sales cadence for fiscal year '27.
Your commentary, I think Tom's commentary around July and August were positive. That sounds good, it sounds like the first quarter should be positive just based on maybe how September ends up.
Any color around the last three quarters of the year in terms of I know it's tough to kind of forecast that, but what you guys are kind of thinking from a same-store sales perspective? Then maybe anything from a headwinds or tailwinds for the last three quarters of the year as well that we should be thinking about?
Bobby Lavan
Moving backwards, June was the worst month I've ever seen here, and so that is going to be a tailwind next year. We're not going to have the World Cup and, hopefully the weather in Chicago is better.
June has some tailwinds. Last year, we had about $10 million of revenue hit from two different distinct snowstorms in the March quarter.
The weather is the weather, but ultimately those were very unique. The quarter that I'm most focused on is our December quarter.
We have completely restructured our events platform. Events, as we've talked about a lot, has been this $40 million top-line drawdown over the past 3 years.
That business has been positive for the past 4 months, but most importantly, going into the end of September last year, the December backlog was tracking down 30. This year, it's tracking up 10.
We feel, and it's still early and that's on a lower base of events, but we're pretty happy with where events is going, and if the trajectory stays, the December quarter is going to be a proof of concept that we can execute on the initiatives we lay out.
Steven Wieczynski
Gotcha. Thanks, guys.
Appreciate it.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Eric Handler from Roth Capital. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Eric Handler
Yes, good morning. Thanks for the question.
Wonder if we could dig in a little deeper on events. A while back, you talked about how you were moving sales people back into the facilities and there were various initiatives to get the local community to come in and have tasting programs and everything.
What's been going on there and how are you seeing the results from that?
Bobby Lavan
We are moving the business forward every day. On July 1, we announced a full restructure.
We went to a hybrid model where we have a split of our inbound business between huge companies and localized companies, and then we have our call center, which used to be unique to individual centers, is now covering parties sub-12. It's a very rebalanced structure where the team can focus on outbound.
It's still early, but we're seeing the fruits of the labor there where we're developing clients. We had a client this week who was going to have a party in New York, and their other offices grabbed on and had parties as well, sort of everybody in the company was doing the same thing.
Really building that outbound structure, and so again, this $40 million that we've lost over the past 3 years, I think is very achievable to rebuild over the next few years.
Eric Handler
Great. That's helpful.
Then digging in a little bit more on SG&A was up a good amount year-over-year and sequentially. How much of that was due to promotion of the water parks?
What were the initiatives that didn't play out as expected? What are some of the shifts that you're planning here?
Bobby Lavan
The biggest thing is we are releasing a new CRM in October, and so those investments have been very heavy, they'll be heavy in the September quarter. It's the largest IT initiative the company's ever had.
Those just flow through SG&A. SG&A sequentially is flat to down.
Operator
Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of Randy Konik from Jefferies.
Your line is open, please go ahead. Great.
Randy Konik
Thanks a lot, and good morning, guys. I guess Tom, in the presser and in your remarks on the quarter, and the year, you talked about the capital expenditures coming down fairly dramatically from peak levels.
I think there was a point made that those will continue to be kind of just restrained going forward. Can you kind of elaborate on that?
Let's dig into that a little bit more and think about, on a multi-year basis, how do you think through what you believe is appropriate levels of capital expenditure in the business? Then as you kind of look to generate and accelerate more free cash flow, how are you thinking about deploying that?
Where are we with share repurchase activity and so on and so forth? That would be really helpful.
Thank you.
Thomas Shannon
Our capex budget for fiscal 2027 is $90 million, it continues to trend meaningfully lower. In that number, we are finishing the remaining Lucky Strike rebrands and we are doing the AMF rebrands, most of which are already AMF, but not all.
Some are transitioning from Bowlero brand or an independent brand to AMF. By the end of this fiscal year, I think we will have finished the rebrandings, and we will only have two brands, which will make the marketing message much more focused and efficient, Lucky Strike and AMF.
There's been in the last 2 years a significant amount of capex spent to sort of catch up deferred maintenance in the water parks and the Boomers that we acquired, and that wasn't a surprise. That was part of the investment thesis.
We bought these assets for very attractive prices, but there was a reason, and they needed to be refreshed. We're meaningfully through that cycle.
We're also just much more efficient, we've really become very, very good at doing large capex projects like a roof replacement or parking lot replacement or HVAC upgrade for close to half or even less than what we were paying historically by using national vendors with national contracts and all of that. I think ultimately the capex, once we get through this rebranding cycle, will probably move into the $70 to $80 million range.
Again, we peaked at, I think it was $194 million 2 years ago, down to $114 million in the last year, and $90 million budgeted for this year. A pretty good trajectory.
Randy Konik
Great. Super helpful.
I guess new for Bobby, when you look at the guidance, I think it's slightly up on EBITDA at the midpoint. I guess no, it's higher.
I'm looking at a different guidance, but when you look at the different holdbacks you talked about, let's say, this year in the World Cup, investment in marketing, the difficult weather impacting the water parks, the California business being subdued or down. Maybe could you kind of dimensionalize for us how impactful those items have been on the P&L whether from a revenue perspective or an EBITDA perspective to get some perspective of how potentially conservative this fiscal year guide could be for 2027?
Bobby Lavan
Weather in the third quarter was $10 million. The World Cup was at least $7 million in June, if not 10 to 12.
I was super happy in May. May, we ended plus two, and the momentum out of that was great.
Then June 3rd happened, and on June 3rd was the first night of the Knicks championship, and we looked at the numbers the next day and we're like, 'Wow, this does not bode well for the World Cup.' It's at least seven, if not 12, cuz the World Cup did go until July 19th, you have, frankly, high-single-digit, low-double-digit comps the first few weeks of July.
Then you had the water parks are about $3 to $5 million of incremental weather, there's always some weather. All of those are there.
That's what gives us confidence in a 1% to 3% comp this year. If things go our way, it could be better.
Weather is something that we've found is more volatile lately, we're trying to not say, 'Okay, everything's going to be perfect.' Those numbers are partially de-risked in the one to three, but not fully de-risked.
Randy Konik
Maybe just finally, can you just give us a little bit more color on California in terms of just reminding us how big of a contribution it is to the business, how difficult it's been over the last year or two? You talked about changing leadership.
Sounds like things are getting sequentially better, i.e., less negative. Just kind of unpack that a little bit more.
Do you think California can turn positive this next fiscal year? If so, what quarter would that be most likely to occur in?
Thanks, guys.
Bobby Lavan
California comped minus four last year versus the rest of the company was plus one. It's about 20% of the business.
California is going to be driven by two things: retail, which we keep talking about marketing. Marketing continues to get better, but I'm not going to say that that's going to be a key driver this year.
California goes the way events go. If events continues momentum, I would expect California to turn, but we're not factoring that into our forecast this year.
Randy Konik
Super helpful. Thanks, guys.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Eric Wold from Texas Capital Securities. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Eric Wold
Thanks, guys. Two questions.
I guess, first off, you mentioned, Bobby, a little bit on the parks in terms of trailing 12 months and the plan to kind of sell season passes earlier to maybe hedge out the weather, a little bit. Can you just update us on kind of the larger projects that are still at hand for the parks that you planned in the off-seasons and kind of what we could see next year, from kind of capital improvements and new offerings that weren't there this year and the way you think they could do?
Thomas Shannon
Hi, this is Tom Shannon. I'll take this one.
We didn't close on Raging Waters Los Angeles, which is our biggest park, until January, and we inherited a deficit, a significant deficit, in season passes. As a result, no season passes were really sold in the fall as the seller got ready to transact.
The transaction was delayed because it required approval by LA County, which is the landlord for the park. The water parks were sub-optimal, right?
We just acquired them, and we just acquired the two biggest in the portfolio. There's a lot of things that will be done better and certainly with more runway, one of which is having more of a runway to sell season passes at least in our two biggest water parks.
Also, there were some decisions made last year to open the Panhandle parks later in the year and to keep them open later, which is happening. Some of the revenue deficit in Q4 of fiscal 2026 is a result of not having the two parks in the Panhandle open earlier.
They are going to go later, let me just give you an interesting data point. Big Kahuna's in Destin, Florida, has had a positive attendance comp in 25 out of the last 30 days, and Shipwreck Island in Panama City Beach has had a positive attendance comp in 19 out of the last 30 days.
It's a long summer season, and there were some pretty meaningful headwinds in the quarter that are not necessarily representative of, number one, the business as a whole, water park business, but even of the summer because there's a lot of this revenue that we can make up, and will, and probably have made up already in the first quarter of fiscal '27. It's hard to look at this business sort of on a snapshot basis, but I think that explains a little bit about what happened and a little bit about what's happened since the fiscal year ended.
With regard to capex, there are some semi-large projects that we would like to do. When I say semi-large, on order of $5 million each, in Shipwreck Island and in Big Kahuna's.
I doubt if either of those will be approved in time to do in fiscal '27, the capex in aggregate in the water parks will be pretty minimal, I would say, in all likelihood, this fiscal year. Then in the following year, we'd like to do these two large slide towers that would have a lot of presence from the street and drive traffic, also increase the nature of the parks, broaden the audience a little bit.
That 10 $10 million, give or take, is likely to happen in fiscal '28.
Eric Wold
Got it. Then, secondly, maybe update us on where you are with the labor efficiency moves.
I know you talked a little bit that towards the end of the year, to the savings, kind of I say maybe baseball analogy, but kind of how far along are you? Kind of what's been saved so far?
How much more do you think you can pull out of the bowling centers? How far have you taken those initiatives at the water parks and FECs?
Bobby Lavan
Yeah. Let's separate water parks and FECs and bowling, because water parks and FECs, we're still figuring out what's the optimal labor model.
On bowling, we're running down a million year-over-year right now, a million of savings a month. Our model assumes that that flattens out and that there's actually a inflationary adjustment on payroll as we invest in people, we invest in sort of bonuses deeper in the system that ultimately drive KPIs that drive revenue.
It's a tailwind today, but I would assume it moderates to flat to some investments that drive revenue throughout the rest of the year.
Eric Wold
Got it. Thank you both.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Jeremy Hamblin from Craig-Hallum Capital. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Jeremy Hamblin
Thanks for taking the question. You guys are reducing your capex spend, as you absorb some of these initiatives in the parks.
I wanted to just understand in terms of thinking about the go-forward, you've done several acquisitions here over the last few years, and in terms of thinking about the go-forward strategy, there's been a lot to absorb, including the FECs, which have probably a slightly different business model and certainly investment needs. Just thinking about, should we expect here over the next year or two, as you absorb these, that there may be a kind of reduced kind of acquisition strategy in total, as you work on kind of fine-tuning the operations for the water parks, or as you kind of get through finishing the Lucky Strike conversions?
Thomas Shannon
That is accurate to say. We're still in the M&A game, but only opportunistically.
We're not actively looking for deals because there is so much opportunity to optimize the existing portfolio. I want to be very clear that we view the water park and FEC acquisitions as extremely good.
Even when the year is not ideal, we're still in these for probably 6.5 to 7x. They are counter-seasonal, we generated a lot of cash this summer that we wouldn't have otherwise.
Other than the last week of the month or first week of the month when rent is paid or interest is paid, every week was cash flow positive on an operating basis, which we've never seen before, because things slow down on the bowling side in the summer, but with the addition of these assets, we generate a lot of cash. We feel really, really good about them, but we are focused on two things: operational improvements, organic EBITDA growth, and effective deleveraging.
Jeremy Hamblin
Got it. Then, Tom, you noted that you're going to very carefully look at marketing investments that are being made and looking for high ROI on those investments.
I think, Bobby, you said you've gone from 1% marketing budget to 2% or 2.5%. In terms of thinking about making those incremental investments, how are you viewing the channel of where you're spending on that?
Do you feel like there's fine-tuning? Then how quickly do you get feedback on whether or not a particular marketing strategy has been effective or hitting the ROI that you're looking for?
Bobby Lavan
We raised spend from $17 million to $30 million. Our impressions went from about 75 million a quarter to 350 million a quarter, but our engagement rate is not good enough.
We're super focused on not taking a person who has intent to bowl and showing them our website more. We're focused on the people who don't necessarily have intent to bowl and getting them to want to bowl, and that is what we need to push this year.
The feedback loop is instantaneous at this point. We have a lot of data that's just driving the engagement with our content.
We continue to invest in content, and so ultimately we need to convert the people who don't have intent to intent, and that's where the growth will come from. We are seeing very significant growth in our lane reservations platform, which is the tip of the spear and the bottom of the funnel.
We need to continue to bring people in there that have more intent, and that's how we're looking at it.
Jeremy Hamblin
Got it. Then just a quick follow-up.
In terms of your marketing spend, [portion?] of that spend is on your events business?
It seems like that's quite a bit more volatile in general. Wondering what portion of your total marketing budget goes into the events portion of your business.
Bobby Lavan
Great question. It is none right now.
It is an opportunity.
Jeremy Hamblin
Got it. Thanks so much.
Best wishes.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Kupinski from Noble Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Michael Kupinski
Thank you for taking my questions. I just want to add a little color around the water parks a little bit.
I know that you said that you're looking for higher per cap spending and improved labor efficiency, and I was just wondering if you can maybe quantify the expected incremental revenue and EBITDA contribution from the water parks in fiscal '27, particularly in September, if you could just add a little bit more color there?
Bobby Lavan
TTM EBITDA in June was 14. Then it became 22 at the end of July.
August is still not over. August will drive that TTM to 26 to 28, and then we'll have an incremental few million dollars more from September.
One of the issues that Tom discussed is we do staff some of the water parks with J-1s, these are international students who come in. Instead of them coming in in May, they came in for August and September, and so we're testing pushing the season out.
There is a little bit of volatility in how much earnings we get in August and September, and that will also be dependent on the weather.
Michael Kupinski
Gotcha. Then you mentioned about the opportunity on events.
How significant is events to the overall same-store revenue opportunity? If you could just give us some sense of how bookings are going through the fall and into the holiday periods?
Bobby Lavan
Events has been the entire comp decline over the past 3 years. We quantified it.
It's about $40 million that we had in '23 that we don't have today. Ultimately, on top of the quantum, there is a element of events, corporate events during the week is very tip of the spear to traffic.
Ultimately, if you go to a company event, you walk in, you have the wow factor of the Lucky Strike, and you go, 'I'm bringing my kids this weekend,' and so we've lost some of that over the past 3 years. Ultimately our events business is a tiny percentage of the global or national events business, and so we just want to go out and get that business.
From our perspective, December is our Super Bowl. Events becomes 40% of revenue in December.
Last year, we were down the first 2 weeks of December, and so though that business right now is tracking up.
Michael Kupinski
Gotcha. If I can squeeze one more in, you have in the past discussed rationalizing the location portfolio as capital intensity comes down.
I was just wondering, how many of your locations would you characterize as underperforming? Then should investors expect a meaningful number of closures, sales, or other portfolio actions in fiscal '27?
Thomas Shannon
In one sense, you could say they all underperform their potential. The number of centers that we have that are EBITDA negative is maybe two or three, one of which is a legacy property we inherited from when we bought Lucky Strike that we sort of knew we were just going to exit at the end of the lease term, which is coming up in the next 15 months or so.
I would estimate in this fiscal year, we'll probably shed on order of 10 properties, and most or all of these are properties that we acquired in the last 5 years after we went public and we had a flurry of M&A activity because there was a focus on unit count, which, in retrospect, was a mistake and a mistake that won't be repeated. We're just rationalizing the portfolio.
There won't be anything that I would characterize as seismic. It's really just getting rid of centers in markets where they're peripheral and they're more of a hassle to manage than they're really additive to the portfolio.
Bobby Lavan
Yeah. We're very focused on leverage, and so if we have properties that on a four-wall basis, we can sell at an accretive leverage multiple, and when you blow it down and say what does it cost to send the field there, what is IT support, what is insurance support, it's very accretive to our leverage position to sort of sell some of these fringe assets.
We've done a comprehensive review, looked at land values, go-dark values, and ultimately there is an ability to use asset sales to delever the business.
Michael Kupinski
Great. Thanks for taking my questions.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Ian Zaffino from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Ian Zaffino
Hi, great. Thank you very much.
I just wanted to kind of key into the comment about the per caps, water parks. What basically is driving some of that call it pricing power?
Maybe there, and then versus your kind of other concepts? What's kind of being the differentiating factor there?
Thanks.
Thomas Shannon
The per caps in the water park were up this year on order of 15% 15% to 20% as a range. We decided after last year, which was pretty good year, that there were a lot of pricing opportunities.
The season pass was simply too cheap last year, in our view, and we took price. We introduced a super premium tier called Elite and it surprisingly sold about that 10% of them of the season passes were the Elite.
There's demand at the high end, certainly, for that product, which was good. We deemphasized the season pass this year.
We were successful in driving up per cap. It was partially responsible for decline in attendance.
Our biggest water park in Los Angeles, it didn't reach 80° there for the first month that it was open. An air temp of 80° is just not sufficient for a water park.
The water temperature was frigid. We lost I don't know.
I haven't done the math, but probably 60% of attendance. We were down probably 60% in that month.
Now, it has rebounded, but one of the problems with having a slow start to the season is that that is when it's most attractive for someone to buy a season pass, right, because you get to amortize it over the rest of the summer. As you move through the summer, the season pass becomes relatively less attractive.
We now view season pass in a completely different way than we did 4 months ago. 4 months ago, we viewed it really as a matter of pricing strategy and mix.
We now view it as weather insurance. If it had been a good weather season for the water parks, I think we would look really, really smart for holding on to this premium price model.
Problem is that you can't predict the weather, and if you have, in the case of Raging Waters Los Angeles, a slow start to the season or at Raging Waves in Yorkville, Illinois, a abnormally cold, rainy summer, you need that built-in season pass revenue to reduce volatility. This coming year, we'll strike more of a balance between volume and price and, I think we'll get closer to optimal on that.
Ian Zaffino
Thank you. Then just as a follow-up, Bobby, I know you said the trends were improving since your decline, but what are we kind of looking at now?
Are we back to that 2% we saw in May? Is there any type of acceleration or any type of notable trends that you're seeing, let's just say, July and August?
Thanks.
Bobby Lavan
Yeah. July we're going to have to carry the first 2 weeks, first 2.5 weeks of World Cup.
July was down low single digits. August is flattening out, but it's not fully there.
Events is strong. Leagues is strong.
The school shift and the Labor Day shifts a little weird, ultimately this weekend will be very important whether August flips positive or negative. Ultimately, we're more focused on the December quarter.
Generally, we are expecting plus 1 to plus 3 throughout the year.
Ian Zaffino
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of David Hargreaves from Barclays Capital. Your line is open, please go ahead.
David Hargreaves
Hi. Good morning.
If we look at the 2027 guide of 340 to 360, can you give us an idea of how much the contribution from the water parks and Boomers will be in that number?
Bobby Lavan
Yeah. Water parks will be sort of somewhere between 28 and 33.
Which really comes down to how September plays out and how May and June next year play out. Boomers, which excludes Big Kahuna, which came with Boomers, right now is $11 million of EBITDA, and with all the capex we put in there, that's anywhere between 10 and 15 million in the next 12 months.
David Hargreaves
Got it. Then if we take the midpoint of the guidance, interest, I imagine tax payments will be negligible, and 90 million of capex, I think free cash flow should probably be around 50 million.
I'm just wondering if that's a fair number to assume.
Bobby Lavan
That is a fair number to assume. That does not include any asset sales we do.
David Hargreaves
No, okay, it doesn't include asset sales. About half of that we could assume maybe is debt repayment?
Bobby Lavan
The goal would be to pay down the revolver by June. Yes.
David Hargreaves
Excellent. Thank you so much.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Gregory Miller from Truist Securities. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Gregory Miller
Thanks. Good morning, gentlemen.
Just one question for me. I'd like to dive more into league performance, if possible, and your engagement with league players.
I saw a press release interquarter that spoke about the decision to invest in lane conditioning and oil patterns, and I'm curious if that was driven by customer surveys and just how important that is to their satisfaction as league bowlers. Thanks.
Thomas Shannon
I think machine reliability and lane conditions are critically important to the league bowlers, and we are super focused on that now. We've made some structural changes to be able to ensure better machine reliability.
We've upgraded the quality of the oil in league-heavy houses, and we're keeping a very close eye on it through feedback that we get both directly and through social media. It's a big initiative.
It coincides with a I would say reinvigorated league business. The league business is outperforming all of our other business lines right now, and it's an important business unit.
It's $110, $120 million before ancillary spend, and so we view it as a significant growth vector for us going forward, but we have to deliver the product.
Gregory Miller
Thanks, Tom.
Operator
There are no further questions at this time, and we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. This concludes today's call.
Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.