Here is the original pitch: Let's create a new "3-D" pro sport that involves a giant trampoline, two rotating hoops suspended 7 feet in the air and players who score by jumping through the hoops with the ball.

Investor Rick Platt and his son Jeff didn't buy it. But they did like the idea of that giant trampoline. So back in 2002, the Platts snatched up the patent and built an enormous experimental version in a Las Vegas warehouse. Would it be a fitness center? A venue for high-flying league sports? They were still trying to figure it out when kids from the skate park next door started banging on the doors, wanting to play.

"We kind of opened by accident," Jeff Platt says. But soon enough, they had set up a folding table with a cash box and a roll of tickets, and Sky Zone was born. The Platts added regular trampoline dodgeball games and fitness classes, but mainly, people just wanted to pay $9 to jump around for an hour in the 9,100-square-foot main court.

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