The bright lights were never foreign to Tiger Woods.

Heartwell Golf Course, a par-3 course in Long Beach — where Woods got his start — is one of 56 facilities in the U.S. offering nighttime golf. 

The success of Topgolf and Drive Shack has inspired course owners and designers to revisit the experience. Escaping the heat and playing at more flexible times makes golf under the lights particularly attractive. 

“It was lit at night, just like most of the people who were there,” Woods once joked. An 18-hole round at Heartwell today costs just $19.

In 1998, David Postlethwait built Knight’s Play Golf Center, a 27-hole facility in North Carolina that opened with 18 lighted holes. In its first year of business, the course did 60,000 rounds. 

Four years later, it surpassed 100,000 and now averages approximately 80,000 rounds per year.

The Ladies European Tour, played at the Faldo Course at Emirates Golf Club in Dubai, became the first professional day-night golf tournament in the world. The event solidified nighttime’s allure for competitive tournaments. 

But offering nighttime golf comes with its own set of costs.

Postlethwait said the electricity bill at Knight’s amounted to $150,000 annually. However, courses like Royal Greens in Saudi Arabia saved money by switching from flood lights to LED.

“We’re going to create golf fun spots as a response to trends in golf,” said course architect Erik Larsen. “Why not have a more intimate, luxurious and special product just in a different format.”

Three weeks after GameStop came back to earth, the once-beleaguered video game retailer returned to the spotlight with another stock rally and a fresh round of intrigue.

The company’s stock price leapt up 104% on Wednesday, and another 85% in early trading on Thursday. 

That put the price right around half of Reddit-fueled highs near $350 in January. The price had since dropped well below that peak but was still two to three times what it was in December, when the company was simply a retailer struggling to keep up with a digital marketplace.

The surge comes on the heels of news that CFO Jim Bell was forced out by the company board, a move GameStop said was unrelated to the recent hubbub. 

The gaming retailer’s good fortune is rubbing off. Esports Entertainment Group’s shares jumped nearly 30% when Citron Research Group advised GameStop to buy the gaming betting platform. Another Reddit favorite, AMC Entertainment, had a similar burst in activity, with its stock price rising 18% on Wednesday.

As for Robinhood — although the stock trading platform had to defend itself before Congress in the wake of this saga, the publicity hasn’t hurt its outlook as it moves toward a likely IPO later in the year.

Fisker’s cars aren’t on the road yet, but the company is already getting good mileage out of its latest partnership. Longtime iPhone assembler Foxconn signed up to produce 250,000 Fisker vehicles annually.

The electric car company, which outsources its manufacturing, focusing instead on software and design, already has a maker for its first model, the Fisker Ocean. Foxconn will build its second model, believed to be a larger vehicle, starting in Q4 2023.

Fisker, which went public via a SPAC merger in October, saw its shares jump 18% after the partnership was announced. Electric auto tech also lies at the heart of Fisker’s efforts in racing.

In July, Fisker committed to participate in the Extreme E off-road race series, in which custom-made electric off-road vehicles will race in remote locations, while filmed by drones.

Races in Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Greenland, and Brazil are slated for later this year. Seven-time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton formed a race team–X44–to compete in the series.

Apple is long rumored to be working on an electric, autonomous vehicle. Foxconn’s expansion from iPhones to auto manufacturing with Fisker would make it a natural fit, should those Apple rumors come to fruition.

For a company offering free games, Playtika is making an impressive amount of money.

The digital entertainment firm known for mobile games Bingo Blitz, World Series of Poker, and Caesar’s Slots released its 2020 earnings report Thursday. 

Revenue grew from $1.9 billion in 2019 to $2.4 billion in 2020. Net income grew to $76 million in the fourth quarter, up from $30 million during the same period the year prior.

Shares rose 17% in its market debut in January. Of the 69.5 million shares sold for $2.16 billion, almost 51 million came from existing shareholders, with the rest from Playtika.

First bought by Caesar’s in 2011, the Israel-based company was acquired by a Chinese consortium for $4.4 billion in cash in 2016. The group includes an affiliate of game developer Giant Interactive Group and a private equity firm set up by Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group.

Mobile gaming has been the source of much success recently.

• Electronic Arts announced it will acquire developer and publisher Glu Mobile in a deal worth $2.1 billion.
• Zynga saw $616 million in fourth-quarter 2020 revenue and $1.97 billion in its full fiscal year. The company projects $2.6 billion in 2021 revenue.

CEO Robert Antokol said that despite the challenges of the past year, his team banded together “to allow Playtika to continue its mission of providing our customers with infinite ways to play.”