I know a guy who used to run one of these businesses. He pivoted to something else because of the expenses, and hardware wasn’t the biggest. The monthly license fees for games are outrageous when you want to provide them to the public. Which means you have to constantly bet on which game’s demand will outweigh its cost on a monthly basis.
Before COVID, his place was very busy. I went many times and it was a lot of fun. His business was profitable, but because of the cost of games still not super successful.
I agree that the expense of paying someone to run the spot would quickly outpace the cost of hardware, but in his case he was running the whole thing himself. Even with nobody to pay for their time, his margins were never great.
Then COVID came along. That really killed it. No one wants to wear a VR headset that was just worn by a sweaty stranger minutes earlier during a pandemic.