Jul 26, 2009 5 min read

It is very sad when I read about a nice bowling facility that has to close its doors. Most of the time when it happens, you can see the end coming even years prior to the actual event. The first sign is when leagues start to get smaller. Twelve team leagues become 10-then eight-then six- then gone. Usually, the proprietor sees the reduction, but most often figures that the way to counteract it is to increase the open bowling. That is where the problem lies. That assumption is false.

Leagues are guaranteed money. The minute the season starts, the owner can judge exactly to the penny what the season’s base revenue will be. Think of leagues as being similar to you getting a base salary every month, and let open bowling be like commissions. No matter what the hardships, you will always have the base to live on. The commissions are then like the icing on the cake.

So, when a proprietor begins to notice a drop in league size, that should set off a major alarm in his/her head that it is time to promote. It is not the time to fall back and rely on open bowling.

Historically, bowling alleys have been notorious for not ever advertising. They had a locked in clientele, and the owners almost had a “stuffy” attitude that they were impervious to a drop in business. Their bowlers came every week to league. The leagues provided a tremendous sense of security.

That is until about 3 years ago, when things started changing. When the league size started to reduce, the proprietors had absolutely no clue as to how to handle the situation. And, I am afraid that most of them just looked the other way. It was just assumed that business would pick up and open bowling would save the day.

I had a good friend a number of years ago that had a small center. When Cosmic Bowling became the rage, he put it in his place, and according to him he practically “became a millionaire overnight”. He was turning Cosmic bowlers away at the door every Friday and Saturday night because his place was packed. And, I remember him saying that if he could, he would get rid of those darned leagues and just do Cosmic every night.

Four years later, he was teaching Sociology at Marshall University and his bowling alley was just a memory. All that remained were the creditors and the bankruptcy. Cosmic Bowling dried up, and he ignored the signs about his leagues.

Another prime example is Omaha’s mammoth “Thunder Alley”. It was listed in the Bowler’s Journal’s 95th anniversary issue as one of the “95 Bowling Centers You Must Visit Before You Die”. It was 86,000 sq-ft of entertainment heaven, but then on June 8, it abruptly locked its doors. Boom!

“I’ve known for a long time that we were in debt”, said Alex Rockwell. Then he came to work that day, and found he no longer had a job. The enormous 40-lane Family Entertainment Center, FEC, was a beautiful facility, but that was clearly not enough to keep it profitable.

It takes an entirely different mindset to make a center successful today, and our local proprietors like Jimmy Matis, Joe Pascia, Dave Show, and Lenny Beveloque are chewing on their knuckles while realizing that their success is directly dependent on reviving their leagues. And, specifically, they will eventually come to terms with the fact, if they already haven’t, that they need more new bowlers to populate their leagues. Expecting current bowlers to bowl even more is not going to save the day.

The game of Bowling is at a crossroads today. The route the proprietors choose to travel will determine whether the sport grows or whether more facilities close their doors.

GAMBLING: I mention this for your consideration. The Bowling Centers Association of Ohio believes it has found a solution to provide some needed economic relief to the state. It wants to place a maximum of 10 video slot machines in each bowling center in Ohio. Representing about 300 centers, it believes the machines could bring in more than $130 million dollars per year of additional revenue.

The bowling proprietors envision an increase in foot traffic due to the gambling. And, as one Ohio proprietor has stated, “We have all been trying to find different ways to bring people into the business, like Keno, and this is another product we would have to bring people in.”

I don’t know how you feel, but it kind of sounds like another Cosmic Bowling situation to me-a temporary patch instead of a repair.

BOWLING NEWS:Uniontown resident Gary George writes a weekly bowling column for the Herald-Standard. If you have any bowling news, contact George, a member of the Professional Bowlers Association since 1997, via email at probowler48@aol.com or fax at 724-438-7290. Information is welcome from all area bowling establishments.