Interesting article on the decline of Bowling

W

westcoast

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Just read this article about the decline of bowling. Never really been into bowling, but I noticed some parallels to pool- debates about who business owners should cater to (causals vs serious players), traditional games/tables (of course the bar table craze in the US and I didn't know that duckpin bowling was a thing), and real estate costs.

I also didn't know that there are people who have bowled three consecutive 300 games (36 strikes in a row!)- 40 people to be exact.

But the number of bowling centers in the United States, which peaked at about twelve thousand in the mid-1960s, has been steadily falling for four decades. The number was down to about 3,800 in 2023, according to the USBC. Political scientist Robert D. Putnam famously cited the decline of league bowling in his 2000 book Bowling Alone as one of many indicators that civic engagement was collapsing across America, noting that league bowling declined by 40 percent between 1980 and 1993. The updated figure is even more dramatic: from a high of about 9.8 million league bowlers at the end of the 1970s, the number of USBC members in leagues for the 2022–23 season was 1.09 million. That’s a decline of 89 percent.
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Even in professional bowling, the styles of delivery vary wildly; some bowlers are graceful and fluid, others are herky-jerky. The canny bowlers know how their ball will react to the oil on the lane, and they know what combination of velocity and spin will get it to hit the pins just right. But the lane conditions are always changing. What worked last week may not work next week. Even as a tournament is in progress, the oil gets streaky or dries up in spots. What worked for a game or two might not keep working. Experienced bowlers know how to adjust.

To be a bowler is to be at war with change. You feel it in the moment as you are bowling. But you also feel it whenever industry leaders talk about the need to “evolve.” You worry about looming transitions, as the bowling business struggles to adapt to the times.
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thebaffler.com

Changing Lanes | Dave Denison

How long can bowling endure the vulture capitalists buying up alleys around the country?
thebaffler.com
 
A few years ago, my local paper had a bowling column each week. In an interview with a proprietor, it said their liability insurance went up to 80k a year. It would be hard to operate any business where you basically paid an employee 80k who just sat there doing nothing.

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Bowling in this town still does better than pool is all I know. We have 3 bowling alleys here and Any night of the week it’s packed and you aren’t getting a lane on weekends without making a reservation. Across the river towards Lancaster there is a bowling alley that has I believe 5 9 foot tables that is open 24 hours a day. I used to play a straight pool league there and I was surprised how full it was on a Tuesday afternoon and it was a big place ! I know pool beat out pool years ago as more people play it but I think thats just because it’s easier to casually play a game of pool in a bar then it is to bowl. Financially maybe bowling is on a down turn but it’s still a head of us.
 
There is a combo bowling and billiard room here in SW Florida - often I am the only person in the billiard room and walk out to literally hundreds in the much larger bowling area.
Also 810 Bowling & Billiards is a newer franchise - a new one opened down here - same story - 90% bowling - 10% billiards participation.

Billiards is mostly nighttime leagues in bar locations now - that is 90% of billiard participation - one on one and solo practice participation in traditional billiard rooms on 9 foot tables is getting close to almost non existent from my personal observations.
 
Reasons for bowling decline:
--- more competition from video games, organized sports, and other entertainment;​
--- younger crowd has different interests;​
--- modern employment and flexible competing sports make required attendance at bowling-league's set times undesirable;​
--- a decline in society toward social engagement and community participation;​
--- I believe bowling was made easier to allow more 300 games --- net result meaning too many pros at peak --- more boring as far as watching bowling​
--- its gone from a blue-collar game to a white-collar game. From more league games to not.​
​
 
I'm sure there are many factors why bowling has declined, but I will tell you why I left the sport in the 90s.

I'd show up at the lanes for league night with two bowling balls, one a strike ball and one for spares. Maybe one more if I were entering a tournament and I was unfamiliar with the venue and their typical oil patterns.

As you may know, the lane conditions can change dramatically in a three-game set, in particular for right-handed bowlers when most bowlers are right-handed and change the oil pattern just by bowling. I used to pride myself on being adaptable (although I never did master the deep-inside line because I could not get crazy rev rates). So I'd adjust with line and technique as the lanes changed. Used to piss me off when I'm adapting, and Joe Bowler brought 6 or more $200 bowling balls to the lanes, and simply put one ball away, and pulled out another one with a different cover stock and different weight block placement, still throwing the ball the same way. My protest to not subscribing to investing over $1,000 or more in bowling balls was to simply walk away.

This was in the 90s when the reactive resin craze was in full swing, and savvy bowlers and pro shop ball drillers became very good at matching ball characteristics to various oil patterns. Aside: My "credentials"? No, I wasn't up with the better league amateur 220 average players (and where pros can average 240 on the casual bowling patterns), but I was in the 205-210 range with reactive resin, and I do have many high-700 series and one 245-259-300: 804 series in a tournament, *using a urethane ball*.

I suppose the same can be said about pool, what with $250 CF shafts, specialized jump and break cues, $ carrying cases, but I only need one of each to play well. I don't know how much the cost of equipment influences the popularity of pool, but I don't think it's much. I could be wrong.
 
Where I live we have 30 Lanes, very popular with old people. We have served large tournament's every year, Bowlers like Pool Player don't make squat.
 
Bowling is big by us, three bowling alleys that I know of, with one of them so big they hold state tmts there and multiple leagues nightly. This place also has pool tables there where my wife and I first started shooting leagues about 7 years ago. They had 6 Valley tables, very well maintained with Championship Tour cloth. There were two leagues a week there when we started then covid hit and another place in town with 6 tables pulled all their tables out.
The bowling alley worked with us and brought in two more tables so we now had 8, and we were able to give all those displaced league players a place to continue playing by not only having more tables but also having leagues 3 nights a week.
After a couple years of this, the three person teams were complaining of seating room. They brought this up to the bowling alley and they had a spare much larger room on the other end that they remodeled for us, all new perimeter lighting, and all new high sitting tables, 2 per pool table. Fantastic room.
Now, with another 8 table room opening up 15 miles down the road with Diamond tables, there was talk of how nice it would be to have Diamond tables also at the bowling alley and when brought up to the owner they have ordered 8 Diamond tables to replace the well maintained Valleys. They now have streaming of tmts and Friday and Saturday tmts also. We actually shoot at leagues at both places, pool is strong, well managed and growing here, as is bowling, bowling and pool can exist in the same place with a well run pool league management and supportive bowling alley owner.
Funny side note on bowling. This little farm town by me, with a population under 1100, has two bowling alleys, small, only a few lanes but two of them with leagues also.
 
Bowling exploded with the post-WW2 baby boom. You had war vets/spouses and then their kids taking up the game. That's a HUGE number of people. It has fared better than pool, imo, because of its image, something pool is still dealing with.
 
Families take their kids bowling when they are young, schools take the kids bowling, at least around here they do. I've never seen an unhappy kid when out bowling, I know my kids loved it. Yet pool, it's almost unheard of to see kids with parents shooting pool, really unheard of to see teachers take kids to a pool hall. One only need to look back at all the discussions on here about everyone's ideal pool hall, never ever a mention about a family friendly, kid friendly being a part of that. And yet you wonder and complain about why pool isn't popular.
There is hope, and I was reminded of that by a post by Poolmanis, a very accomplished player, yet still willing to give up his time to work with kids in pool, and show them how wonderful and fun the sport of billiards can be.
 
dquarasr said:
I'm sure there are many factors why bowling has declined, but I will tell you why I left the sport in the 90s.

I'd show up at the lanes for league night with two bowling balls, one a strike ball and one for spares. Maybe one more if I were entering a tournament and I was unfamiliar with the venue and their typical oil patterns.

As you may know, the lane conditions can change dramatically in a three-game set, in particular for right-handed bowlers when most bowlers are right-handed and change the oil pattern just by bowling. I used to pride myself on being adaptable (although I never did master the deep-inside line because I could not get crazy rev rates). So I'd adjust with line and technique as the lanes changed. Used to piss me off when I'm adapting, and Joe Bowler brought 6 or more $200 bowling balls to the lanes, and simply put one ball away, and pulled out another one with a different cover stock and different weight block placement, still throwing the ball the same way. My protest to not subscribing to investing over $1,000 or more in bowling balls was to simply walk away.

This was in the 90s when the reactive resin craze was in full swing, and savvy bowlers and pro shop ball drillers became very good at matching ball characteristics to various oil patterns. Aside: My "credentials"? No, I wasn't up with the better league amateur 220 average players (and where pros can average 240 on the casual bowling patterns), but I was in the 205-210 range with reactive resin, and I do have many high-700 series and one 245-259-300: 804 series in a tournament, *using a urethane ball*.

I suppose the same can be said about pool, what with $250 CF shafts, specialized jump and break cues, $ carrying cases, but I only need one of each to play well. I don't know how much the cost of equipment influences the popularity of pool, but I don't think it's much. I could be wrong.
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I was in the same boat as you when I quit bowling in the late 80's early 90's. Not only did you need to carry around a full armada of balls for different lane conditions the balls also wear out very fast. Theres a huge difference between a new ball and a not new ball with only 100 games on it. The pool hall that I frequent now the most has 8 Diamond bar boxes and 2 9' Olhausens. They also have 24 lanes I believe (they definitely have bowling lanes, Im just not sure about that number) Both the pool room and lanes are always busy which is a great sign. They also have an in house pro shop but its bowling stuff only, no pool stuff.
 
Paul_#_ said:
Reasons for bowling decline:
--- more competition from video games, organized sports, and other entertainment;​
--- younger crowd has different interests;​
--- modern employment and flexible competing sports make required attendance at bowling-league's set times undesirable;​
--- a decline in society toward social engagement and community participation;​
--- I believe bowling was made easier to allow more 300 games --- net result meaning too many pros at peak --- more boring as far as watching bowling​
--- its gone from a blue-collar game to a white-collar game. From more league games to not.​
​
Click to expand...
How has bowling been made easier to allow more 300 games?
Has the game physically changed or the scoring?
 
jimmyco said:
How has bowling been made easier to allow more 300 games?
Has the game physically changed or the scoring?
Click to expand...

See NY Times article from 2000 that states:
Thanks largely to NASA-like advances in bowling-ball technology and the more liberal application of lubricants upon lane surfaces -- by bowling center proprietors seeking to enliven a game of fickle popularity -- the number of perfect games has exploded. Teenagers in youth leagues are throwing them. Retired people in senior leagues are throwing them. There is a bowling alley mechanic in Nassau County who has thrown perfect games with his right hand and his left.​

 
Last time I bowled, 2 games with some beers, shoe rental etc...etc.... came out to be over $100. Just for me.

I definitely don't want to do it again since I'm not the bowler. I'm assuming it would be a great night for the regular bowlers.
 
billiards_watch said:
Those bowling prices are outrageous.

Expect to average $50/person
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When I was a kid, summer afternoons was a dime a game, free shoes.
You could duck in the on-site barber shop and buy an ice cold 6.5 oz. bottle of Coke for another dime.
The Gottlieb pinball machines in the small arcade cost a nickle.

Two bits went a long way back then.
 
muskyed said:
Bowling is big by us, three bowling alleys that I know of, with one of them so big they hold state tmts there and multiple leagues nightly. This place also has pool tables there where my wife and I first started shooting leagues about 7 years ago. They had 6 Valley tables, very well maintained with Championship Tour cloth. There were two leagues a week there when we started then covid hit and another place in town with 6 tables pulled all their tables out.
The bowling alley worked with us and brought in two more tables so we now had 8, and we were able to give all those displaced league players a place to continue playing by not only having more tables but also having leagues 3 nights a week.
After a couple years of this, the three person teams were complaining of seating room. They brought this up to the bowling alley and they had a spare much larger room on the other end that they remodeled for us, all new perimeter lighting, and all new high sitting tables, 2 per pool table. Fantastic room.
Now, with another 8 table room opening up 15 miles down the road with Diamond tables, there was talk of how nice it would be to have Diamond tables also at the bowling alley and when brought up to the owner they have ordered 8 Diamond tables to replace the well maintained Valleys. They now have streaming of tmts and Friday and Saturday tmts also. We actually shoot at leagues at both places, pool is strong, well managed and growing here, as is bowling, bowling and pool can exist in the same place with a well run pool league management and supportive bowling alley owner.
Funny side note on bowling. This little farm town by me, with a population under 1100, has two bowling alleys, small, only a few lanes but two of them with leagues also.
Click to expand...
What area are you writing about? Sounds like a great place for pool and bowling.
 
billiards_watch said:
Those bowling prices are outrageous.

Expect to average $50/person
Click to expand...
I just checked out the prices as I had no idea, for the bowling alley by me where we also shoot pool. This is where they hold state tmts and the 2nd biggest bowling lanes in Wisconsin.
They charge $32 an hr for a lane with up to 6 people. They have an summer pass with unlimited bowling for $120 good for anyone. Fantastic price for someone with a kid that likes bowling.
 
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