Have You Thought About Bowling Lately?

“Your father won a bowling trophy and then, well, you arrived nine months later”. Yes, those ARE the exact words my parents told me about what exactly led to my very existence… bowling. And yes, this also was totally unprompted for them to say, somehow it just came out in a conversation one day.

Now I’ve always been a fan of bowling ever since I could remember. My friends and I go to Majestic Lanes all the time to get games in as teenagers. At college I’d bowl a few 50-cent games in the bottom of the Mountainlair between classes quite often. Then in my adulthood I continued to be in various leagues and would even catch the pros like Patrick Allen, Chris Barnes, and Wes Mallot on Sunday afternoons bowling on the TV. It was a fun hobby, something I never took too seriously though.

Then one day a couple of years ago I got wind of a “sport pattern” league run at one of the bowling alleys close by. “Hmm”, I thought, “how hard can this really be?”. I took the plunge and showed up one Tuesday night and I was hooked. It was a whole new ballgame.

For those out there that don’t know what sport patterns are, here is some info. Basically they are oil patterns put on the lane that take a lot of the luck out of bowling and make things incredibly difficult. Accuracy and consistency are rewarded heavily. An interesting analogy I have heard is your typical everyday “house shot” oil pattern is like driving on a straight highway with guardrails. You may drift a little here and there but you get guided back to where you’re supposed to be. A sport pattern is like driving on a winding mountain road, with no guardrails, and in the fog (because you can’t see the oil!).

The challenge of sport bowling and my appreciation of what the pros (and the elite bowlers in my league) can do has grown immensely since. The sad part though is that bowling, as a professional sport, is dying a slow death. TV coverage went from major networks putting it on their prime weekend spots to now last minute deals being made just to keep it on the air at all. Pros used to be able to make a very good living off the sport, now the vast majority of them are barely scraping by and more than half of their income comes from other sources.

So, for brevity’s sake, I want to get to the point… bowling needs fixing and I have some ideas that I’d like to share (either of my own or what some others have already said that need some more light shined on them). I want to see the sport turn things around and start to grow again to not only support the Pros financially, but also so that more alleys open per year instead of close down (which is currently happening at an alarming rate).

What Works For Similar Sports?

The way I want to approach this is to see what other more niche sports (or events) have done recently to be successful and can bowling incorporate these. I will list these out in bullet form for easier reading.

• Regional/National Pride: From the Olympics to the Ryder Cup to even things like college athletics, people seem to love cheering for those from their home areas. When’s the last time you watched a 100-meter dash on TV that wasn’t part of the Olympics? Probably never, but over 35 MILLION people tuned in to watch Noah Lyles take gold in Paris (https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/08/06/nbc-olympics-success/) “Ok, well bowling HAS this- it’s called the PBA League with teams from New York, Las Vegas, etc”. Yes, they do, and it’s awful because not only do the players have no association to their cities, but the TEAMS THEMSELVES don’t have anything to do with them outside of theming themselves. The Las Vegas High Rollers weren’t traveling to Detroit to play the Motown Muscle- they were just playing at each of the tour stops. Then they completely dropped the city tie in and went full shill and replaced it with the “Battle of the Brands”. Did they really think fans would care about rooting for “Team Brunswick”? It’s the least-heartened and tone-deaf way of trying to gain affinity for a team.
• Prestige, Tradition, and Presentation: Horse Racing has the Kentucky Derby (21.8M viewers in 2025), Long-Distance Running has the New York City Marathon (2M in attendance), and events like the Rose Bowl will ALWAYS get a ton of viewers because of its prestige and tradition. New Years day, the sun setting on the San Gabriel Mountains, the crowd split directly in half with the Big Ten and PAC-12 Champions (well, most years) facing off in the “Granddaddy of Them All”.. that’s tradition! Now these are not overnight sensations here, but bowling also isn’t a brand new sport either. The current iteration of professional bowling is meh at best when it comes to these factors.
• Scarcity: The NFL plays but once a week and is the most successful sport there is, unless you count World Cup Soccer, which only happens once every four years. This is a pretty simple concept- people love antici….pation. The PBA season though has gotten more and more condensed to where you blink and it’s over. One major after another in almost back-to-back succession all within a couple of months in the spring. This is an indoor sport we’re talking about too.
• Drama/Rivalries/Backstories: Fans get the most interested when they either love or hate the participants. Jake Paul isn’t the world’s greatest boxer by any means, but people tune in because they HATE him and want to see him lose. LeBron James will always get the highest ratings in the NBA because everybody either loves him or hates him. I was super late for school watching the highlights of when the Avs-Red Wings rivalry peaked in the 1990’s despite not caring about any team because there was drama. Bowling has had Pete Weber and Rash-Belmo, and it got more eyeballs on the screen… is that a solution?
• Records and Milestones: Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa saved baseball by chasing the most cherished record in all of sports. Cal Ripken’s ironman streak had a 22-minute standing ovation. Tiger Woods chase of Jack Nicklaus’s 18-wins in majors STILL get major ratings. I’m even seeing consistent coverage of pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis breaking world-records left and right now in my feeds… pole vaulting! People love records and milestones. Bowling doesn’t have that many and doesn’t make that big of a deal about the ones they do have.
• Best-on-Best: This one is really simple, people like watching the best play the best to see who wins. It’s why we have playoffs and championship games. The key that bowling is missing though is that the casual viewers don’t know really how good the pros are! That oil thing I was talking about above- it’s invisible to the human eye. All of the qualifying rounds during a tournament, barely mentioned on the telecasts as well. There’s definitely a problem when a casual fan looks at a pro bowler getting a 202 in a title match and going, “meh, 202, I do that every week in my (house shot) league”.
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• NFL-Redzone: The “crack cocaine” to the NFL viewer, Redzone has absolutely changed the way fans watch sports today. Constant action of the most important parts of the games and that’s it. It’s always high stakes and the people can’t get enough of it. That coupled with fantasy football has what would be a fan who only watches their team now deeply engaged with every game the entire league has playing the entire day. Bowling right now has one match at a time and typically at a quiet, slow pace.
• Unique Features: I love visiting MLB stadiums because each one has its own uniqueness and personality you don’t find anywhere else. Being in awe of seeing the Green Monster in Fenway the first time as a kid is a vivid memory of mine. Taking in the beautiful city backdrop of PNC Park in Pittsburgh was a joy during my college years. I even yearn for a team to rebuild the Polo Grounds so I can just see one game with a 483-foot centerfield but the lines only being around 250-feet away. Bowling is done on somewhat standardized lanes, but there’s a lot of personality out there that can be honed in on.
• Reality Shows: In the last 20 years we’ve seen F1 become a HUGE success because of… a reality show. We saw Forrest Griffin vs Stefan Bonner take the UFC out of this universe in popularity on the finale of… a reality show. NFL Hardknocks has been a staple of bringing in new fans every year and letting them get to know players more intimately via the… reality show. Bowling has some good YouTubers right now, but more can be done.
• Unique Games and Avoiding Burnout: Golf has different types of holes and is played on a wide variety of golf courses. All-Star games are surrounded by skills competitions and homerun derby type mini-games. Most of the successful sports have natural mixing up of what is going on during regular play too. Bowling is a lot of the same thing on repeat. It can get boring if nothing changes. They have had skill competitions in the past, but lately they’ve faded away and are only on YouTube channels now.

How Do You Fix Bowling?

Ok, so now that we know what has worked for other sports, I’m going to try to get those factors to work for bowling. So here are my ideas for the PBA to implement… scratch that- first off, it doesn’t HAVE to be the PBA. The PBA is one of the factors as to why this sport is dying its slow death so this can be done by any group that wants to put in the money, time, and resources. That being said, here they are:

• Make it a League: The vast majority of us who bowl, bowl in leagues. We understand it, it’s not a huge leap. Almost every other sport outside of Tennis and Golf uses a team based league (and Golf just had monster ratings again for its team-based event, the Ryder Cup).
• Actually Regionally Basing Teams: Don’t give me a team called the “Portland Lumberjacks” when nobody on that team has ever even stepped foot in Portland. Instead, give EJ Tackett a team based in Indiana that he gets to choose consisting of the best bowlers from that area. Let them face off against Ryan Barnes and his squad from Texas in the Midwest Division. Then the champ of that division plays the Northeast Division’s Champion of teams made up of bowlers that was captained by Bill O’Neill in the playoffs. Each team has their own home alley and they play five other teams within driving distance to ease the travel burden. Fans get to root for their region's best bowlers and take pride in that. Oh, and sign them to contracts like other sports do- get these guys paid something consistently (incentivize the rest via individual and team performance) and also keep them on the same team for a few years.
• Home-Field Advantage: Each team not only has their own home alley but they bowl on their own specific home oil-pattern. Just like the New York Yankees load up on left-handed hitters to take advantage of their short porch in right field, the Captains select their bowlers based on their speciality and comfort zone as half of their matches take place on their home pattern. Oh, and you can totally restrict equipment too… one team can be the “Traditional Short Pattern” team and another be the “Short-No-Urethane” team. This helps give teams an identity.
• Vary The Games: Just like the Ryder Cup has a variation of team events, do that with the league games. One point for Baker, Individual Matchups for another few points that bring in even more strategy, and then maybe even a “Last Man Standing” strike competition caps off each match for another point.
• Unique TV Time Slot: Just like how Saturday Night Live is never going to be cancelled because it has the 11:30pm Saturday Night timeslot and nothing else is going to get ratings at that time that come close, bowling should pick a unique time and go with it. Picture this: Friday Nights, 8pm- National Bowling Night. “If you aren’t on the lanes yourself, you’re watching em”. No more trying to squeeze in a Sunday afternoon spring show and hoping like the kid in the PG-13 movie that you get kissed with oh so tiny but good ratings. Go in and make Friday nights yours! Make people think bowling when they think Friday nights. Put it on some of the TV screens at the bowling alleys.
• RedZone For Bowling: If everybody is playing on the same night then get a RedZone channel going for it. Switch to the most compelling matches going on at the time.
• Make Traditions: Let the championship game be played at the same bowling center akin to the Kentucky Derby always being at Churchill Downs. The Cowboys and Lions always play on Thanksgiving, maybe New York’s team always hosts a game on the 4th of July. The World Cup always gets buzz going when they announce the pools teams will be in, so come up with something like that before every season.
• Establish Records and Milestones: Most strikes in a season, most turkeys in a season, most perfect games in official League Play (big deal if one pattern scores higher, MLB ballparks all favor hitters differently but we all still see the same homerun record).
• Scarcity: One game a week per team (always on the same night as mentioned above). If a fan wants to follow their favorite bowler or team then it shouldn’t be extremely difficult to do so, like it is currently. Fans can see every shot of their favorite bowler if they want. Doing it one game a week also allows the public to speculate and discuss the way football does. Wins feel great while losses linger with pain for a few days.
• Local Advertising: With teams being regionally based there’s a lot more opportunity to sell local advertising on the jerseys, merch, and such.
• Get More Personal: The current crop of YouTubers are doing wonders for the sport, but they could still use help. Belmo does a great job at taking you into his life as a pro bowler. Packy does a lot of fun competitions. Brad and Kyle have had success being more instructive. Let’s really get to know these guys better, and if on a team, then really get to find out the team chemistry.
• Classify Lane Patterns Better: All house shot patterns should be called “Bronze” level patterns. All challenge shots, “Silver”, and all sport patterns should be called “Gold”. Answering “How many Bronze 300’s” do you have rings a lot differently than “How many Gold 300’s do you have?”. Get rid of the house-shot-heroes thinking they can make it with the pros without ever bowling on sport patterns. On league standing sheets use the words “Bronze League”. Encourage and entice bowlers to challenge themselves and also appreciate how damn good the pros actually are.
• Add Pomp-and-Circumstance: Pro Bowlers are treated special. They have intro-music, they have autograph lines and security, somebody handles their equipment for them. Hell the Nathan’s Hot Dog Contest participants come in on a special bus to Coney Island together, let’s do this for the bowlers. Treat them special and put them up on a pedestal. Also there’s a ton of things you can do with projectors now on the lanes. Give the lanes some personality- you can show the oil patterns on them, or have sparks behind the ball, or after strike graphics/celebrations/etc.
• Keep the Individual Majors: Incorporate them into the season and give out team points based on the individual sum of the final rankings.
• The Championship Team Wears Gold the Following Season: Much like the Yellow Jersey during the Tour de France, the winning team from the previous season should have some shiny gold lettering on their jerseys. Let ‘em know who’s the champ.
• More Youth Clinics and Leagues: I give credit to "Big Mike" from the Sweep the Rack podcast on this (he's also in my league), but it's 100% the case that kids are constantly in youth leagues and camps for all sorts of sports these days. Every Saturday and Sunday the fields behind my house are jam packed with Flag Football and Soccer games. Why not have bowling put on some actual clinics at an affordable price (or even free) for the youth to really get into it. Teach them how to properly hook a ball and line up to shoot spares. Give them a budget reactive ball and let them get it drilled instead of trying to make house balls do things they aren't designed for. Let them see their scores actually improve instead of just being a birthday party activity. And the best part is that it's indoors and can be done at any time during the year. Scorching hot outside? Time to go to the bowling alley. Raining a ton? No worries.

What I Don’t Want

• Manufactured Drama: This isn’t roller-derby. The sport should be taken seriously on its own. If something happens organically, then sure cover it and talk about it. But the need to artificially create drama is disingenuous to the bowlers who put in the time and effort to get to the level they are at.
• Embarrassing Advertisements: It’s one thing to have Denny’s as your sponsor (not the greatest but ok), it’s another to have Dude Wipes as the tour had last year. That’s embarrassing to have that as your main sponsor, it comes off as a joke. You want this sport to be taken seriously? Have some respect for everyone involved to where fans won’t think about wiping private parts anytime they see a pro bowler on TV.
• Sports Betting Centric: This may be controversial here, especially coming from somebody like me who once had quite a following in regards to Horse Racing, however I don't think inundating the sport with betting is a healthy way to grow the sport. It's really easy to miss a shot and it's even easier to do so on purpose but not make it look so. Bowling leagues are rife with complaints of "sand-bagging" and bowling doesn't exactly have the billions of dollars pouring in to make it not worth it for bowlers to potentially fix matches or blow pin counts on purpose. We've had major sports like MLB and the NBA ban athletes for sports betting related issues and bowling really need to get that reputation. Go to a horse track and you'll hear the words "oh the fix is in" quite often, whether it's true or not. It's too much of a headache and not worth the long term damage it can do.

In Conclusion

Bowling needs some serious help if it wants to thrive again. The context has changed drastically since it's peak in the 1960's and 70's as viewers have many more options to how they want to occupy their time. However, it is not hopeless. Bowling centers around the country are still packed with not only leagues each week night but also kids birthday parties and teens on the weekends. It's time to make it interesting for them on a higher skilled level so they really get into it. Also I recently saw the prize pools for LPGA Tour event (women's golf)- multiple $12 MILLION dollar events this past season. To put that in perspective, the US Open for Bowling last year had a total prize pool of just $300k.