Issue Date: September 16, 2007

New life in the fast lanes

As bowling's gone upscale, leagues have lost out.

This is not your father's bowling alley featuring dingy facilities, cheap beer and hotdogs spinning on steel rollers.

Martini anyone?

"What we used to call bowling alleys are now like huge sports bars, with billiard sections and elegant dining rooms," says Tom Doyle, vice president of information and research for the National Sporting Goods Association.

The upscale bowling trend, epitomized at national chains such as Lucky Strike Lanes, has brought Americans back to the joy of bowling, he says. "With all the changes, and electronic scoring, you really don't even have to know anything about the game. Just throw the ball."

Last year, approximately 45 million Americans went bowling, up 32% over the past 20 years, when 34 million people a year visited bowling alleys, according to the National Sporting Goods Association.

Even though more people are bowling now, the biggest rise is among infrequent bowlers, who bowl just two to nine times per year. In 1986, infrequent bowlers made up 27.5% of those who bowled; last year, there were 43.6% infrequent bowlers.

The one dark spot: bowling leagues. Mainly, people don't have the time to commit to weekly games anymore, says Mark Miller, of the United States Bowling Congress. His group reports that as of last year, there were 2.7 million bowling league members in the United States, a huge drop from the heyday of 9 million league bowlers in the late 1970s.

-- Eve Tahmincioglu

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