{"id":745,"date":"2026-07-03T16:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T16:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=745"},"modified":"2026-07-03T16:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T16:14:12","slug":"how-private-equity-destroyed-an-american-pastime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=745","title":{"rendered":"How private equity destroyed an American pastime"},"content":{"rendered":"<section><p>Joey remembers falling asleep to the sounds of league bowling when she was a little kid in Eastern Michigan. \u201cBoth my parents bowled, and my older brother was supposed to keep an eye on me, but he would tell friends to meet him there to play pinball,\u201d she recalls. That left her free to nest in a pile of family coats under a row of seats. There was something calming and oceanic about the rhythm of rolls and cracks around her, blending with the ambient murmur of banter and gossip into white noise. In middle school, she joined a youth league and spent her Saturdays at the same lanes. \u201cI learned to flirt there, I learned to smoke there, I learned to trash-talk there,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s where I grew up.\u201d<\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=742\">Half of Americans will celebrate the Fourth of July in extreme heat<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Returning to her hometown alley last year with her own daughter and grandson, she says, was the opposite of nostalgic. \u201cEverything was loud and flashing and neon. Overstimulating. Expensive.\u201d The floor was so grubby that the thought of sitting anywhere on it was nauseating \u2014 and regardless, the lanes were now too dark for reading, lit primarily by bright neon stripes and squiggles. \u201cThey turned it into a funhouse,\u201d she remembers saying.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cthey\u201d is Lucky Strike Entertainment, formerly known as Bowlero Corporation, the private equity\u2013backed behemoth that in the past 10+ years has bought more than 350 of the nation\u2019s bowling alleys and transformed them into a (to quote the Bowlero website) \u201cquirky, edgy, retro-inspired bowling phenomenon\u201d that has deprioritized league bowling, escalated the cost of bowling with algorithm-driven dynamic pricing, and accelerated the demise of one of the 20th century\u2019s most dependable third spaces. And now, thanks to a class-action lawsuit filed in May by disgruntled bowlers, the company stands accused of violating antitrust laws, as well as with \u201cthe veritable destruction of the decades-old pastime of bowling in America.\u201d (Bowlero, which rebranded as Lucky Strike Entertainment after acquiring all Lucky Strike bowling centers, has since added water parks to its portfolio.)<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>A rapid loss of third spaces has drawn increased attention in recent years, as the pursuit of profit and the hostility toward the very ideas of community and interdependence has mounted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>In a 2024 expos\u00e9 on Bowlero\u2019s rise, Amos Barshad introduced a now-familiar category of villain \u2014 the private-equity vulture \u2014 as more than the average mercenary buying up distressed properties and selling off their parts. It was engaged in an intentional decimation of bowling itself, asserted Barshad: It became the world\u2019s largest operator of bowling centers, the suit alleges, \u201cnot by offering better lanes and a superior customer experience, but by gobbling up its competitors through unlawful acquisitions, and then cutting supply, raising prices, pushing alcohol, promoting gambling, and alienating virtually every customer except those who have no interest in bowling.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The new model was flashy, black-light entertainment with thumping music, huge video screens, arcade games and claw machines, along with upscale food and drink at double or triple the prices of standard bowling-alley fare. Leagues were de-emphasized in favor of open bowling, parties and corporate events. Prices were jacked up (often with Uber-esque surge pricing at peak hours), but budgets for staff, janitorial service and lane maintenance were cut. In 2019, the company purchased the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) with an eye toward making tournament broadcasts, as Bowlero CEO Thomas Shannon told CNBC\u2019s Jim Cramer, into extended ads that would drive business to Bowlero\u2019s ever-expanding collection of properties.<\/p>\n<p>Bowlero\u2019s intent to own every 32-lane bowling alley in America is about profit, obviously, but it\u2019s also about the pursuit of a different class of participant. Bowling as we know it has always been a solidly blue-collar pursuit. As a pastime that took off in postwar America with the debut of the literally game-changing automatic pinsetter (alleys previously depended on a revolving stable of pinboys), bowling alleys shed their reputations as seedy, rowdy men\u2019s clubs where patrons drank, smoked, gambled and brawled. The automatic pinsetter ushered in a new era: clean, well-lit places in which to spend leisure time. As a sport, bowling was accessible, low-cost, and with adult, junior and senior leagues, age-inclusive. This made alleys community destinations and social hubs. League bowling took off, offering a reliable income stream for bowling alleys and centers; and as more women joined leagues, some places even offered free daycare. By the mid-1960s, there were approximately 12,000 bowling alleys in the United States that were largely sustained by league play; they were often family businesses that were passed down over generations.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>As a business, bowling is private equity\u2019s polar opposite in that its values are primarily community-based.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Bowling leagues were barometers of social engagement, which is why Robert Putnam theorized their decline as emblematic of a broader decrease in community participation and social capital in his 2000 book \u201cBowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.\u201d Putnam wrote that as regular social engagement and recreation dwindled, so did participation in daily civic life. \u201cPeople divorced from community, occupation, and association,\u201d he wrote, \u201care first and foremost among the supporters of extremism.\u201d A rapid loss of third spaces \u2014 social hubs like libraries, caf\u00e9s, pubs, parks \u2014 has drawn increased attention in recent years, as the pursuit of profit and the hostility toward the very ideas of community and interdependence has mounted. Both phenomena made Bowlero possible and, plenty might argue, inevitable.<\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=740\">In 1976, I went to jail to celebrate the Fourth of July<\/a><\/p>\n<p>To be clear: No one seems to actually like Bowlero, as either a company or an experience. The number of social-media groups and threads predicated on the opinion that Bowlero\/Lucky Strike absolutely sucks testifies to the number of both serious bowlers and casual enthusiasts who see the corporation as an invasive rot. Even worse, the people ravaging the sport don\u2019t even have the decency to pretend to like bowling. (\u201cI don\u2019t think anyone takes bowling seriously,\u201d Shannon said in a 2011 Bloomberg interview. \u201cWhy would you?\u201d) The 11 plaintiffs in the lawsuit have a range of beefs: inconsistent but ever-increasing costs, lack of lane maintenance, malfunctioning pinsetters and ball returns, adoption of string pins, and more. But all are results of rapid, consolidation and indifference to bowling as anything more than a line that goes up or goes down<\/p>\n<div>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-744\" height=\"691\" src=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2fbdf27e020964d527818fba1d814995-1024x691.jpg\" width=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2fbdf27e020964d527818fba1d814995-1024x691.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2fbdf27e020964d527818fba1d814995-300x202.jpg 300w, https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2fbdf27e020964d527818fba1d814995-768x518.jpg 768w, https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2fbdf27e020964d527818fba1d814995-1536x1037.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2fbdf27e020964d527818fba1d814995.jpg 1692w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<p><span>(Bettmann\/Getty Images)<\/span> A woman comforts her child in a bowling alley<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As a business, bowling is private equity\u2019s polar opposite in that its values are primarily community-based. The bowling alleys that opened in the mid-20th century were profitable, but it wasn\u2019t a line of work people got into for the money. Shannon, whose first bowling-related project was the makeover of New York City\u2019s Bowlmor Lanes as a buzzy, boozy nighttime destination, started Bowlero specifically to repackage bowling as explicitly not blue-collar, not age-inclusive, and not community-oriented, and ran it accordingly. A pattern of discriminatory hiring and firing was blatant enough that a federal investigation was opened in 2023; Facebook groups and Reddit threads proffer firsthand stories of special-needs employees fired from longtime employment at alleys, elimination of senior-only hours and more.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Everything conservative politicians profess to prize about real Americans \u2014 the work ethic, the family values, the comforting whiteness \u2014 is what private-equity gobbles up as it stomps through consumer landscapes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>This is all predictably, depressingly American, Barshad writes. \u201cIn the interest of short-term profit, a corporation goes about methodically worsening a beloved national pastime. Do you sometimes ask yourself, why does it feel like everything is getting worse? Bowlero provides one possible answer: because somewhere, someone\u2019s making money off the decline.\u201d And according to the experts Barshad interviewed, the company\u2019s m.o. \u2014 constant growth, expansion and spending that drives its stock price up, use of revenue to pay shareholders and buy back stock \u2014 kicks the question of whether the growing empire is actually profitable down the road year after year while pocketing the dividends. \u201cExecutives may believe it will one day expand itself into a hugely profitable quasi-monopoly,\u201d writes Barshad. \u201cBut for Shannon, it doesn\u2019t matter if Bowlero soars or crashes. Either way, he gets paid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There are Bowlero\/Lucky Strike defenders, of course, people who will point out that bowling alleys were already shuttering well before Bowlero came along, or argue that as a publicly traded entity it has a duty to its shareholders, or simply shrug that late capitalism is doing what it does. All of that is true. But Bowlero\/Lucky Strike seems uniquely craven because it\u2019s not razing bowling alleys, but erasing whole swaths of histories and traditions: German and Dutch immigrants who brought their 9-pin <em>kegelbahn<\/em> to the American Mid- and Southwest, women who joined leagues in numbers big enough to make bowling the nation\u2019s most popular participation sport, the creation of a surprisingly robust canon of bowling movies.<\/p>\n<p>Everything conservative politicians profess to prize about real Americans \u2014 the work ethic, the family values, the comforting whiteness \u2014 is what private-equity gobbles up as it stomps through consumer landscapes. Bowlero\u2019s discriminatory business practices matter. Its lack of respect for the game, visible in badly maintained lanes and balls, matters. Its surface-focused venality \u2014 expressed in, say, purchasing bowling centers that historically partnered with Special Olympics programs and then using arbitrary lane restrictions and price increases to push those programs out \u2014 matters. Bowling\u2019s history is a reminder that money and value are not synonyms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBowling was a part of my life because of my parents,\u201d says Joey, \u201cbut not because there was pressure to. It was just the thing that gave shape to our life as a family. I never saw my dad cry anywhere but there,\u201d she adds, at league celebrations of birthdays and retirements and, if she remembers correctly, a bowler\u2019s funeral. In the Midwest\u2019s unofficial Bowling Belt (Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin), independent alleys are still hanging tough, Joey says \u2014 but the junior-league presence that kept new generations rolling just isn\u2019t likely to thrive in a Bowlero or Lucky Strike. \u201cIt\u2019s so loud,\u201d she said. \u201cHow would you even concentrate?\u201d<\/p><p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=738\">World Cup visitors love ranch dressing, Buc-ee\u2019s and BBQ<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A class-action suit against Lucky Strike Entertainment is a sad coda to the end of bowling <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1064,1065,4,1066,1067,412],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-bowlero-corporation","tag-bowling","tag-commentary","tag-lucky-strike-entertainment","tag-private-equity","tag-sports"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - 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