Ten-pin bowling is one of the most popular participatory sports in Britain, with about 65 percent of adults having tried it or wanting to do so – that’s about 33m people. Children are also surprisingly active in the bowling alley, with some 4.5m kids a year taking part, roughly half of them at birthday parties. This broad appeal is attributed by some to the sport’s combination of simplicity, meaning that anyone can start playing without much of a learning curve, and sufficient challenge to retain the interest of more serious players.

However, those happy numbers conceal a more complex market. While a majority of adults have displayed at least a passing interest in bowling at some time, comparatively very few of them do it regularly – fewer than 1m bowl once a month or more, according to one estimate. As a result the challenge for the sector is to create bowling centres that will attract a customer base beyond the die-hards.

The market is also fragmented in terms of operators: “There is a lack of distinct brand identity, product differentiation and local competition between centres, with four in ten bowlers unable to recall which bowling chains they have been to,” says market researcher Mintel.

There are about 320 bowling centres in the UK, with around 5800 lanes in total. The two biggest operators – Essenden (formerly Georgica) and AMF – control about 30 percent of the centres and 40 percent of the lanes, with other major players including Bowlplex, Namco (which also supplies equipment), and Newbury Leisure.

The market in 2008 was worth around £286m, a figure which Mintel then forecast would rise to £342m by 2013, although it now seems unlikely that that will be achieved: economic conditions caused a slump which saw consumer spend on bowling decline to around £250m by 2009. It appears to be picking up this year, but Mintel warns that it “still lags behind pre-recessionary levels”. The reality may well be that 2013 is not much ahead of 2008. Corporate bookings, which are valued by bowling operators because of the high level of spend on ancillary services such as food and drink, have been particularly hardly hit, while birthday parties have been affected least.

To remedy this, suggests Mintel, “centres could increase food-and-drink revenues from the most affluent consumers with a more upmarket food-and-drink proposition”, saying there is some demand for gourmet dining, cocktail bars and the like. At present, visitors from the AB socioeconomic groups generally only buy snacks, presumably because they follow up their visit to the bowling centre with a meal at a restaurant; those from lower groups are more likely to buy full meals.

“A good quality food-and-beverage [F&B] offering is required,” agrees Filip Pawelka, EMEA marketing manager for Brunswick Bowling, a major equipment supplier. “Today, this often means one area such as a sports bar which targets adults, then another area which would feature casual dining, a quality snack bar, or even a small food court. The other good supporting thing to have is party or combination party/meeting rooms.

“Ancillary activities are very important today because customers put great emphasis on optimising the spending of their discretionary money. We believe it is critical to have a well-designed and co-ordinated centre and elevate the level of the F&B within the centres, in order to become a one-stop shop for all the entertainment needs of the consumers,” Pawelka adds.

QubicaAMF, another of the most prominent suppliers and the product of a five-year-old partnership between U.S. giant AMF Bowling Products and Italy’s Qubica Worldwide, agrees. Says a spokesperson: “Facilities are continuing to trend towards broad-based entertainment venues that offer multiple attractions and improved F&B operations for family entertainment and socialisation. Operations are transforming into more sophisticated entertainment facilities offering a variety of attractions to broaden their appeal, including bars/restaurants, mini-bowling, arcades, billiards, mini-golf and more.”

QubicaAMF believes that in coming years “bowling centres will not only continue to include more attractions, becoming more like bowling-based family entertainment centres, but are also moving toward filling the need of providing more socialisation for adults and young adults, where destination dining and upscaled F&B play a larger, more important role”.

Family fun

This shift from concentrating purely on bowling toward providing a much greater variety of leisure attractions is underlined, says QubicaAMF, by growth in so-called “open play” – that is, casual, non-tournament bowling just for fun – as well as a greater representation of different age ranges, with families as well as adult groups coming through the door.

“As an example,” says Brunswick Bowling’s Pawelka, “a family may come in with a couple of kids and their friends under ten years old, and a couple more in their teens. They might all bowl a game, then the younger kids will go to the redemption arcade and play games while the teens go and play laser tag. At the same time, the adults may stay and bowl another game or two.”

And indeed Britain’s operators are moving in this direction. At the 38 centres Essenden runs under the Tenpin brand, for example, non-bowling attractions include licensed food bars, American pool, and arcade areas. In the first half of this year alone, the firm introduced the Sing Dizzy karaoke feature at its Cambridge outlet, with the aim of rolling it out further; trialled a new food concept called Beach Road Café Bar, as well as a soft play area; and developed plans to relaunch Quasar, a combat-simulation activity available at 15 centres, all in the interests of creating new customers and new revenue streams.

It also saw revenue from gaming machines – supplied under a recently-renewed contract by Inspired Gaming – begin to grow again after a lengthy decline, with their revival driven both by rising customer numbers and by the installation of new machines.

Indeed, amusement machines play an increasingly important role in broadening bowling centres’ offer. Besides Inspired, Bandai Namco Games – sister company of centre operator Namco – is another major supplier, with products such as Clena-Flex and H2Overdrive, an arcade game which earned high praise from customer Shane Wells, coin-op manager at the Bowlplex chain: “Operationally its key stand-out quality is its ability to attract the first coin, courtesy of what is undoubtedly the most visually stunning cabinet on the market, and an LED attract mode which as far as I’m aware is an industry first and one which is already being imitated,” he said.

Seeing the future

But for bowling centres, thriving in an environment where they compete for the consumer against an increasing array of entertainment options, both in the home and out of it, will not just be about sticking a few machines in the corner – and successful operators such as Essenden are realising this. What’s required, instead, is a continual reinvention of the concept. For a glimpse at the future of bowling centres that combine the core sport with other games, dining and drinking, and even business services, take a trip to Munich, where Europe’s largest venue, the Dream-Bowl Palace in Munich, opened at the beginning of this year.

The three-storey facility has 52 lanes on its ground level, all equipped with Brunswick Bowling kit, including an eight-lane “boutique” zone aimed at markets such as corporate entertainment, which can be separated from the others by a movable wall. This level also has a bar, bistro and lounge area.

Going upstairs to the second floor, the F&B offer is completed by a restaurant, while this level also houses conference rooms and billiard tables. The combination of participatory games and ancillary revenue-producing activities continues on the top level, which combines an indoor mini-golf course and a bowling pro shop.

“The Dream-Bowl Palace introduces a new approach to the German market as it combines bowling with other family entertainment as well as with business facilities,” said Jan-Oliver Hoops, owner of Brunswick’s local representative Hoops the Bowling Company. Still, it has a way to go to catch up with the world’s biggest bowling centre, also a Brunswick site: the Inazawa Grand Bowl in Japan has 116 lanes, more than twice the number in Munich.

And there is plenty of scope in Britain for bowling centres to emulate these titans. “So far only a few entertainment complexes in the UK have taken full advantage of all the new products available today to enhance the bowling experience,” according to Brunswick’s Pawelka. “There is a great need to modernise existing facilities and create a ‘wow effect’ which attracts and retains customers.”

He says bowling centres should consider add-ons including glow-in-the-dark lanes, video projectors, custom lane images, custom scoring, LED lights on the pins where they stand at the end of the lanes waiting to be hit, automated bumpers, and digital signage, as well as harnessing communications technologies with Internet reservation systems and links to social networking.

“Such centre enhancements will help proprietors boost their bowling offering and capture serious sport bowlers along with maintaining and growing their entertainment and casual bowlers, thus driving revenue,” Pawelka argues.

Beyond the technology-enhanced sports and entertainment experience itself, though, the business imperatives of customer service and marketing will also continue to be key. “Make sure you provide a clean, quality, modern facility,” advises Pawelka. “Make providing great customer service a requirement, as bad reviews can have more effect on a business today because of the broad use of the Internet and social media. Market heavily and smartly – have a good Website, Facebook page, direct marketing both by email and in print, and so on – targeting the demographics you desire. Offer your customers great value for their money. Be new, be cool, be visible and stay up-to-date.”

And if bowling centres can do all that, there’s a good chance that despite any temporary setbacks caused by recent economic woes, they’ll continue to develop the wide customer bases they need. As QubicaAMF puts it: “Bowling has been the foundation for outside-the-home entertainment for many, many years. As an attraction that is socially-oriented, community-oriented and family-oriented it really has no rival.”

Bowling facts

• Britain’s first bowling centre was opened in 1960.

• The oldest centre still in business is the Regent Bowl in Great Yarmouth, operating since 1963.

• 100m people worldwide are estimated to bowl – or about 1.5 percent of the planet’s population.

• That makes it the second most popular participatory sport after soccer.

• In the UK, the British Tenpin Bowling Association provides official rules, recognises records and oversees tournaments.

• Archaeologists have found artifacts resembling bowling pins in an ancient Egyptian tomb.

• The modern game began to emerge in the medieval period.

• In 1366, King Edward III banned his soldiers from bowling because it was distracting them from archery practice.

• But ten-pin bowling as we know it did not come to dominate until AMF in the U.S. introduced the automated pinsetter – which returns balls to players and puts pins back in the upright position – after the Second World War.

AMF’s coup

The shape of the British bowling-centre sector changed dramatically this summer when Mitchell & Butlers (M&B) sold its Hollywood Bowl business to AMF Bowling for £39m, giving AMF 24 new locations to add to its existing 33 sites.

AMF – no longer a subsidiary of the U.S. bowling giant of the same name, after the UK firm was itself sold in 2004 – paid £27m for the Hollywood Bowl operation itself, and a further £12m for freehold properties.

M&B pulled out of bowling following a decision to discard non-core businesses and concentrate on its pub brands such as Harvester, O’Neill’s, Toby Carvery and Vintage Inns.

More than pins and balls

When a customer thinks of the equipment at a bowling centre they probably think of balls, pins and shoes, perhaps of furniture such as tables and chairs – and indeed the major suppliers do provide all these. But it’s less likely the customer would consider the sophisticated systems which modern bowling centres employ to gain a competitive edge.

Young leisure bowlers, for example, are keen on redemption games, according to QubicaAMF, which suggests that adding redemption features to a bowling centre not only attracts these customers but also increases party bookings and sales of food and drink.

So the firm developed its On-Lane Redemption System, integrated with its Bowler Entertainment System and Conqueror Pro Management System, which issues redemption tickets based on the occurrence of game events such as a strike, spare, or converted split, or on statistics such as strikes in a row and total game score.

The conditions for ticket issuing can be configured according to customer type, and disabled during league play. On-screen animations with graphics that QubicaAMF compares to cinema-quality serve to increase the entertainment value, while useful recap screens summarise the tickets issued so players can check at the end of the game who’s won what. For the convenience of management, meanwhile, shift reports provide payout information to give a quick indication of the redemption feature’s profitability, and the system can also be configured remotely.

Even the basic bowling game may employ much smarter technology than is visible. Brunswick Bowling’s Vector Plus, for example, is a management and scoring system that serves eight lanes with one computer. Management can create custom animations and score sheets, and see more than 150 different reports, produced either at scheduled intervals or on demand, to monitor performance and identify weak spots.

The system also interfaces with the mainstream accounting software QuickBooks as well as specialised packages such as the Bowler Trac marketing application, and systems for bars and restaurants such as Azbar and Berg. Scoring data is backed up every two seconds.

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