Amos Barshad reports on the rise of Bowlero, the empire of entertainment centers gobbling up the bowling industry in the US. There are about 3,500 independent bowling centers left in the country; depending on where you live, it’s possible that your local neighborhood bowling alley may have already shuttered or is soon to close—to be taken over by the bowling giant. The company boasts upscale entertainment and expensive cocktails, but there’s a lot more to Bowlero under the surface, and none of it is good: poorly maintained centers, questionable hiring and toxic employment practices, a CEO lining his own pockets while the company amasses debt, and probably the worst thing of all: a business that doesn’t care about the sport itself.
It all feels thoroughly American: In 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’s making money off the decline.
Shannon is a business owner, not a bowler. He got his start in the nineties, originally under the name Bowlmor, with one bowling center in New York City. It was there that he developed his big idea, the one that would become the Bowlero template: a bowling center as a glitzy all-in entertainment palace, where anything from cocktails to video games can draw your attention away from the lanes. In a 2011 interview with Bloomberg, just a few years before Bowlero began its aggressive expansion push, Shannon made an infamous and illuminating comment. “I don’t think anyone takes bowling seriously,” he said. “Why would you?”
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