really hate seeing my favorite sport (bowling) being taken over by mass Capitalism (more than it has already). There's a certain feeling watching something you love get slowly destroyed.
tl;dr bowlero is buying everything and everything kinda sucks now
Basically, used to when I was involved you had two major companies that were competing - AMF and Brunswick (some areas may have had different companies as well). I grew up with my home alley as an independent alley that partnered with Brunswick, and I played in a lot of tournaments at AMF places.
The one common denominator with AMF places was that they all suuuuucccckkked. They sucked to be at, sucked to play at. They were more expensive, but you got lesser quality. There was a reason for this though and that's that AMF fucking hated league/serious bowlers. It's literally baked into their philosophy.
Fast forward, and now AMF is known as Bowlero, and they've basically took control of the market. About 6 years ago, they bought out a dying Brunswick and now control a bunch of centers everywhere. Bowlero still hates people who actually want to bowl, and instead exclusively caters to casual bowling.
Now, there's nothing wrong with casual bowling or anything - this isn't a "get off my lawn" speech. But, they use this to cut a lot of corners. Casual bowlers don't notice price creep since bowling is a special occasion. Casuals don't care if the lanes aren't properly oiled, if pin machines are actually working (I've had several balls damaged due to these fuckin things), and that things are in basic working order. They're there to have a fun time and probably drink a ton of overpriced beer, and that's okay.
Basically, Bowlero is cranking up prices and making the experience worse for actually bowlers and are just adding lame bells and whistles to make it worthwhile. Forget about the dogshit lanes, we now have a projector showing ESPN on the walls. Forget about the fact we raised prices by double, it's because we now added a specialty beer rotation. It just sucks because it's not the consumers fault, but it still just sucks because prices continue to rise and it's essentially priced me out.
The biggest thing too is that they're running other places out of business. I've seen several centers in my area either close or be barely hanging on because Bowlero pulls in groups and casuals with a bunch of cool features and they either have to raise prices to match (sucks) or close (really sucks).
Anyways fuck bowlero
