You are not looking in a mirror, these are the lanes at Sunset Station. The lanes at Orleans and Gold Coast are just as large.
When the Great Recession hit in 2008, many entertainment venues lost business as families suffered financially. Bowling, however, just kept rolling along.
For locals, bowling means a trip to one of the casinos that operate lanes, and all of those facilities survived the recession’s dark days.
“Bowling is recession-proof because it’s a family sport, and it’s a leisure sport that it goes across all age groups and skill sets,” said Dennis Mathews, bowling operations manager at the 72-lane Red Rock Lanes Bowling Center. “The business has shifted as it has gone toward leisure bowling, groups and birthday parties with less league play. We noticed that across our company, but bowling is still going strong. It is still hard to get a lane here on the weekends.”
Mathews said league play can suffer during recessions because league bowlers lose jobs or change jobs or shifts. With league play, there is more of a time commitment as many run for 14-36 weeks. It also costs more, and if you lose one member from a four-person team, you might lose the whole team.
Mathews said about 30 percent of business for Red Rock’s bowling center comes from shoe rentals and other accessories, and that 60 percent of Station’s bowling revenue comes from leisure bowlers.
Besides Red Rock, Station operates bowling centers at Texas Station (60 lanes), Sunset Station (72 lanes), Santa Fe Station (60 lanes) and Wildfire (18 lanes).
At South Point, the 64-lane bowling center, not the new bowling plaza designed for major tournaments, has focused on shortening league play to attract younger bowlers.
“Over the last five to six years, open bowling has stayed popular, but the leagues have gotten tougher,” Mike Monyak, South Point’s bowling operations director, said. “There are two to three leagues now going only 16 weeks. Leagues normally take between 33-35 weeks. We have a shorter league on Thursdays that now has 44 teams.
“The shorter leagues are working. They’ll bowl 16 weeks, take a week off, bowl 16 weeks, and take a week off, then bowl 12 weeks. So, we are actually getting more out of them, but in their minds its only 16 weeks long.”
Boyd Gaming Corp. markets to league bowlers, especially sweeper leagues that come to Las Vegas for their last days of league play. Mike Kaufman, Boyd Gaming’s bowling operations director for the Nevada region, said Boyd lanes remain a popular option for casual bowlers looking for a night of entertainment. He added play at Boyd Gaming lanes has increased 4 percent in the last year and a half.
“We always market for league bowlers,” Boyd Gaming spokesman David Strow said. “Based on our history with locals, we’ve always marketed toward them by giving them value to come to our properties. What we offer to the league bowler, with pricing and amenities, is far more than what is able to be offered in other markets in the United States.”
Strow added that about 13 percent to 15 percent of business in Boyd Gaming’s bowling centers come from tournaments, sweeper leagues and destination group play. Boyd Gaming offers bowling at Suncoast (64 lanes), Gold Coast (70 lanes), The Orleans (70 lanes), and Sam’s Town (56 lanes).
A scoring-system overhaul may help bowling’s popularity increase. World Bowling, the sport’s governing body, has developed a scoring system that could help bowling become an Olympic sport by 2024. Bowling was an exhibition during the 1988 Summer Olympics.
To win a match under the new format, bowlers must win the most frames. The new system, which resembles golf’s Ryder Cup format, is expected to reduce the time it takes to play a match.
The system was tested in Las Vegas during the World Bowling Tour Men’s and Women’s Finals in the new South Point Bowling Plaza on Nov. 2 to mixed results.
“There is a huge push to get Olympic bowling, which is amazing for us as we just opened the best tournament facility in the world, and now it’s all of a sudden going to be an Olympic sport,” South Point General Manager Ryan Growney said. “To do that, they said they’d have to make some adjustments and one of the things they want to try to get moving forward is changing the scoring system.
“So, from that standpoint, there is some excitement that it will open some new doors, but there are a lot of bowlers who don’t want their game to change. They are good at the game, trained in a way to fit in the current scoring structure and it’s a different mindset.”
Mathews, who has worked in bowling for 28 years, has mixed feelings about changing the scoring.
“It’s great to get bowling as an Olympic sport, and that has been the initiative for about the last 20 years,” Mathews said. “The new scoring system is interesting. I’ve been reading a few blogs and there have been very mixed emotions about changing the traditional scoring system of bowling.”
Kaufman, another longtime bowler, said the new scoring system may make the game easier to follow as a spectator. He added that if the system benefits bowling, he supports it.
Locally, the sport will continue to grow and attract major competitions from the U.S. Bowling Congress, Professional Bowlers Association, World Bowling Tour and other professional and amateur bowling organizations.
South Point invested $35 million in its 90,000-square-foot bowling plaza. The plaza, which is designed to host the U.S. Bowling Congress Open Championships, will also help fill South Point’s 2,163 hotel rooms.
In 2009, the championship event was held at Cashman Center, running for 154 days with 17,200 teams. The estimated attendance for participants and their traveling parties was 292,750 with an average stay of 4.3 nights and a nongaming economic impact of more than $120 million, a South Point statement shows.
Boyd Gaming is also improving its bowling lanes. The company just finished renovating Gold Coast and The Orleans, and is upgrading Sam’s Town. Boyd Gaming also hosts events for the U.S. Bowling Congress.
Station Casinos also hosts those events. Red Rock Resort recently hosted the World Tenpin Bowling Association’s Senior International World Championships. While Red Rock Resort was hosting that event, Sunset Station was hosting the association’s international tournament, which had 500 to 600 bowlers.
The focus on these facilities appeals to local bowlers. And casinos use bowling to attract locals.
Besides, bowling is fun. Once they get customers to give it a roll, they know they’ll come back.
“Even when I go out bowling, I have a lot of fun and think I should do this more often,” Red Rock Resort Vice President and General Manager Mark Tricano said. “We do anything we can to help get the word out that as a fun night out with the family at a great value, bowling is a great option.”
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