I want to thank everyone that answered on previous topic I posted a couple of days ago, it was very helpful.

   At our small bowling alley, we have fought with the owner and somewhat with the manager since the bowling alley opened 5 years ago. The owner has been insistant that the open play bowlers are their bread and butter and tends to cater to them. They even said they would let open play bowlers bowl next to tournament bowlers during tournaments if necessary. They very rarely have half the lanes filled with open play and usualy only a few during most the day.

   The manager says that on the east coast, a larger percentage of bowling alleys dont even have leagues and only have open play. I may be wrong, but I am having a tough time with this.

   I have been association secretary since the bowling alley opened and the first year we had several leagues but leagues and league bowlers have dropped off since.

   Any insight on this?
   .....Joe

Really interested in finding out if east coast houses are really mostly open play with no leagues.

Come on bowlers. I know you can give me a little more to take back with me.
Thanks....Joe

Thanks Curly, we have one bowling center here so the option of another bowling alley is not an option, there is another bowling alley in another town about 50 miles from here, but it is very poor condition. There closest "real" bowling alley is about 100 miles away.

What I mean by insight, I cant imagine that there are very many bowling centers that would rely on only open play. As our house has explained to me that our area (west coast) needs some leagues for support but the trend as on the east coast is that most houses are just open play. I have expressed my opinion that I find this hard to believe, but before I go putting my foot in my mouth I am hoping I will get some response to support their claim or I can take back and at least let them know that they need to research these things a little further before bringing them to bowling association meetings.

I can't answer for the east coast, but I can shed some light on Arizona, Nevada, and Ohio.

One of the trends has been towards the rock-n-/extreme/glow/whatever-bowling, especially on Friday and Saturday nights.  Even from a capital expense point of view, proprietors seem to be spending more money on music sound systems, black lights, and flourescent furniture and appointments than spending money on more traditional items such as the commonly half-broken lane-conditioning machine.  Take a look at where the money is being spent and that is usually a good indication of what the proprietors believe to be the big money source.

Another (disturbing to me) trend has been the "bowling birthday party".  I've had several managers tell me they'd rather fill the house with birthday parties than leagues because they make more money per birthday party.  The reservations for these things get scary on the weekends.  To share a personal experience, I walked into a 32-lane house at 10am on a Saturday not long ago.  There were a total of 3 lanes (not pairs) in use at the time.  When I asked for a lane, the desk clerk asked me if I had a reservation.  Since I didn't, he could not give me a lane.  They were "booked" with birthday parties starting at about 11am, and he didn't want to give me a lane for fear of upsetting the incoming birthday parties.  $40 bucks gets you an hour of lane time, some party favors, a small cake, soft drinks and some hot dogs for the kiddies.  Some places even give you an autographed bowling pin.  The $8-9 dollars they were going to get from me for the hour just wasn't worth it, so I was turned away.

Second-shift leagues are on the decline when you can find them at all.  They seem to be unheard of on Friday and Saturday nights (rock-n-glow-extreme bowling).  However, many of the houses are filled with leagues on the first shift Monday through Thursday.  Surprisingly, the non-smoking leagues seem to do especially well.

I've heard several exasperated bowling center managers explain that league bowlers do nothing but complain about lane conditions and prices.  Lineage did not increase one penny in any of my three leagues over the last two years, but I've seen birthday party prices increase 4-8 bucks.  Perhaps if league bowlers in general were willing to spend a bit more in lineage and do a little less complaining about league fees, center managers would be happier to have them.

Don't construe any of this as anti-league.  I've been a league bowler for more than 25 years.  These are just observations and conjecture.

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Kill the back row (or maybe this should read "make your spares, dummy")