onefrombills
10-04-2009, 07:24 PM
Yes, it’s has been almost an entire two weeks since I last submitted anything to my blog. I have a couple excuses though. One, I figured if I avoided all contact with the PBA website for at least two weeks, the buzz over the World Series of Bowling’s taping of all the finals would have died down by now and I could surf safely without encountering a spoiler. So far so good!
My second excuse of course is that I’ve been pretty busy getting my PBA Experience League out of the gate and running. We try our best to make sure we put on the best product in the city. When people are paying extra to be a Sport Bowling member, you’d better be giving them their money’s worth. We model our league after the PBA Tour. Except that it’s truncated so it can run out of one bowling center. Exempt Tour, TQR’s, multiple formats, weekly champions, and an end of the year major tournament all wrapped up into one league. It’s affordable and our league bowlers love it.
We had our first week of competition on the 13th of September and I’ve finally gotten all the league registration, sanction cards, standings, and deposits taken care of. Whew. Week one is always the worst!
Each year, when we undertake preparing for our league season we try to improve on the previous year and I feel we’ve accomplished that goal again this year. We had our highest turnout of participants. With a league format as complicated as ours, it took almost a full year to develop it including building the programs that could handle the statistics. Promoting it and selling it took almost as much time.
Our first year was tough. We had to sell the concept to the bowlers. Convince them they would love it and produce a product worth their weekly fees. Our second year was a little easier. We had to sell a few spots, but a lot of people from the first year came back. We changed quite a few things to improve on the first year and to add value to our bowler’s weekly fees. Our third year, we didn’t have to promote it all. The league sold itself. The number one compliment of our league from our bowlers is how different it is than what they have been doing for their entire bowling careers. And like I said before, we had our best turnout ever.
The point of that story is to show that changes or new ideas that challenge the norm aren’t always immediately accepted. However, over time, those radical variations to the traditional game can become more accepted.
Our league is just a small league in a decent-sized city. The Professional Bowlers Tour on the other hand is a big league followed by a national audience. And the USBC is an even bigger organization. Their changes come under a little more scrutiny than our league.
However, whether you’re looking at small bowling leagues, the PBA, or the USBC, neither has changed significantly over the course of their existence. The way we see bowling on TV isn’t much different than the way we saw bowling on TV when it was in grayscale…except the balls hook more and it’s in color. This is the same with leagues. Most league bowlers show up, bowl three games against an opponent and go home.
While the PBA works to revitalize the professional avenue of bowling, the amateur side of bowling needs to make some drastic changes to reverse the scary trend of declining annual memberships. If we can turn that trend in the other direction, we gain bowling fans and the PBA benefits. The hard part about reversing a trend like that is that we need to make big changes and allow years for those changes to be implemented and accepted.
Locally, we’ve seen a couple bowling centers close over the years, as is probably the case in most communities. When the neon/disco/cosmic bowling concept blew up, a couple centers went all out to attract the business and other centers did little to nothing. Can you guess which centers stayed in business and which ones closed? And now, the centers that invested in the new age of recreational bowling have a larger customer share, because of the other centers closing; which results in fewer centers for league bowlers and a significant reduction in USBC membership.
What we should have learned is that people like a little variety in their day-to-day activities and we should introduce the concept of variety into our bowling leagues.
But how do we do it? I’m not suggesting we turn off the lights and crank up the music on your Wednesday night men’s league or during your youth leagues. I’m suggesting you take a couple days to ponder how you can implement changes to your leagues that will keep people from getting bored with the product. Changes that will give bowlers value for their weekly fees. Even if you aren’t on the league board, you can influence changes. Or better yet, start your own league.
For example, in adult leagues, break your teams off into smaller divisions, run four 8-week seasons, and have a playoff tournament to determine each 8-week season champion. Increase the frequency of your league payouts so that bowlers don’t have to wait 32 weeks for a return on their weekly fees. Even small amounts that the league can throw at weekly high games or series pots will give your bowlers a little something extra to compete for. We all know how depressing it can be when you’re on the bottom of the standings with another half of the season left and no chance of finishing first. When you’ve been there, the competitive fire disappears and it’s hard to ramp up any adrenaline on bowling night. You wonder why you even show up anymore.
Think of it this way. What other intramural or recreational sport can you think of that ends their season the way bowling leagues end their season? Why can’t each bowling week with your five-player team be a tournament? Simply moving pairs after each game and awarding bonus pins for victories sounds like more fun than bowling one team the whole night. The top two teams at the end of the night roll-off in a baker format game for a cash prize. So your team might be in last place, but if you had a chance to win something each week, you’d be more motivated each week.
Another example; I just played my first year of slow-pitch softball in a completely recreational coed league. There were divisional championships, city championships, state championships and various skill challenges to participate in. So yes, we finished the season 6-8 and towards the bottom of the standings, but we had the option to compete for a championship to close out the season. Why can’t bowling leagues be like that?
In youth leagues, why not reward the kids with scholarship money at season’s end? Get rid of the trophy mentality and team standings in general. Teach them how to bowl and let their improvement in scoring be the reward. At season’s end, instead of buying them those rinky-dink trophies, deposit a portion of their weekly fees into a USBC SMART account in the youth bowler’s name. You can never start too early. Parents will love the fact that their small weekly investment in the youth league is also an investment in their children’s future. As it stands now, very few youth bowlers will ever make a living as a bowler, but bowling during their youth could help them make a living in another career field and they’ll probably be bowlers for life. Five bucks a week in a 30-week league starting at the age of 5 is over $2,000 by the age of 18 (not including compound interest, with that, the number is way higher). It won’t get you into Harvard, but it will give you a chance. And if you bowled three or four leagues like I did, that’s a lot of money for those expensive textbooks.
We need to be the creative creatures that we are. We need to think outside the box. We need to take a lesson from the PBA and open the doors to new ideas that will bring a new audience to our game.
If you think you have a good idea, send it to me and I’ll try to post the best ideas on my weekly blog!
Side Notes & Observations:
· I watched the Women’s US Open telecast last Sunday. Shannon Pluhowsky won both matches by nearly 200 pins combined. Which begs the question, with the matches over early, why are we sacrificing valuable air time on ESPN during a tape-delayed telecast to watch bowlers fill frames when they can’t win? I just don’t see the value for the average viewer who is more likely to watch a close match than a match decided by the fifth frame. In a tape delayed telecast, why aren’t we running more player features?
· We bowled on the Shark Pattern during our first week of the league I mentioned above. With my head spinning in circles from the week one circus, I managed to work my way through the 32-player single game, single elimination bracket to victory on games of 200, 233, 235, 183, and 225. Week two is on the Chameleon…I hate lizards.
· I also subbed on a house shot league and struggled to a 726 on scores of 279, 179, and 268. Not sure what happened in game two.
· Only a month to go before the first PBA telecast on ESPN!
My second excuse of course is that I’ve been pretty busy getting my PBA Experience League out of the gate and running. We try our best to make sure we put on the best product in the city. When people are paying extra to be a Sport Bowling member, you’d better be giving them their money’s worth. We model our league after the PBA Tour. Except that it’s truncated so it can run out of one bowling center. Exempt Tour, TQR’s, multiple formats, weekly champions, and an end of the year major tournament all wrapped up into one league. It’s affordable and our league bowlers love it.
We had our first week of competition on the 13th of September and I’ve finally gotten all the league registration, sanction cards, standings, and deposits taken care of. Whew. Week one is always the worst!
Each year, when we undertake preparing for our league season we try to improve on the previous year and I feel we’ve accomplished that goal again this year. We had our highest turnout of participants. With a league format as complicated as ours, it took almost a full year to develop it including building the programs that could handle the statistics. Promoting it and selling it took almost as much time.
Our first year was tough. We had to sell the concept to the bowlers. Convince them they would love it and produce a product worth their weekly fees. Our second year was a little easier. We had to sell a few spots, but a lot of people from the first year came back. We changed quite a few things to improve on the first year and to add value to our bowler’s weekly fees. Our third year, we didn’t have to promote it all. The league sold itself. The number one compliment of our league from our bowlers is how different it is than what they have been doing for their entire bowling careers. And like I said before, we had our best turnout ever.
The point of that story is to show that changes or new ideas that challenge the norm aren’t always immediately accepted. However, over time, those radical variations to the traditional game can become more accepted.
Our league is just a small league in a decent-sized city. The Professional Bowlers Tour on the other hand is a big league followed by a national audience. And the USBC is an even bigger organization. Their changes come under a little more scrutiny than our league.
However, whether you’re looking at small bowling leagues, the PBA, or the USBC, neither has changed significantly over the course of their existence. The way we see bowling on TV isn’t much different than the way we saw bowling on TV when it was in grayscale…except the balls hook more and it’s in color. This is the same with leagues. Most league bowlers show up, bowl three games against an opponent and go home.
While the PBA works to revitalize the professional avenue of bowling, the amateur side of bowling needs to make some drastic changes to reverse the scary trend of declining annual memberships. If we can turn that trend in the other direction, we gain bowling fans and the PBA benefits. The hard part about reversing a trend like that is that we need to make big changes and allow years for those changes to be implemented and accepted.
Locally, we’ve seen a couple bowling centers close over the years, as is probably the case in most communities. When the neon/disco/cosmic bowling concept blew up, a couple centers went all out to attract the business and other centers did little to nothing. Can you guess which centers stayed in business and which ones closed? And now, the centers that invested in the new age of recreational bowling have a larger customer share, because of the other centers closing; which results in fewer centers for league bowlers and a significant reduction in USBC membership.
What we should have learned is that people like a little variety in their day-to-day activities and we should introduce the concept of variety into our bowling leagues.
But how do we do it? I’m not suggesting we turn off the lights and crank up the music on your Wednesday night men’s league or during your youth leagues. I’m suggesting you take a couple days to ponder how you can implement changes to your leagues that will keep people from getting bored with the product. Changes that will give bowlers value for their weekly fees. Even if you aren’t on the league board, you can influence changes. Or better yet, start your own league.
For example, in adult leagues, break your teams off into smaller divisions, run four 8-week seasons, and have a playoff tournament to determine each 8-week season champion. Increase the frequency of your league payouts so that bowlers don’t have to wait 32 weeks for a return on their weekly fees. Even small amounts that the league can throw at weekly high games or series pots will give your bowlers a little something extra to compete for. We all know how depressing it can be when you’re on the bottom of the standings with another half of the season left and no chance of finishing first. When you’ve been there, the competitive fire disappears and it’s hard to ramp up any adrenaline on bowling night. You wonder why you even show up anymore.
Think of it this way. What other intramural or recreational sport can you think of that ends their season the way bowling leagues end their season? Why can’t each bowling week with your five-player team be a tournament? Simply moving pairs after each game and awarding bonus pins for victories sounds like more fun than bowling one team the whole night. The top two teams at the end of the night roll-off in a baker format game for a cash prize. So your team might be in last place, but if you had a chance to win something each week, you’d be more motivated each week.
Another example; I just played my first year of slow-pitch softball in a completely recreational coed league. There were divisional championships, city championships, state championships and various skill challenges to participate in. So yes, we finished the season 6-8 and towards the bottom of the standings, but we had the option to compete for a championship to close out the season. Why can’t bowling leagues be like that?
In youth leagues, why not reward the kids with scholarship money at season’s end? Get rid of the trophy mentality and team standings in general. Teach them how to bowl and let their improvement in scoring be the reward. At season’s end, instead of buying them those rinky-dink trophies, deposit a portion of their weekly fees into a USBC SMART account in the youth bowler’s name. You can never start too early. Parents will love the fact that their small weekly investment in the youth league is also an investment in their children’s future. As it stands now, very few youth bowlers will ever make a living as a bowler, but bowling during their youth could help them make a living in another career field and they’ll probably be bowlers for life. Five bucks a week in a 30-week league starting at the age of 5 is over $2,000 by the age of 18 (not including compound interest, with that, the number is way higher). It won’t get you into Harvard, but it will give you a chance. And if you bowled three or four leagues like I did, that’s a lot of money for those expensive textbooks.
We need to be the creative creatures that we are. We need to think outside the box. We need to take a lesson from the PBA and open the doors to new ideas that will bring a new audience to our game.
If you think you have a good idea, send it to me and I’ll try to post the best ideas on my weekly blog!
Side Notes & Observations:
· I watched the Women’s US Open telecast last Sunday. Shannon Pluhowsky won both matches by nearly 200 pins combined. Which begs the question, with the matches over early, why are we sacrificing valuable air time on ESPN during a tape-delayed telecast to watch bowlers fill frames when they can’t win? I just don’t see the value for the average viewer who is more likely to watch a close match than a match decided by the fifth frame. In a tape delayed telecast, why aren’t we running more player features?
· We bowled on the Shark Pattern during our first week of the league I mentioned above. With my head spinning in circles from the week one circus, I managed to work my way through the 32-player single game, single elimination bracket to victory on games of 200, 233, 235, 183, and 225. Week two is on the Chameleon…I hate lizards.
· I also subbed on a house shot league and struggled to a 726 on scores of 279, 179, and 268. Not sure what happened in game two.
· Only a month to go before the first PBA telecast on ESPN!