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Thread: Bowling business worth...buying?

  1. #11

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    A 6 lane center isn't worth that money. Think about this, a brand new bowling center being built is worth about $100k per lane. That is brand new with new equipment. With only 6 lanes your opportunity for income is very little. You can't have any good leagues or tournaments with a center that small, so it isn't a place you can use to cater to the serious bowler. The only thing they would use it for would be to practice. Private parties and open play would seem to be the only thing you could really market. if it has other amenities like a bar and billiards and food you can definitely see a bonus there.

    Think about this, if you spend that much on it, how long would it take to make back the investment? With only 6 lanes, even at maximum capacity all day long, I can't see much profit coming in at all. Usually, it takes about 15 minutes to finish a game of bowling, if there are 4 people on a lane that is 3 frames, 3 people would be 4 frames etc. So you can get roughly 4 games in on a lane for an hour. If you are open for 15 hours a day and full the entire time that is a maximum of 360 games per day. Prime time lineage here is $4 per game. So that would be $1440 in revenue at max in bowling per day. I doubt you will be full the entire time, and open a full day every single day, and be able to get prime time lineage, so that figure would drop drastically. Let me tell you, working at a 40 lane bowling center I hardly ever saw days that brought in that much in open play unless it was Friday or Saturday. Even on weekends I would have shifts where they made under $1000 on some Fridays and Saturdays, especially in the Summer. And that was a 40 lane center with a full arcade and laser tag and everything.
    How much overhead would you have as well? I don't see a 6 lane center making back a $500k (or $200k) investment within 5-10 years. Obviously you will be going over everything with your financial advisers to know for sure, but I would recommend talking them down quite a bit.

    There was a local center here with 16 lanes, a bar, snack bar, pro shop and small arcade area that sold for $100k on a major road in a city with over 28,000 population and within 10 minutes of 4 or 5 different cities that double or triple that number. Within 15 minutes of the capital that has over 200,000 people. They do okay business but they haven't made their investment back yet, plus he has had to put a lot of money into it to upgrade and maintain the center.
    Levi "Lucky" Lauck - USBC Silver Coach - U.B.A. Member

    UBowling.com is a new bowling website created as a resource of bowling news, reviews and information to help grow and improve the bowling community.

  2. #12
    What is Bowling?
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    Thanks for your reply Levi!

    Been in business for over 13 years, this is not a decision to take lightly. thanks for the numbers and for sharing your experience, very much appreciated and will certainly help me in my decision.

    Cheers

  3. #13
    What is Bowling?
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    Think about this, a brand new bowling center being built is worth about $100k per lane. That is brand new with new equipment.
    On that aspect Levi, do you mean it would cost 600K for brand new 6 lane center building included? I doubt that is what you meant.

    construction cost of a new building today is about 100$ per sq.ft, so at 8000 sqft it would cost about 800K to build this from scratch + the bowling lanes at 100K a lane.

  4. #14

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    According to numbers Brunswick has put out, the average cost to build a new bowling center is $100k per lane. So if you build a 40 lane center it would cost about $4 million.

    I know there are companies that will build residential bowling lanes and for a pair they estimate $120k and that is brand new state of the art lanes, pinsetters, scoring and everything. So I am sure it doesn't cost Brunswick $100k to put in each lane on top of the costs for constructing the building.
    Levi "Lucky" Lauck - USBC Silver Coach - U.B.A. Member

    UBowling.com is a new bowling website created as a resource of bowling news, reviews and information to help grow and improve the bowling community.

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