No serious leagues?!

[Phonetek]

Is your house still a sanctioned alley? I tried to set my league up but then discovered it wasn’t even a sanctioned bowling alley.

Getting the answer to that sounds like it would be the logical first step. If it's not then I'm probably beating a dead horse right from the get go. Is there an expense out of pocket for the bowling alley itself aside from the fees collected from the bowlers? If there is then I need to present them with research on the pro's and con's of being a sanctioned alley, hopefully with more pro's to prove my case. I do remember the boss saying that the lanes are measured/inspected twice a year, I would assume that would be by the USBC?

Then it sounds like if I can get far then it's on me to present a case to the bowlers themselves. Maybe some sort of fact sheet of WHY they would want to be on a sanctioned league or tournament vs. not. I personally am not educated myself on all the advantages either. All I know is that you get to report honor scores and rings/trophies for them.

All I see right now when leagues come in is people bowling. I hear nothing over the intercom about pots, high scores or anything over the intercom for that matter. Don't get me wrong, I love where I work but I guess I'm trying to find out if it's a bowling alley with a bar or a bar with a bowling alley. For employment purposes I guess it doesn't matter which one it is. For the love of the sport is where it does matter to me. If I can do something about it I would like to even if it requires me to do it on off hours. I think the bowlers, alley and the sport deserves that.

[Phonetek]

Florida, California, and Wisconsin seem to be hot spots not really sure why

Getting a lane at this place is fairly easy if you go online you can set up your own lane reservation. No waiting (not that it happens frequently anyway) but you can even make sure a pizza or other food is ready when you get there, your shoes are waiting and the names are already programmed on your lane with or without bumpers for each bowler. You just put on your shoes and bowl. It will not allow us to assign the lane to anyone during that time. It won't allow double booking either, if it's already assigned for league or another party it will show when it will be available. It's a pretty slick system to be honest.

I will say it reduces the amount of people who come and walk out because they can't get a lane and the people who use it love it. For us employees it's nice too because it automatically starts a tab on the lane so everything including bowling is automatically calculated. At the end we just click pay, the receipt pops out and they sign it, add a tip (hopefully) and off they go. Then the screen goes to cleaning mode telling us they are done to go clean up the lane for the next people. I'm so glad you don't have to "Prepay" for bowling. That always annoys me having to keep going to the counter if I want to bowl more which I usually do. To me that makes me want to bowl less, hence they lose money.
So in most cases there is lanes available. There is a lot of hours that I've seen where nobody is bowling or 1 or 2 people. Sounds like good hours to set up a league.

[boatman37]

And Pittsburgh. I had to go to 5 place before getting a lane for 3 of us to get a couple games in on a Sunday. Most days of the week are filled until at least 10

Same here. I am a little north of Pittsburgh and our place is always pretty full. 40 lanes and Tuesday night there are 3 leagues going (17 5 man teams in our league alone). Sunday afternoons aren't bad. I stopped in Saturday at about 9:00PM and the place was full of teens. I think Mondays are pretty light there too but the rest of the week there are leagues every night and most every day. Those are usually retired folks that would rather avoid the big loud crowds.

[Eddy]

Florida, California, and Wisconsin seem to be hot spots not really sure why

New York is a pretty big bowling state too from what I remember. I'm in Georgia now, which actually has a fair amount of serious bowlers. There are many tournaments held at the center I bowl at. The Atlanta area is pretty good for serious bowlers.

[Phonetek]

There is some hope that maybe by next fall I can get management to get some real leagues in there. I was told they are expanding the bowling alley. From what I understand it's going to take place this summer. We're actually going to have an upper bowling alley installed. As I mentioned before we have 12 lanes and it's downstairs. Obviously the place is doing well if they are doing this. I'm not sure exactly how many lanes yet, they are in talks with an architect to figure it out. If they are doing this well, I think this would be a good time to plead my case.

It's going to be interesting to say the least. I'm curious if they are going to have wood lanes in the new area or go to synthetic. I know they are sticking with the same AMF pinsetters as we currently have AMF 8270's. As I mentioned they are going to have the wood ones cut 1/8" this summer so they are keeping them wood obviously. I wouldn't mind if the new ones were synthetic it would be nice to have the best of both worlds. This may attract more serious bowlers. It opens up a whole lot of possibilites