How To Take A Different Shot This Summer

It’s the end of the fall/winter league season. Many centers’ winter leagues have already ended and spring/summer leagues are starting. 

Other centers’ leagues will go another 3 to 4 weeks, or even more, due to snow cancellations and the like which could result in a shortened summer league schedule. 

No doubt you are doing your lane to lane solicitation, call back programs, emailing and social media strategies to sign up as many summer league bowlers as possible, right?

If you’re doing these tasks and treading water, maybe it’s time to take a shot at something different; like a monthly open play bowling pass.

Years ago, probably in the mid to late nineties, when I headed up the marketing effort for a 62 center chain (Bowling Corporation of America), we experimented with monthly summer open play passes in our upstate NY centers and Michigan centers; two areas that we had a notoriously difficult time in flooring summer bowlers. 

(In these environments, anything over 50 degrees was summer and everyone was outside)! Getting them back inside was a “toughy”.

So we countered that with a  price package of unlimited open play bowling for you and 1 friend for $29.95. For 2 months it was $49.95 and for 3 months it was $59.95. After two people, everyone else paid the prevailing rate. Back then we used punch cards to track usage and plan future marketing plans. 

Shoe rentals were uniformly set at $2. Remember these price points were “mid Nineties” prices in low summer league based centers. Very low :(

It was a successful program in that it met our fairly ambitious sales goals.  We planned to roll out the following summer with all the marketing support we could muster. 

But, by then, BCA was sold to another chain…and we never did get our shot to repeat it.

Maybe you can take your shot this summer…after your leagues floor, of course.