There have been a few posts lately on attracting new bowlers to our sport, increasing the sports profile and so on. I can see several reasons why with the current centre structure why this task may not be that easily achieved. Firstly, who owns AMF ? – Well it is MLT (Macquarie Leisure Trust Group – purchased a year ago along with Bowling Australia), a division within Macquarie Bank (they also own Dreamworld). If you have your superannuation managed by MacSuper, then there is a good chance you are contributing to your super by way of your bowling. As this is a business who’s sole purpose is to provide a return on investment, the business will be (and should be) run in a manner to provide this. Therefore prices are as likely to drop as interest rates (and there is probably a like between them too), and incentives to attract more bowlers will become the responsibility of the individual centres who would be required to achieve results whilst adhering to the corporate guidelines on pricing – hence no freebees or near freebees. The direction that MLT want to take AMF is stated in their prospectus –
“Since making the acquisitions, we have significantly restructured the business to reposition bowling as a major leisure pursuit in the Australian market. Initial work has concentrated on establishing a strategic marketing team with the objective of improving performance in the key growth areas of birthday parties, corporate groups and open social play.”
The key words are “improving performance”
This is not limited to AMF, the independents are now up against the might of MLT, and to succeed they must be run very well and cut costs wherever possible to stay in business. I bowled at one of these centres last week and discovered the pinsetters where Brunswick, but the approaches and lanes were synthetic and out of China ! at 20% the cost of traditional lanes, (The games cost $10 each and as I did not play in a league there, they would not give me league discount. I will not bowl there again !!)..
I learnt recently that all pro shops were independent of the centres too, thinking about this it made sense – MLT are not in the retail business, they are in leisure – that is why all the outlet shops at Dreamworld are independent too. So I doubt we would see all the pro-shops being run out of AMF directly in the future.
Is Bowling treated like a ‘real’ sport? – I don’t really think so, not in Australia anyway at the moment, the TBA are doing a great job in getting up there, but I feel they must be a little inhibited by not having any real input into the running of the centres. In the USA, if you are a member of the PBA you can get $1 games. It is very difficult for youngsters (and oldsters too), who want to excel in bowling to put in the lane work required to achieve the elite level without having significant resources behind them. In NZ centres have a practice block (normally 2 hours), where you pay about $20, and bowl any number of games you like – great if you just want to play the dots and reset the spares or just generally practice. This would be welcome here I am sure..
This post is not a put down of AMF in any measure, It hopefully just provides information to help everyone understand why we pay what we do for bowling, why we will continue to pay what we do for bowling, and why centres and state management are not the ones to complain to.
Maybe a few emails or phone calls to MLT’s marketing group would help (or maybe it wouldn’t) ???? –
“Since making the acquisitions, we have significantly restructured the business to reposition bowling as a major leisure pursuit in the Australian market. Initial work has concentrated on establishing a strategic marketing team with the objective of improving performance in the key growth areas of birthday parties, corporate groups and open social play.”
The key words are “improving performance”
This is not limited to AMF, the independents are now up against the might of MLT, and to succeed they must be run very well and cut costs wherever possible to stay in business. I bowled at one of these centres last week and discovered the pinsetters where Brunswick, but the approaches and lanes were synthetic and out of China ! at 20% the cost of traditional lanes, (The games cost $10 each and as I did not play in a league there, they would not give me league discount. I will not bowl there again !!)..
I learnt recently that all pro shops were independent of the centres too, thinking about this it made sense – MLT are not in the retail business, they are in leisure – that is why all the outlet shops at Dreamworld are independent too. So I doubt we would see all the pro-shops being run out of AMF directly in the future.
Is Bowling treated like a ‘real’ sport? – I don’t really think so, not in Australia anyway at the moment, the TBA are doing a great job in getting up there, but I feel they must be a little inhibited by not having any real input into the running of the centres. In the USA, if you are a member of the PBA you can get $1 games. It is very difficult for youngsters (and oldsters too), who want to excel in bowling to put in the lane work required to achieve the elite level without having significant resources behind them. In NZ centres have a practice block (normally 2 hours), where you pay about $20, and bowl any number of games you like – great if you just want to play the dots and reset the spares or just generally practice. This would be welcome here I am sure..
This post is not a put down of AMF in any measure, It hopefully just provides information to help everyone understand why we pay what we do for bowling, why we will continue to pay what we do for bowling, and why centres and state management are not the ones to complain to.
Maybe a few emails or phone calls to MLT’s marketing group would help (or maybe it wouldn’t) ???? –
