How big is bowling in Western Europe? Japan? etc?
I bowl once or twice a year with my family. We always score badly but have fun.
I don’t know the specifics in terms of bowling for fun, but it is probably somewhat telling that the world’s top professional bowlers have increasingly become a more international group in the last…say 10 years or so. Many of them tell stories of growing up bowling on local lanes, so I assume the sport is at least somewhat popular in their home countries.
Current examples include arguably the world’s best, Jason Belmonte (Australia) and others like Dom Barrett and Stuart Williams (England), Jesper Svensson (Sweden), Osku Palermaa (Finland), Andres Gomez and Clara Guerrero, among others (Columbia), New Hui Fen, Jazreel Tan and Shayna Ng (Singapore).
There are also huge tournaments in Japan, Korea and other parts of Asia every year, but for whatever reason, there aren’t as many Asian bowlers on the professional men’s tour. It may be that the JPBA and its Asian ilk are lucrative enough that the top pros there don’t feel the need to migrate to the US to be on tour.
Growing up in Maryland in the 60s we went to at least two Duckpin alleys. They were more family oriented than the 10 pin places. At one place you could bowl in your socks if you didn’t have shoes and they had a report card special where you could get a free game for every A you got. That last part didn’t help me much.
I used to be an avid 10 pin bowler back around 1960, when it seemed new lanes were going up every day. Then it basically faded and most of them closed. I did go bowling near Boston where my lives and they used candlepins, an entirely different game where the pins were upright sticks (candle-shaped in fact) and you got three shots in every frame (like duckpins) and they didn’t clear the deadwood between shots. Spares were rare and strikes virtually non-existent. A score of 100 was as rare as 200 in tenpins.
Anyway, my impression is that it went steadily downhill after the big bump in the 50s.
I’m around 35 years old and I know multiple people a couple years younger than me that regularly played in leagues at least up to a few years ago. I personally have never played in a league, and only went as a kid when my dad took me. While it’s not boring or uninteresting, it’s one of those things I never really liked enough to do if I had to pay for it, so I stopped doing it as an adult.
120 is a pretty impressive speed, I must say. 
Clearly bowling is in a decline, a lot of alleys have closed down over the last 20+ years. The remaining alleys are busy, but all the alleys used to be busy. The great thing about a league is that you get out every week with friends to do something that doesn’t prevent you from socializing.
There is 3 Bowling Alleys within 15 miles of each other. There is a very strong league, with many 300 ring wearer’s. 40-50+ in age. I date a gentleman that wears one & is on 2 leagues. We are a tight group, we also ride motorcycles together. Playing league is intense so for fun and a way to let loose have a few beers, the Alley’s offer “Glow in the dark” bowling on the week-ends. The Alley transforms into a black light wonderland the balls even glow, the music is loud & hip, makes a great first date night! I don’t see it slowing down anytime soon one of the Alley’s is a few years newSacramento California & surrounding area’s
I’d bowl everyday if I could afford it. And they didn’t keep putting kids in the lane next to me when the alley is almost empty. You also don’t have to worry about bowling dying. According to Kevin Riley the Enterprise has a bowling alley aboard the starship.
Sooner or later there’s a thread about just about everything: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=805973