Another vote for TV.
Television drastically changed a lot of social activities. For bowling, the current bowlers kept on bowling for the most part but there were fewer and fewer young bowlers coming into the sport. Once it became to be seen as an “old person’s sport” the numbers really started to fall off.
All of this feels like overthinking it. Trends rise and fall, fashions change, fads come and go. A bunch of bowling alleys opened up back in the 60s and 70s and did well, but then people got bored and found something else to do. Maybe in 20 or 30 years it’ll come back into style. This thread feels like a bunch of intellectuals trying to figure out socioeconomic reasons for Dance Dance Revolution not being as popular as it was in 2002.
When I was a kid we had what I believed to be the biggest bowling center in the world about a mile from our house. 118 lanes, if I’m not mistaken. We did our fair share of bowling but the pinball machines are what brought my friends and me back. Five balls per game (five actual balls, not the same one used five times.) and some of the older machines required you to manually lift the next ball into the launch area. There was a second plunger type handle under the launch handle to do this. I clearly remember when they brought in the first air hockey table and let us play for free for quite a while to get our impressions.
The bowling ally site is now a Target or something. I blame the increasing cost of a game of pinball for the demise of bowling. 
When I was growing up, my parents were in bowling leagues, and one thing I recall from then was industry consolidation–it seemed to go from a bunch of independent bowling alleys to everything being AMF. Looks like AMF’s gone through a couple of different bankruptcies, I presume part of it was a matter of a corporation over-extending itself just as the demographics are changing, it can’t really react well because it just spent all it’s money buying all of these huge buildings. So they start consolidating/shutting down poorer performers, which just further spirals down the hobby.
My first job was keeping score for leagues in a bowling alley in Torrance California. Gable House Bowling. Great fun.
But I’ll also admit that, in the early 80s (I was about 13 or so) I wandered in because it had a full fleet of video games instead of going to bowl.
Heh. I do not bowl, but I had a really cool pair of retro/art nouveau shoes that looked exactly like bowling shoes. They were also the most expensive shoes I’ve ever owned.
It is definitely overpriced for one.
Second, somewhat expensive gear-wise if you want to get at all serious in the game. Technology has massively changed over the last 30 years.
Finally, there are several times per year where a casual can’t get a lane because of league night, which is absolutely infuriating.
Poor perception of bowling in general. Even though it is NOT cheap, it’s perceived as a blue collar “sport” full of losers, hot heads, and drunks (see: 1996’s “Kingpin”). I think this is slowly changing.
I’m not sure how big a contributor it is, but it seems like these days families are much more focused on the kids’ activities. For many families I know there are 2-3 kids and the parents are shuttling them to/from activities 5 nights a week or more. That doesn’t leave much time for Mom or Dad to go bowling.
It could be. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, in Illinois and (especially) in Wisconsin, bowling was huge. Men’s leagues tended to be on weekday evenings, and (probably a lot like fraternal organizations like the Moose and Elks, which have also declined dramatically) it was a vehicle to socialize with other men, without the families present. Women’s leagues tended to be during the day, as more women were stay-at-home moms then, and it was a way for them to socialize with other women, without their husbands around – the alleys where my mom bowled had “kids’ rooms” where they could park us, just like the tennis club did.
All of those dynamics have changed since then.
I agree with this. We have a small alley in our town with 20 or so lanes. It has been there a long time, and some would say it is run-down, but others, like myself, think it’s just fine. My kids occasionally went there, but as stated upthread, it was usually for parties, and rarely a small group drop-in - never a league.
I think in addition to what has been stated already, the increased size of our homes may be a factor. Most entertainment happens at home now with gaming rooms, Netflix, huge TV screens, etc. In the 60s and 70s people still depended on away-from-home sources of entertainment, such as bowling alleys, public pools, parks, movie theaters, libraries, etc. You had to leave home to be entertained. I wonder if there is a parallel decline in usage of these sorts of facilities as well.
Now you can bowl all night in the comfort of your own home for free on a gaming system, toss some frozen wings in the oven, and drink your own microbrew, and not have to worry about getting home safely.
One thing that didn’t help bowling was the bad job they did running and broadcasting bowling championships. The stepladder format for the finals was supposed to make things more exciting but, to me, had the opposite effect. The commentary and such was basic.
Note that there isn’t a lot you can say about what a bowler is about to do. There’s one pin left standing, what sort of color commentary are you going to add? Controversial “plays” are few and far between. It’s more boring than golf!
And the crowd sizes are small. Doesn’t compare to 20k+ you could get with a football or baseball game.
If you don’t grab people on TV, the sport isn’t going to thrive.
My guess at the reason for “bowling ironically” is also my guess for the reason bowling has declined. I see bowling as a game for older blue-collar men. Older blue-collar men of the type who bowled regularly are pretty much gone.
This town is blue-collar and low income. The population is about 11,000,and the demographics over the last decade show a large increase of Hispanics and an increase of Africans. (No, not African Americans. Africans.) The idea that bowling is for blue-collar workers seems…hmmm…prejudicial. The bowling alley here went out of business so long ago that we (newcomers of 3 years) have never been given directions including the phrase “where the bowling alley used to be.” There is no indication that there is any attempt by anyone to open a business for recreation such as bowling. We wish someone would open a mini-golf course, but no.
I think there are some economic and social factors to the demise of bowling. It has gotten more expensive. There are cheaper forms of entertainment. I don’t know about others but we don’t bowl. We might go bowling if an alley would decide to ditch the deafening (and repulsive) music choices, but I don’t see that happening, either.
I think the better question is why the sudden surge in bowling that started in the late 50s, stayed high through the 60s and then dropped back to its previous level. You cannot blame TV because those years were the golden age of TV. Incidentally, I started bowling in the late 50s and did for four or five years, including being in a league, but then stopped for lack of continued interest and have bowled only a few times since. Oh, and I think I inured my back. The few times I have bowled since then were ducks (or, once, candle-pins a form of bowling devised for masochists only).
Anybody remember The bowling Game or “Bowling for dollars” that a lot of local media markets had? It was immensely popular here in the 70’s and 80’s.
Anyone claiming that social activity has declined should observe that thirty people are here having a discussion together on the issue.
I would wager that Putnam would strongly argue with your use of the word “together” in your statement, or that an online message board is “social activity”. Personally, I think he’s a little self-contradictory. Here he suggests that “Barn-raising on the frontier was social capital in action, and so too are e-mail exchanges among members of a cancer support group” - but I think he’d look at a broader-based message board such as ours as something else entirely. There’s likely a line there somewhere. Maybe it’s the anonymity?
If anyone is interesting here’s the time stamp in “The Dollop” podcast where they briefly talk about how lack of money is what killed bowling (it seems like they talk about it for longer earlier but just scrubbing through I can’t seem to find it)
http://thedollop.libsyn.com/187-the-history-of-bowling-in-america
1:05:13
Even crown green bowling has declined hereabouts, and that’s much more of a spectator sport. Where we play croquet has two bowling greens and we use one and I’ve never seen the other in use.