17 years ago when we dreamt up what has become the Kids Bowl Free marketing movement we had just 3 goals in mind.
- Create summer traffic to bowling centers, for decades summers were a drain on bowling centers who worked all winter to build up a nice cash reserve, only to see it slowly drain all summer long.
- Create secondary spending. The goal of the program was never to “give away” bowling, but we and participating centers needed a “hook” which was the 2 FREE games of bowling EVERY day, all summer long. By creating traffic, we’d naturally create secondary spending via food, beverage, shoe rental, and arcades.
- Create a database that could be used to market the bowling center year round. Many bowling centers were not gathering data in any meaningful way at the time, few had been using tools like BowlerTrac. Today many centers are now using CRM tools, sending emails and direct mail to the massive list of customers we’ve helped them build.
But then as the program began to build momentum and centers began to develop these new customers from Kids Bowl Free into league bowlers, a lot of other stories began coming to us from centers, from distributors, from manufacturers, from media contacts.
What were these stories?
They were the stories of Kids Bowl Free customers, becoming the future of bowling!
We began to get stories from parents letting us know that their kids found bowling for the first time through Kids Bowl Free, and then they tried a league program, which led to them joining more leagues, applying for scholarships and bowling on college teams!
We even have stories like Hope Gramly who began bowling because of Kids Bowl Free and became the Rookie Of The Year on the PWBA tour in 2023.
In addition to Hope there are many other kids just like her, they fell in love with the game and sport of bowling, after learning about Kids Bowl Free at school, a church, a youth group that passed out our cards or seeing one of our digital ads.
Then in 2024 we launched our BIG Movement (Bowling Industry Growth) where we are collaborating with Storm Bowling to take Kids Bowl Free, and the millions of kids that join the program to the next level.
We created a series of video bowling lessons that every kids receives in our Kids Bowl Free app, they are done with Storm team member Verity Crawley.
We also implemented a bowling score tracking tool in our app. The goal is to have kids and parents create their Kids Bowl Free average. During the first year more than 135,000 kids created an average!
This introduces them to the sport side of bowling. We want them to know there’s more to bowling than just going with their friends for fun day out.
This summer we’ll be adding some additional Storm elements.
…and here’s the best news for you. If you’ve not participated in Kids Bowl Free over the past 2 years, Storm is willing to pay for your center to join the program.
They believe that working together with us, that all centers can improve their future league and competitive play.
Tens of thousands of kids have become lifelong bowlers, after joining the Kids Bowl Free summer bowling program, you have nothing to lose, except for a lot of future bowlers, both kids and adults!
During the summer of 2025 Kids Bowl Free will introduce more than 3.5 million kids to bowling.
The only question is will they be at your center or not?
Ready To Get Started?
Give Andy Vasko a call today at 877-841-4590
