IBI April 2019 Cover Story

COVER STORY

By Robert Sax

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owling as sport and game show has played a big role on television since the 1950s. If you remember the syndicated Bowling for Dollars show of the 1960s, you know that bowling-based game shows that allow viewers to win money based on the performance of on-camera bowlers have been a popular hybrid format at various times.

In 2018, Bowlero, the world’s largest owner and operator of bowling centers, updated the format for the digital world with Live on the Lanes, a show that was streamed live on the Internet. What transpired is a fascinating look at how old concepts and new media can be used to market bowling to contemporary audiences.

Willis Robertson is a young TV producer in Los Angeles who learned the ropes of reality TV with such top companies as Bunim-Murray, the producers of such hits as Project Runway and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. As he began developing his own projects, he realized that there hadn’t been a bowling game show in some time. “I knew that historically there’s been a lot of success in bowling game shows,” says Robertson, “and I just felt that there was a way to do an updated version.” He was also inspired by the success of HQ Trivia, a livestreamed daily trivia contest launched in Fall 2017 that proved capable of drawing a huge audience.

He also had a hunch that Bowlero, with more than 300 bowling centers, could

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COVER STORY

Production of Live on the Lanes

use its social media connections to its Millennial customers to create its own “network” via streaming video. This meant the ability to produce and test a show quickly without having to waste years trying to convince a television network to bankroll it. “With 300 plus bowling centers that each have a Facebook page, they have a massive number of eyeballs, right?” says Robertson, “and Bowlero seemed like a brand on the leading edge when it comes to taking chances and trying new things.”

So he pitched his idea to Bowlero CEO Tom Shannon, a fellow University of Virginia alumnus.

Shannon was receptive to the pitch and connected Robertson with Colie Edison, Bowlero’s Chief Customer Officer and a creative marketer with a background in advertising.

Coincidentally, Edison had also been working on ideas for TV shows, and her earlier video ventures included some tournaments and Crushes It, a TV ad campaign starring PBA champion Jason Belmonte and a very complicated trick shot on the lanes. “We had ideas about televised bowling forever and had a couple of things that were baking in the

oven,” Edison says. “It was all about finding the right production partner.”

The creative partnership of Edison and Robertson proved a powerful one.

“Bowlero knows their brand and they know bowling,” says Robertson, “and my background of reality TV development is coming up with crazy ideas and challenges.” He says the combination of his ideas with Edison’s combined to make good television as well as a solid promotion for the Bowlero brand.

Edison and Robertson developed their show to use the Facebook Live streaming video platform, which was made available to the public in 2016.

Facebook Live allows Facebook users to capture and stream live video on a Facebook page. It also lets viewers comment in real time on the video they are watching. It was this feature that allowed the producers of Live on the Lanes to monitor viewer response to the game and permitted viewers to play along and win prizes.

“What made Live on the Lanes different than anything out there was that our customers and our audience could actually engage with that in real time,” says Edison. “So while we had our bowlers bowling in the center, home viewers could comment, “like,” and share on Facebook for a chance Co-creator of Live on the Lanes Willis Robertson IBI

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COVER STORY to win their own prizes.”

The basic format of Live on the Lanes was a thirtyminute live show with an in-center audience streamed

from a different Bowlero bowling center each episode.

Three amateur bowlers selected at the center competed in a variety of bowling challenges for a chance to win cash prizes. The bowlers faced such trials as bowling blindfolded, backwards and while sipping from a beer helmet. Their goal was to make it through to the final jackpot round, where they could win a

LOL Episode4 Contestants

grand prize of as much as $1,500.

In the jackpot round, the final contestant had to bowl the conventional way, getting several chances to knock down a specified number of bowling pins. Each roll was worth an increasing amount of money and after each roll the contestant could decide to take their winnings and leave or risk it all for a larger jackpot. Failure to knock down the required number of pins in a round meant the

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contestant forfeited all their jackpot winnings.

Live on the Lanes retained at least one traditional game show element, a host who introduced the challenges, chatted with the contestants and kept the game rolling. Meanwhile a separate on-line host monitored viewers following along on Facebook, who could enter into random drawings for additional cash prizes of up to $500. The engaging Live on the Lanes oncamera host was actress Sarah Pribis, who was one of the hosts on Trivia HQ and has also appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Production ran from July to October 2018, and five episodes were produced at Bowlero centers ranging from northern New Jersey to Southern California. LiveX, a New York-based company that has done streaming broadcasts for the Democratic National Convention and the U.S. Open golf tournament, handled the production duties.

Live on the Lanes drew a cumulative online audience of 2.5 million viewers over its five episodes, according to Edison. As Robertson realized, that’s a lot of eyeballs. Although admittedly an apples and oranges comparison, recent PBA competitions telecast on FOX Sports have drawn audiences averaging 533,000 viewers per first-run episode.

Edison says the series succeeded as a marketing test for Bowlero.

“People played it back, people watched it [live] and we promoted Colie Edison, Bowlero’s Chief Customer the show through Facebook ads. Officer

COVER STORY

And overwhelmingly the feedback was really positive.” The show also gave Bowlero a way to show people how much fun they could have for themselves

at Bowlero. “We were able to target people who may not have a Bowlero near them. They were able to learn about what the Bowlero brand experience is like, and that’s something we really haven’t been able to do before,” says Edison. “That was huge because so often we talk about what we’ve done to the centers, how we’ve changed that experience inside the four walls. But unless you were going there, you didn’t really see it.”

Despite the creative success of Live on the Lanes, Bowlero isn’t planning to produce additional episodes at this time. “Unfortunately we didn’t really see it correlate directly to revenue [at centers],” says Edison. However, one experience of doing the show has led to a new television project. “Something we learned quickly was that people like to watch better bowlers. In the beginning the process to become a contestant was pretty broad and then toward the end we really looked at our Bowlero core of league bowlers to

be our contestants, because we found them much more engaging to watch,” says Edison.

That insight lead to the Bowlero Elite Series, the company’s own professional sports property. “In its first year it is comprised of three tournaments,” says Edison. “The first tournament will be this April in which we’re having eight professional bowlers compete against eight amateur bowlers [drawn from Bowlero leagues] to win a prize pool of over $500,000.” The lineup of pro bowlers includes Jason Belmonte, Sean Rash, Shannon O’Keefe and Danielle McEwan.

The tournaments will be broadcast live on the NBC Sports Network. “This is a true opportunity for the amateurs to best the pros, with a tremendous payout at stake on a national stage.”

Amateurs versus pros on television?

That brings to mind Beat the Champ, a local Detroit show in the early 1970s. It began with a match between several amateur bowlers; the winner of the rolloff would then play a one-game match against a pro bowler or a local top allstar bowler. Occasionally a PBA star would be on the show, according to a post on bowling discussion board mrbowling300.net.

In Bowlero’s creative approach to marketing, it seems that everything old can be new again. ❖

You can watch episodes of Live on the Lanes at Facebook.com/BowleroBowl/videos Tune into NBCSN on Tuesday, April 9th from 9-11 p.m. (EST) to watch the first event of the Bowlero Elite Series

Robert Sax is a writer and PR consultant in Los Angeles. He grew up in Toronto, Canada, the home of five-pin bowling.

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