E-dition No. 948 Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Editor: Bob Johnson (bjibob@aol.com)
We hope you survived Tax Day 2017 without incident. We’re coming to you a day early because we’ll be on assignment the rest of the week, working on a couple of very special stories. As always, we invite you to keep up with all the latest bowling news on bowlersjournal.com and bowling business news on bcmmag.com.
SCN Partners With STE on Go Bowling App
Sports Challenge Network, provider of mobile solutions for the bowling industry and creator of XBowling and Action Bowling, has completed an agreement with Strike Ten Entertainment to be the exclusive mobile app and digital contest platform for the national network of STE Bowling Centers.
This exclusive agreement is set to accelerate growth and lead digital innovation within the sport of bowling. Through its relationship with STE, SCN brings expertise and unwavering passion in delivering consumers access to products that move the industry forward by exciting bowlers, delivering new and engaging products to proprietors, and creating more traffic inside of bowling centers.
“We are excited to provide the bowling industry with the Go Bowling App. This new mobile platform will engage bowlers, bowling centers, vendors, sponsors and other related brands to further grow the industry,” said Tim Minard, founder and CEO of SCN. “We are committed to delivering new opportunities to bowling proprietors and customers. Our mission is to serve the sport of bowling through the advancement of mobile and digital technology by inspiring more people to bowl and to do it more often.”
SCN will deliver a marketplace of products and services via the Go Bowling App, including the fastest-growing program the sport has to offer, Action Bowling – a consumer-facing mobile product that lets league bowlers across the U.S. compete in daily, weekly, monthly and season-long contests using their league scores for real cash from the comfort of their home center.
The new Go Bowling App also provides a back-end system to more easily manage various aspects of business from one simple platform, including the ability to custom-create coupons, and messaging in real-time.
“SCN has proven itself as a technological leader in terms of delivering products that are embraced both by bowling center owners on the business-to-business side and by bowlers on the consumer side,” said STE’s President, John Harbuck. “In today’s world, you have to deliver on the digital front, and SCN gives bowling an edge in this area.”
The new Go Bowling App is available now in Google Play and the App Store.
Main Event Opens New Location in Indy
Main Event Entertainment, the nation’s fastest-growing bowling-anchored dining and entertainment destination, has opened its first center in Indianapolis center.
Indy is the 32nd Main Event location and the latest of seven centers set to open across the nation in 2017. Additional centers are now under construction in Pittsburgh, Pa.; Humble, Texas; Gilbert, Ariz.; North Kansas City, Mo.; and Knoxville, Tenn. Jacksonville’s first Main Event opened earlier this year.
Additional geographical markets spanning the East, Midwest and Southern regions are in the pipeline for 2018. The company projects to have 42 centers open across the country by the end of next year.
The Indianapolis center hosted a VIP event on Saturday, and a ceremonial “lane-christening” and grand opening took place on Monday, hosted by the OneZone Chamber of Commerce and various local dignitaries.
The event included a check presentation to the Damar Foundation, a leader in providing early intervention and transitional living services for children and adults in Indianapolis with developmental and behavioral disabilities.
“We are so pleased to introduce to the people of Indianapolis the truly distinctive dining and entertainment experience that is Main Event,” said Charlie Keegan, CEO of Main Event Entertainment. “We’re inviting the entire community to come out and enjoy some delicious food, play an assortment of incredible games and maybe even try something completely new – like multi-level laser tag or the World’s Largest Pac-Man. We’ve got it all in our beautifully designed new entertainment center, located near the Castleton area.”
The 65,000-sq.-ft. entertainment center has been completely renovated with Main Event’s new design prototype, which features 22 state-of-the-art ice-white lanes with multi-color LED lighting and luxury seating, a rock-climbing course, laser tag, billiards, shuffleboard and a games gallery featuring more than 100 of the latest interactive and virtual video games.
A chef-inspired casual dining experience is provided in the center’s full-service American-fare restaurant, specialty pizzas are prepared in its Italian-themed café, and handcrafted cocktails are mixed in a high-energy bar surrounded by big-screen TVs.
The center offers fully equipped private meeting spaces with the latest audio-visual technology, full-service catering, free Wi-Fi and everything else essential to hosting corporate meetings, team-building exercises, holiday parties and other gatherings.
“We are excited to welcome Main Event to our area,” said Mo Merhoff, President of the OneZone Chamber of Commerce. “As a unique combination of family entertainment and food, it will provide great opportunities to our growing communities. We think Indiana is a great place to do business and are thankful Main Event chose to both invest in our community and provide important jobs.”
Pezzano Scholarship Deadline Nears
The deadline to apply for the Chuck Pezzano Scholarship is 11 days away. The International Bowling Media Association, which oversees the scholarship, will accept applications through April 30.
The scholarship was introduced to honor the memory of Pezzano, often referred to as bowling’s most prolific writer, and to help develop a new generation of journalists to cover bowling. This year, the scholarship is valued at $5,000.
To learn more about the scholarship and qualification requirements, go to: http://www.bowlingmedia.org/Portals/0/Documents/CRITERIA.pdf.
To view the online pre-application, click here: http://www.bowlingmedia.org/Scholarships.
If you know of an aspiring journalist at your center or company, please let them know about this opportunity to help pay for their college education.
Business Briefs…
* A September opening is planned for what will be the 10th location of Stars and Strikes , and the first in Alabama. The company has broken ground on a site in Huntsville for a 54,000-sq.-ft. facility that will house 24 lanes, an arcade, a two-level laser tag arena, plus other attractions. The company pegged the cost of the project at $6 million.
* The third Dust Bowl Lanes and Lounge was scheduled to open last year in Little Rock, Ark., joining locations in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla. But now the project is back on track, with a building permit issued for the former American Legion building on Little Rock’s Capitol Avenue. To view an architectural rendering, go to: http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2017/apr/18/news-in-brief-20170418/?f=business.
Other News You Can Use…
* McKendree captured its first National Collegiate Athletic Association Women’s Bowling Championship on Saturday at the Raising Cane’s River Center in Baton Rouge, La. The Bearcats swept five-time NCAA champion Nebraska in the best-of-seven Baker final, 4-0, to become the first Division II team to win the title. Saturday’s championship round was broadcast live on ESPNU. Full report: http://www.bowlersjournal.com/mckendree-wins-2017-ncaa-womens-bowling-championship/.
* In the wake of his victory in the PBA Mark Roth/Marshall Holman Doubles Championship with Jesper Svensson, Kyle Troup made an appearance on ESPN’s SportsCenter program Wednesday morning. For more on that, go to: http://www.bowlersjournal.com/fro-power-kyle-troup-talks-hair-and-spares-on-sportscenter/. For a full report on the tournament, click here: http://www.bowlersjournal.com/kyle-troup-jesper-svensson-win-rothholman-pba-doubles-championship/.
* The PBA60 Killer ‘B’ Open went down to the final frame, with Tom Baker finishing first and forcing Ron Mohr to punch out for the win. Mohr got two strikes but not the third, so the $7,500 title went to Baker. Read more here: http://www.bowlersjournal.com/tom-baker-survives-10th-frame-shootout-with-ron-mohr-to-win-pba60-killer-b-open/.
* The guest this week on Phantom Radio is bowling writer Mark London, who authored the feature on the 50th anniversary of Jack Biondolillo’s televised 300 game at the 1967 Firestone Tournament of Champions for the April issue of BJI. To listen to the conversation, click here: http://www.kegel.net/phantomblog/2017/4/19/mark-london-phantom-radio.
* CONTACT: Please send business news, event information, etc. to Bob Johnson at bjibob@aol.com. For breaking business news, visit bcmmag.com or bowlersjournal.com. BJI Cyber Reports are now archived at bcmmag.com.
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