Bowlero remade neighborhood bowling alleys into a trendy “eatertainment” brand and now owns the PBA. A federal agency, the EEOC, says the makeover also purged its older workers.
For a decade Bowlero — now legally named Lucky Strike Entertainment — ran one play: buy a tired bowling alley, add black lights, cocktails, and arcade walls, and sell it to a young crowd as “eatertainment.” It swallowed AMF Bowling in 2013 and the Brunswick centers in 2014 and rebranded the whole chain. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it spent that same decade managing out the older workers who actually ran those alleys. After a nine-year investigation, the EEOC found reasonable cause to believe Bowlero engaged in what the law calls a “pattern or practice” of age discrimination going back to at least 2013 — an administrative finding, not a court verdict.
Former employees allege managers were pressured to swap longtime staff for “fresh young faces,” that 287 of 351 center managers were cycled out between 2013 and 2015, and that CEO Thomas Shannon screened job candidates over video for how young and attractive they looked. Bowlero denies all of it. After a proposed $60 million settlement collapsed — Bowlero countered with $500,000 — the EEOC closed its case and issued 75 right-to-sue notices. On a May 2023 earnings call, President and CFO Brett Parker called the claims “entirely false” and said the company denies them “in the strongest terms”; in its SEC filings the company disclosed the EEOC determination and said it “contests such determination and intends to defend vigorously.”