The Ground Under Your Bowling Alley
In October 2023, Bowlero — the company that spent a decade rolling up American bowling — sold the real estate under 38 of its bowling centers for $432.9 million. The buyer was VICI Properties, a Las Vegas real estate investment trust that owns the ground under Caesars Palace, the MGM Grand, and the Venetian. Then Bowlero signed a 25-year lease to rent those very same buildings back at $31.6 million a year, with rent that can only rise. The sport’s home now shares a landlord with the Las Vegas Strip.
The man who has bowled the same house every Tuesday for thirty years has no idea. The floor under his lane does not belong to the bowling alley anymore. It belongs to a Las Vegas casino landlord. And in Bowlero’s own filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, this so-called sale is not even counted as a sale.
Who VICI Properties Is
VICI Properties is not a bowling company. It is a real estate investment trust — a REIT — which is a landlord that owns property and collects rent on an enormous scale. VICI owns the actual real estate underneath some of the most famous buildings on the Las Vegas Strip. It does not run the casinos, does not deal the cards or spin the wheels. It owns the ground they sit on, and the casino operators pay it rent. That is the entire business model: own the dirt under the thing everybody loves, and collect the check forever.
In October 2023, VICI decided it wanted to own the dirt under bowling, too. It bought the real estate of 38 Bowlero centers spread across 17 states — 11 of those states brand-new territory for VICI. The price was $432.9 million. VICI called it, in its own announcement, its first move into family entertainment. The casino landlord had discovered the bowling alley.
A Triple-Net Lease Running Fifty-Five Years
When Bowlero sold those buildings, it did not pack up and leave. It signed what is called a triple-net master lease. Triple-net means the tenant pays not just the rent but the property taxes, the insurance, and the upkeep on top of it. When the roof starts leaking, when the air conditioning dies on a hundred-degree August Saturday, when the county reassesses the property and the tax bill jumps — that is the tenant’s bill. Bowlero pays to fix, insure, and tax all of it. VICI just cashes the check.
The rent started at $31.6 million a year. The lease runs 25 years to start, with six five-year renewal options stacked on top — meaning it can run as long as 55 years. And the rent does not stay still. It climbs every single year by at least two percent, and more if inflation runs hot, capped at two and a half percent. Over just the first 25 years, that rent adds up to roughly a billion dollars in committed payments — on buildings the company used to own free and clear.
VICI also received a right of first offer, good for eight years: every time Bowlero decides to sell the ground under more of its alleys, VICI gets first crack at buying it. The casino landlord did not just buy 38 buildings. It bought a standing first option on the future of Bowlero’s real estate.
The Mortgage Hiding in the Footnotes
Here is the part hiding in the footnotes — the part that turns a strange real estate transaction into a genuinely bizarre one. In its annual report, Bowlero states that the transfer was not a sale for accounting purposes, because control of the buildings remained with the company. The lease is so long — 55 years if you count the renewals — that for accounting purposes Bowlero never really gave the buildings up. They kept the buildings on their own books. They kept depreciating them, the way an owner does. And the $432.9 million? They did not book it as money from a sale. They booked it as a financing obligation. A debt. A liability that, in their own words, is accounted for similarly to debt or finance leases.
Accountants have a name for a sale-leaseback that functions as a loan in disguise: a failed sale-leaseback. By Bowlero’s own filings, that is exactly what this is. As of mid-2025, that financing obligation sat on the balance sheet at about $449 million, and in a single year Bowlero paid about $40.7 million in interest on it — interest, like a loan. The cash from the deal shows up on the cash-flow statement under financing activities, filed right next to borrowing. Not under sales. A sale on the marquee. A mortgage in the footnotes.
This Is Not New: 2004, 2014, 2023
If this feels like a brand-new private-equity invention, it is not. Selling the ground out from under bowling is a tradition. In February 2004, AMF — the same AMF that put automatic pinsetters in alleys across America — sold the land under 186 of its bowling centers and leased them right back for $254 million. The buyer was a real-estate finance firm called iStar. AMF sold those buildings to climb out of its first bankruptcy, the one it had filed in 2001. It needed cash, so it sold the one thing it could not make more of: the dirt.
Then in 2014, iStar bought 58 more bowling centers — the old Brunswick alleys — for $200 million, and leased those back too. Same landlord. Same playbook. A decade apart. And the operator is the same bloodline the whole way through: AMF became Bowlmor AMF, Bowlmor AMF became Bowlero. Three deals — 2004, 2014, 2023 — the same families of buildings, sold and rented back over two decades. The forensic point underneath all three: selling the dirt does not make the rent go away. It makes the rent permanent. AMF sold those buildings to climb out of its first bankruptcy and was still carrying that rent when it went bankrupt again in 2012. They sold the ground to save the company, and the rent helped sink it. Twice.
Who the Bill Comes For First
Ask anyone who has ever run a bowling house on a corporate lease. The rent check is the same size the first of every month — fat week or dead week, whether the place was packed or empty. When a rent bill only ever climbs, the manager re-prices the only things left to re-price: open play, the walk-in family on a Saturday, the snack bar, the hours. Which are the exact things that made it your room in the first place.
Above all of this sits a layered ownership structure. VICI is the landlord at the bottom, the one that owns the dirt and collects the rent. Bowlero itself is controlled by private equity, an investment firm called Atairos with Apollo money layered in. The everyday bowler is paying rent up to a casino landlord and profit up to a private-equity firm at the same time. The company even stopped calling itself a bowling company: in December 2024 it renamed itself Lucky Strike Entertainment and quietly dropped the word bowling from its own name.
In July 2025, the company quietly started buying some of its leased real estate back — spending about $306 million to reacquire the ground under 58 of its venues using its own credit line, trading a rent payment for an interest payment. But when the house buys its own floor back, the bowler does not get a dollar of it. The only thing being settled is which party collects the rent. The tell was never who owns the dirt. It is that it was never going to be the guy bowling on it.
Chapters
- 0:00 The Floor Under Your Lanes
- 1:30 Meet VICI: The Landlord of the Strip
- 3:30 The $432.9 Million Lease-Back
- 5:40 The Mortgage Hiding in the Footnotes
- 8:00 This Isn’t New: 2004, 2014, 2023
- 10:30 Why a Casino Wants Your Bowling Alley
- 12:30 The Owners Above the Landlord
- 13:50 The Lawsuit’s About the Company. This Is About the Ground.
Sources
- VICI Properties — Completes Acquisition of 38 Bowling Entertainment Centers in Sale-Leaseback with Bowlero (Oct 19, 2023)
- Bowlero / Lucky Strike Entertainment SEC filings (CIK 1840572)
- AMF Bowling Worldwide FY2006 10-K — 186-center / $254M iStar sale-leaseback
- Doehr et al v. Lucky Strike Entertainment, No. 2:26-cv-01535 (W.D. Wash.)
- NPR — Bowlers allege Lucky Strike violated federal antitrust law