Bowling’s old free-fall pinsetters aren’t being put in storage when a center switches to strings. They’re being scrapped. And the company doing more of that converting than anyone else, Lucky Strike Entertainment, the former Bowlero, also owns the PBA, the tour that cleared string machines for professional play.
Once a house tears out its free-fall machines, it has no way back to the old game. This is the story of how that became permanent. Lucky Strike is the largest bowling-center operator in the country; in May 2026 a group of bowlers took it to federal court in Washington State in an antitrust case that is still nothing more than allegations, and their own filing lays out the scale, along with complaints about string pins, lane maintenance and malfunctioning equipment. The same company owns the PBA, which it bought as Bowlero in September 2019. So the operator that saves the most every time a center converts also owns the league that ruled the machines acceptable. One correction the comment sections keep getting wrong: the AMF on a Bowlero sign and the AMF that builds the Edge String machine split years ago and are two different companies. The conflict is real. It runs through the league, not the machine’s maker.
The last case on this channel ended on a number: a documented 6.9-pin scoring loss for the best bowlers on certified string machines. That figure was measured on machines that were brand new. USBC certification is an inspection, and while inspectors do return on a multi-year cycle, that recurring check confirms lane dimensions and approved equipment, not the string tension, pin rotation and cracked pins that actually drift game to game. A modern free-fall machine that costs less to run already exists, the Brunswick GS NXT, and the operators converting to strings are, by and large, choosing not to buy it. Nothing here alleges a crime. It is a cost advantage, an ownership chart and a certification that stops at the front door, laid end to end into a door that only swings one way.