By Rebecca Picciotto | Photography by Sara Konradi for WSJ

David Whitt was ready to bowl his eighth frame at the Lucky Strike in Gaithersburg, Md. Staring down the lane, he took a breath and brought the ball to his chin.

Then the lights went out. Nightclub music blared. The walls and ceilings pulsed with neon light beams. TVs flashed music video clips.

It was time for "blacklight bowling" — the party-style experience offered by Lucky Strike Entertainment, America's largest bowling conglomerate.

"I went ballistic," said the 45-year old competitive bowler, who delivered a few choice words to the staff that night last year and nearly got ejected.

"It was a party house," Whitt said. "They just did not care that we were in the middle of our league."

Hostility between America's dedicated league bowlers and Lucky Strike has been building for years. Competitive players say the company is ruining the sport with its focus on frivolous entertainment while allowing lanes and equipment to fall apart.

"They've put a bad mark on the sport," said Robert Wunderlich, a competitive bowler in Augusta, Ga. He runs a Facebook group called "Bowlero Sucks/Lucky Strike Sucks," referring to the company's previous name.

Lucky Strike Chief Executive Thomas Shannon is incredulous. He says his strategy is crucial for bowling to survive.

"We saved bowling in America," Shannon said. "That's the reality."

In May, the increasingly bitter standoff shifted to the courtroom after 11 bowlers filed a class-action lawsuit in Seattle.

They allege Lucky Strike uses a monopoly scheme to gobble up mom-and-pop bowling alleys and transform them into a "mousetrap" model, luring people in just to upcharge them on shoe rentals and concessions.

Lucky Strike is bringing about "the veritable destruction of the decades-old pastime" in its efforts to become the "'Starbucks' of bowling," they allege in the complaint. They're seeking monetary compensation and a break-up of Lucky Strike's national portfolio.

"The soul of bowling is literally at risk," said Dan Hagan, who says he's been bowling since the womb — his mother competed while pregnant.

Shannon dismissed the suit. "This is the dumbest, most ridiculous lawsuit I've ever seen," he said. "I think it was written by AI and I think AI was hallucinating."

Bowling was once one of America's most popular pastimes. In 1961, one of 17 Americans belonged to a league, according to Bowlers Journal International magazine. Today, the United States Bowling Congress says it's one in roughly 300.

The midcentury boom triggered a flurry of construction. But as demand declined, many neighborhood spots became worth less than the land they sat on.

"It was a real-estate bubble," said J.R. Schmidt, a historian known as "Dr. Jake." "Leagues were already dropping off before Lucky Strike entered the picture."

By the time Shannon bought his first alley in 1997, bowling was struggling to compete with home entertainment.

Lucky Strike, which rebranded from Bowlero Corporation in 2024, wants bowling to appeal to the same people who frequent party-style golf ranges or trampoline parks.

Today, 10% of Lucky Strike's revenue comes from league bowlers while 25% comes from party bowlers. The rest is "walk-in retail," which includes bowling, arcades, food and beverage.

The company still owns the Professional Bowlers Association, but Shannon says that's mostly for show. He said the PBA has lost money for 30 years.

"League bowling is in decline," he said. "We have yet to find that it has real commercial value."

Instead, Shannon is thinking of new ways to reinvent bowling, including through "gamification." Players could earn rewards like a new car or cash, not for winning traditional games but other challenges like rolling a certain number of strikes in an allotted period.

What Shannon sees as a rescue mission, lifetime bowlers see as a desecration.

Members of Wunderlich's Facebook group say Lucky Strikes are more like frat houses. Their gripes abound: Lanes aren't properly oiled; machines break down regularly; leagues are assigned lanes right next to rowdy parties; food is exorbitantly priced.

During one game, Sylvie Kasztan said her league's lanes broke down "every single time we threw a ball." The pins wouldn't reset. Her team waited up to 10 minutes between shots as staff ran back and forth to address each broken lane.

"Within a couple of weeks, the mechanic had quit," she recalled. "The poor guy was exhausted."

Among the most vicious battles is over the transition to "string pinsetting" where pins are attached to strings that make them easier to reset. League players say they interfere with how the pins would fall naturally, sometimes knocking over pins that should have stayed up or impeding other pins from falling down. Bowling center owners say the sport has to keep up with technology.

After the Lucky Strike in Queens, New York, made the switch, the league that had played there for years stopped showing up.

Now, the location is almost exclusively filled with recreational players.

On one recent evening, Neil Kamath had rented out two lanes for himself so he could play two games at once — a kind of workout-style bowling that he invented.

"This is more cardio for me than bowling," Kamath said, short of breath and shiny with sweat. "If there's league bowling, they wouldn't give me all the lanes."

Write to Rebecca Picciotto at Rebecca.Picciotto@wsj.com